Weekend Champion - "The Bum Shoulder"
by Dr. Kareem Samhouri author of Double Edged Fat Loss

Do you love playing sports? Do you participate in a master's league sport? Is it hard to make time to practice outside of games? Well, games are more fun anyway right?

Of course! That is, if you don't have tendinitis or if you don't get injured. Right now, as I'm writing this, there are 30 guys at my gym who are playing a weekend game of 'pick-up' basketball. And guess what? Without fail, every Saturday, one of them (at least) gets hurt, or leaves the game because "my shoulder (knee, ankle, elbow) is killing me!"

While this is good for business, it's not good for you. It's time that you learn how you can strengthen those painful joints in just a few minutes a day so that you don't have to worry about 'old age catching up.' The fact is that we spend our whole day in a chair at work, or in front of a computer, or reading, or doing something else that has us in a terrible posture, slouched or hunched forward. Normally, when we leave work we crack our necks once or twice, wish for a massage, and then assume all is better the next day. Well, it turns out that we are actually doing slow, but successive damage to our joints.

Did you know that your head position can cause tendinitis in your shoulders? It's true. 'Forward head,' meaning your ear is not lined up with the top of your shoulder when you look from the side, actually puts stress on your rotator cuff. 'Forward shoulders,' as the name implies, creates a similar or greater stress on your rotator cuff muscles. This stress eventually leads to tendinitis, or sometimes even a rotator cuff tear that requires surgery.

By performing a couple of back strengthening and head retraction exercises, which you can do while sitting at work in less than 10 minutes, you can avoid, if not eliminate these problems. The muscles that you're going to want to strengthen in your back are:

• Rhomboids


• Middle/Lower Trapezius ("Traps")


• Posterior Deltoid


• Lattisimus Dorsi ("Lats")

So go out there and find some exercises to strengthen these muscles and avoid injury! If you are having trouble or you are unsure about what the best method might be, don't be too proud: Seek the help of a fitness professional or physical therapist. We'd be happy to help you create a foundation for healthy living and injury prevention. The human body is a complicated machine. It's wise to avoid learning through experience when dealing with any complicated machine, especially one that hurts through experience!

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