An Effective New Option For Repairing Shoulder Injuries

It’s no news that many people suffer from shoulder injuries on a daily basis. It plagues not only a great number of weightlifters and athletes, but also an overwhelming number of average everyday folks. Young and old, men and women, active or inactive, the shoulder is such a complex joint and it carries a lot of injury potential. Often times the pain is a result of rotator cuff issues, impingements, small tears, complete tears, or just inflammation which can result in a larger issue down the road. The fact of the matter is, whatever the root of the problem, pain in the shoulder instantly becomes a pain in the butt! It can make it difficult to do almost any everyday task whether it be work, sleep, play, let alone train. Just when you forget about it and move smoothly through a day, you’re quickly reminded by a jolt of pain when you’re doing something as trivial as brushing your teeth. Eventually, the time comes that you know you’ve got to do something about it. A doctor might order up an x-ray and/or MRI, send you to physical therapy, or worse case scenario, the surgeon. Well, surgery or expensive and timely rehab may not be your only option.

There is a new invention out there that is producing outstanding results getting people with shoulder pain back into action. This new product, the “RotatoReliever” looks to be a simple, affordable, effective way to bring people back from shoulder pain purgatory. I'm not here to blow a bunch of smoke, but rather I’ve used this thing for my own nagging shoulder ailments with significant results.

As if you want to know, I'll give you a quick background of my shoulder issues. It started about a decade ago when I was getting into bodybuilding. I was a 19-year-old college kid at the time, and I was just starting to grow into my man body while working hard to get my “swole” on. I was one of the bigger, stronger dudes on campus, and looking good for the ladies was of key importance – haha, those were the days! I could hurl around some weights, but knew very little about muscle imbalances, other than that I wanted every body part to be as jacked as the next. One day, during a recreation league-type softball game, my dreams of becoming the next Arnold hit a road block. Yes, that's right, recreational softball. That's as glorified as it gets, right there. So I was up to bat with a couple of guys on base, and being the “swole” dude on the field, I knew what was expected by everybody else present. So when that roaring 30 mph pitch came, I gave it everything I had. Relying purely on the "gunz," and without turning my hips much or technically swinging the bat, I cracked that puppy just a few feet short of going over the fence. I took off to run the bases, hoping for a triple or an error to give me the home run. Well, on my way to first, I noticed that my arm was kind of flapping while I ran. No, my sprinting form was not that bad, but rather I had popped my shoulder right out of socket upon making contact with the ball. I slowed down and nervously made it to third, and then got the heck off the field, carrying my arm like a limp noodle. I went straight to the school clinic, where they set my shoulder and put my arm in a sling. I went home the next day to see my doctor, who ordered an MRI and after that I was given the heart breaking news that I had detached my labrum and had a nice bit of cracked cartilage. I was given one option – surgery. Well, I saw the surgeon and he gave me the scoop. He said he'd cut me open, re-attach my labrum, and I'd enjoy 6-9 months of recovery and rehab. I knew a few guys who had the same or very similar surgeries, and they all had the same advice. “Don’t do it, it will never be the same again!”

Well, call it what you will, be it wisdom or stupidity, I took their advice. I kept the sling on for as long as I could stand, which was barely six weeks. Then, I got going in the gym to work on bringing back my left arm. Sheesh, I can still remember throwing around the 3 or 5 pound rubber-coated pink/purple weights, instead of my typical gigantic iron dumbbells. Needless to say though, after about six months I got most of my strength back. I rehabilitated my shoulder fairly well and built up the muscles around the joint to pretty much hold the thing in place. I went on pumping up, got strong as hell (well, pretty strong), and even competed in bodybuilding shows a couple of times before getting very bored and craving combat once again, then came Mixed Martial Arts.

My left arm and shoulder was always different after the injury. It was as strong as my right, but it lacked some range of motion and always felt weaker in the joint. I carried it differently, often protecting it which did help to evade arm bars during years of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu training and competition. When I boxed, or did jits for that matter, it was usually sore afterward. Dull, aching pain often radiated down my shoulder into my bicep. I developed more imbalances as my left trap was narrower than my right and my shoulder drew inward and forward. That often caused my neck to be sore as well, and after about five years of that came the blowout – a completely ruptured C6-7 disc. This resulted in nerve damage and an immediate surgical procedure known as a laminectomy. Recovering from that sucked...to put it lightly. Because of the damage at the nerve root from the impacting disc material, I lost every bit of the strength and muscle mass in the left side of my upper body. My pec turned into a man boob and my left lat, bicep and tricep turned to mush. It took three months just to do a pushup, and about two years to get my left side back to about 90 percent and nothing past that. I still work at gaining more, but let me tell ya, nerve injury takes forever to heal. That being said, through diligent work, I was able to rehabilitate the areas affected and never stopped fighting. I fought six times since, and won five of those. I'd like to lie and say I won all six, but hey, five out of six isn’t bad, right?

A couple of years after the surgery was when I was introduced to the RotatoReliever. It was by my boxing coach, who was also suffering from shoulder and neck pain at that time. He could barely hold mitts anymore and was always holding his arm or stretching his neck and shoulder. Now my coach was one tough old SOB...one of the toughest dudes that I knew. You know, the typical old-school boxing coach type. The kind of guy who would only go to the doctor as a last resort, however, the pain and negative effects were so bad in the gym that it drove him to finally hit up his physician to give it a look.

Anyway, a couple of weeks later, I went into the gym and started getting my train on as usual. I saw that Coach was holding mitts for guys, which I hadn’t seen in quite a while and he looked like nothing was wrong. Out of concern, I told him that he better take it easy on his bad shoulder, but his response surprised me. He said that his pain was gone! He got this new device that his doctor gave him and he thought I should give the thing a try. He showed me the exercises and went over the protocol that he felt healed him up and brought his shoulder back to strength. Well, I gave the thing a try and after just a few short days, I felt a great improvement. I thought, damn, this thing works great! A few rounds on the heavy bag used to make my shoulder ache, now I could tear that thing up for twice as long and go home un-phased. But that wasn’t all, I also felt generally much stronger in my shoulder joint and had much better stability. The “weak in the joint” feeling was pretty much non existent. My left punches with were much better and quicker and my endurance also increased, so I started using this thing with both arms in order to reap the performance benefits for my boxing  I used it a couple of times a week as a workout, and also used it briefly before training to “warm up.”

Now, with most doctors being so quick to put patients under the knife, I was immediately interested in a doctor who offered alternative fixes. The same doctor who created this product. Besides just working, this product had some other great benefits. At the cost of about one or two sessions with a physical therapist, his product allowed you to strengthen and rehabilitate your shoulder on your own time. So, time and money are saved, not to mention the depression and stress of surgical recovery or just that of the nagging injury itself when left untreated. I contacted the doctor and after hearing about my success with his product and my athletic and training background, he allowed me an opportunity to sit down with him for an interview.

Introducing: Dr. Michael Carroll, MD.  A Family Doctor with a special interest in Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation.

He has a Family Practice called Creekside Clinic and Sports Medicine, located in Traverse Ctiy, MI

SM: Where does your interest in Sports Medicine come from?

Dr. C: I see a tremendous amount of injuries on a regular basis just in my family practice. This project with the Rotator Reliever started 7 years ago, when I was dying from shoulder pain from my own injury and I could not find any relief. Like most people, I was going through different types of therapy, like physical therapy and steroid injections. Those things would give me a little bit of relief but it was only temporary. It just became a relentless problem and it was constantly coming back. At night I could barely sleep. One night it got really bad and I eventually figured out a good arm position with a little bit of traction by basically tying my arm down to some weights. I slept like that all night and in a sense that was the last shoulder pain that I had. That's kind of when the light bulb went on in my head as I felt that was a pivotal piece of the puzzle in relieving shoulder pain. The other piece of the puzzle is exercising the shoulder in the right manner, and I developed the proper mechanism for that immediately after.

SM: So the proper exercises and the right rest is the premise behind the healing power of the Rotator Reliever?

Dr. C: Yeah, the Rotator Reliever is basically breaking the injury cycle because people with shoulder pain are really hurting themselves at night. So, number one, we break that. Then, we have to ask ourselves, well why are they hurting themselves at night? The answer to that is essentially this muscle imbalance that we talk about. Typically for most people, old and young, is that basically you need a stronger rotator cuff than you have! So what we’re saying is that we will absolutely get you better. You will have the strongest rotator cuff on the block by the end of 40 days with our program. Part of the magic of our program is hey, I am not exercising your pectorals, your deltoid and your trapezius. We’re getting your rotator cuff stronger in the right way, very efficiently and then you’re released to go live your life, pain free with full function.

SM: So how prevalent is shoulder pain or injuries in athletes and the general public?

Dr. C: Well I would say the numbers are mind boggling. There were a few recent studies that say 22 percent of the adult population has shoulder pain at any given time. If you crunch the numbers on that – that's like 44 million people in our country alone. And the statistics are the same in Europe, Australia...everywhere. As health professionals, we see a ton of it. A lot of people suffering can’t remember a specific injury. You know, they can’t say, “Oh yeah, on January 22nd, I slipped on the ice and hurt my shoulder.” For most people, it's just a slow progressive problem that keeps coming on and getting worse. The shoulder is very prone to injury. However, something that I have to preach until I'm blue in the face is that having a rotator cuff tear doesn't necessarily mean that you need to have surgery! A lot of people can have small tears and we just kind of make everything else stronger and make sure that the tear doesn’t extend any further with what we do and the person can go on, fully functional and pain free. The shoulder is an unbelievable joint if you think about it. It has a 270° range of motion in multiple planes, it is what allows your hands to do the work in some ways. A price of that complexity and freedom is risk of injury. One thing goes wrong and there are so many complex muscle interactions that need to take place for the rotator cuff to work well. That's why it's prone to injury.

SM: That makes a lot of sense. I know that for me and most athletes, avoiding surgery sounds like a dream come true, but there are others who think they can only get better with surgery for some reason. I know that you have a 100% money back guarantee that shows you stand behind your product, what gives you that kind of confidence?

Dr. C: Well, you see, we have a lot of research that we’ve done. Like any decent doctor or health professional, I had to back this up with research. The research showed that this product works incredibly well in comparison to anti-inflammatories and physical therapy. One-hundred percent of the people in our pilot study got better. On top of doing the research, I presented and published the research. I presented it at the American College of Sports Medicine national meeting. It was a very well-received presentation. I think that any body, but especially in my field, has an idea then they better be ready to back it up with some research. That's what we believe in and that's what we do.

SM: That's a great belief and more people should have that mentality. What are the risks or success rates of surgical shoulder repair?

Dr. C: You know, I think that there's a place for it. I think that some people are so far gone  I see that one of the major trends of surgery is that people are having such a hard time recovering from the rotator cuff reconstruction that they are doing more complete shoulder replacements. They're getting better at those replacements, but they're still just a bear to recover from. Most patients who undergo shoulder surgery lose 6-9 months of the function and use of their shoulder. That can just really become a dominating issue in your life. If you think your shoulder pain interferes with things now, imagine surgery. It involves everything. It effects your work, your activity – everything. It can get depressing, and in the end, it might not even fix the problem.

SM: Yeah, I’ve seen a number of athletes go through shoulder surgery and it was an incredibly difficult recovery. They seem to get downright depressed while going through the six or nine month layoff feeling like a one-arm gimp.

Dr. C: Yeah and there's a lot of good research out there. Again, some people do need surgery, but I’ll tell you what, the shoulder really rarely ever seems to work the same again. The shoulder function is altered. I think that if you can, you should try to avoid surgery. But if you can’t, you should find a good surgeon.

SM: Can neck injuries and neck pain be related to shoulder injuries? I felt that mine was and the Rotator Reliever gave me a lot of neck relief as well.

Dr. C: Absolutely. One of my favorite stories was a lady patient of mine, she came in complaining that she had seven years of neck pain. I mean, SEVEN years! She had three MRIs, four bouts of physical therapy, and she was working with good doctors. I did an examination on her neck and it seemed to be okay. She hadn’t complained of her shoulder at all, but I examined it and she showed symptoms of a rotator cuff injury. At the time, I was in the research stages of this product and I had like 30 prototypes. They were precious to me! But I gave her one, told her to take this home, open it up, and follow the directions. I told her to call me when she felt a difference. Three weeks later she was practically in tears because she was pain free. Her neck pain was gone completely. Now she’s one of the testimonials on our infomercial. So I’ll tell you this, the body never works in isolation. These things are connected. So much of neck pain comes from the muscle groups around there, like the trapezius. It's not all just disc pain. However, when the shoulder is injured, the shoulder automatically tries to splint the injury. It does this by putting the trapezius into spasm. If you put the trapezius into spasm for a few years, then you can bet that it will have an effect on the disc. Soon, hopefully, our research will get to gravitate toward neck pain. I think that a lot of neck pain on a side of the neck and radiating to the shoulder is in fact stemming from the shoulder.

SM: How is this product working for athletes?

Dr. C: Great! One great story we have is with a Pro female boxer Molly McConnell out of Portland, OR. She had this title fight coming up back in November and she couldn’t even move her left arm. It was severely damaged from a rotator cuff injury. It's not a good idea to go into a boxing match with no jab or left hook! Her coach found us online and called us up, so I sent him a rotator reliever. And what happened? She got completely better. Then her coach used it, and he got better! Then, her 70 year old father used it, and he got better! In her fight, in the sixth round, she broke her right hand. She had to finish the fight with her left hand and she did it. She destroyed the girl she fought. The thing about this product and shoulder pain in general, is that it affects people across the board, in all age ranges, sexes, athletes and non athletes.

SM: I think that a lot of people have muscle imbalance but athletes, especially who participate in a lot of resistance training, seem to be at greater risk. They tend to work the deltoids and other muscles a lot, and the small things like the rotator cuff seem unimportant and get left out because they don’t look good in the mirror. But there's a reason that a 300-pound guy can military press the 140-pound dumbbells with ease, only to reach for his gym bag later and tear his rotator cuff. Isn’t the rotator cuff an important part of shoulder strength? Could having a stronger rotator cuff make your shoulder strength that much better? When I used it, I felt like it was great for my punching power and hand speed. Could it be used to strengthen and be a prehabilitary aid even before an injury?

Dr. C: Yeah, having a stronger rotator cuff can only help you. A stronger rotator cuff will help you build the muscles around it. Instead of getting a greater muscle imbalance and maybe the body fighting against that, with a stronger rotator cuff and joint, your body instead could allow it to grow and support more strength. I'm saying give it like four minutes a day and see if you get a stronger muscle. It's so easy and so time efficient that everybody should do it to strengthen and prevent injury, but athletes especially.

SM: Yeah this thing takes up barely any space in your gym bag and its totally affordable. I’ve witnessed so many shoulder injuries in training. They always show up a while later in a sling and out for nine months for surgery and therapy. If these guys used this thing before training just to warm-up or strengthen, I bet this wouldn’t have happened. It worked for me as a warm-up aid, my pain definitely subsided and I was able to train harder again. It improved my punches quite a bit. It worked my shoulders and kept them feeling tight in the joint, but without putting the bulk on my shoulders that might restrict my punching.

Dr. C: Well the purpose of the rotator cuff is to keep the ball on the tee. You have a big ball there and a small tee. Now it’s not only is a strong rotator cuff that we are going for, but one that remembers to be coordinated. There's a neural aspect to it as well, telling the shoulder how it is supposed to work. The Rotator Reliever builds strength and at the same time It creates that memory and reminds the shoulder how to function healthily and properly. Nothing quite works like it.

A note from the Author: I am not a doctor and this article is not “medical advice.” Some people do need surgery to fix an issue, but I don’t believe that everybody does. This is a simple, effective tool that may be an alternative option and is worth giving a try, but some injuries may inflict too much damage to fix without operating. I always recommend getting a doctor’s advice, so it is up to you to judge the damage and what might work for you.

To view more on this item or purchase a Rotator Reliever yourself, you can now do so right here on elitefts™.  Just click here.