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Shoulders take a battering

Hang glider pilots use their shoulders
April 29, 2014, 8:33:07 EDT

Quest Air|video

If you want to continue to fly hang gliders you'll need healthy shoulders. Unfortunately, hang glider pilots are often damaging their shoulders, which as a rule trade flexibility and range of motion for robustness. Pilot can damage their shoulders with poor landings and we've seen a number of pilots who have hurt themselves.

Here is a shot of Wolfgang Siess after his recent shoulder surgery:

He is in for a long recovery period.

A couple of years ago I tore my supraspinatus tendon in my right shoulder (rotator cuff tears explained here) when I tripped on landing and had to have surgery also. The two month recovery period was quite painful. I recently mentioned that Linda Salamone had the same surgery after tearing her supraspinatus tendon at last year's Santa Cruz Flats Race.

Last September I had a Cortisone shot in my left shoulder for an inflamed long head bicep tendon along with physical therapy. Recently I had a Cortisone shot for bursitis of my left shoulder and I'm doing more physical therapy.

The Cortisone shots reduce or eliminate the inflammation. Then the point is to do what needs to be done so that the shoulder doesn't get inflamed again. That's the point of physical therapy.

You can read more about shoulder injuries here. You can check the symptom checker here, and click on the shoulder.

The point of my physical therapy is to get the back muscles that go to the shoulder joint to be as strong as the front muscles so that the forces at the shoulder joint are balanced.  See here. You want the ball (head of humerus) in the center of the socket (glenoid cavity) and not rubbing (impinging) on the front edge.

It is easy to check to see if your back muscles (rhomboids, trapezius, deltoids, etc.) are as strong as your front (pectoral) muscles.

If you have these bands for exercise you can use them, or check them out at a sporting goods store (where you will need to determine which strength to purchase in any case). To test your pectoral strength do an internal arm rotation exercise:

To test the strength of your back muscles do an external arm rotation exercise:

Do say fifteen of each of these with the strongest band that just allows you to do the fifteen internal arm rotations. If you are not able to do the fifteen external rotations fully then your back muscles are not as strong as your pects.

I did the internal arm rotations with the purple bands (strongest) but could not do a single complete external rotation with the purple bands. Therefore it was clear that my front and back muscles are not balanced strength wise and the trouble with my left shoulder (the one that wasn't injured when I tore my rotator cuff) is that the ball is not positioned well in the shoulder socket.

This test should be a wake up call for you if you get results similar to what I have found. The differences can be very dramatic and you'll want to get the ball and socket lined up ASAP.

I now do 2 sets of 15 of external rotations with the green or red bands (no need to exercise the pects) each day. I also do a standing row exercise (see here) bringing my shoulder blades together for two seconds each time. I do the exercises before flying to warm up the shoulder.

In addition to strengthening exercises I am doing stretch exercises similar to the door way ones found here.

Here are some additional exercises for the shoulders, and here. Here are more stretches.

Discuss "Shoulders take a battering" at the Oz Report forum   link»


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