47 of 53 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Well, It's Got 100 Exercises, But Which Ones Do You Do?, July 8, 2011
This review is from: Healthy Shoulder Handbook: 100 Exercises for Treating and Preventing Frozen Shoulder, Rotator Cuff and other Common Injuries (Paperback)
This really looked like a useful book so I bought a copy. Unfortunately, in this case, the old adage, "Don't judge a book by it's cover" applies. I took the time to cover each chapter - the comprehensive review is below for those interested. In short, this book has several major problems, however the biggest issue of all is this. Most people will probably want to buy it to help them treat a shoulder problem, that is, they want to find out what they can do for it. But guess what? The book will give you 100 exercises, but then doesn't tell you which ones to do! In fact, it's here that the book makes statements such as, "trial and error is the best approach" and "go ahead and select the exercises that appeal to you, changing them periodically".
Oh brother. If you bought this book with a rotator cuff tear, or have been told you have shoulder arthritis, DON'T expect the book to tell you what exercises to do, or which ones will work best for a particular condition - you're so on your own. In fact, the book states on page 30 to, "Treat this book as a menu from which you (either in consultation with your health professional or simple experimentation) select appropriate exercises for your condition."
Hey, just a minute! If I got this right, this means I should either have a health professional help me pick out which exercises to do (if I did that, why would I really need this book) OR I should simply "experiment" on my own to come up with the (hopefully) right exercises for my shoulder problem. Is it me or does anyone else have a problem with this?
Do you realize too that the cover of this book says, "100 Exercises for Treating and Preventing Frozen Shoulder, Rotator Cuff and Other Common Injuries"? Well I feel like this is totally misleading - sure its true that there are 100 exercises to treat those problems, but it's also true that it's all up to YOU to figure out which exercises are the best to do for which shoulder problems!
In all fairness, the book does give you SOME suggested routines. For example, there are routines for general conditioning, baseball, basketball, etc. - which tell you the exact stretching and strengthening exercises to do. BUT there's yet another problem here.
Sure, if all you want from this book is to prevent a shoulder problem, you could do the general conditioning routine and do okay - I agree. However, that's about where the usefulness of the routines go as far as I'm concerned. Why? Because many of the suggested shoulder routines are VERY similar to one another. For example, in the suggested routine for baseball, it has you do the "choker" stretch, the "over the top" stretch, and the "chest" stretch. That's all good and fine, but those are also the exact SAME stretches you do in the basketball, football, hockey, wrestling, and the office/desk job routines!!
Is is me, or does anybody else who read the book find it strange that the book recommends that a football player, a hockey player, a basketball player (overhead sport) and a secretary should all be doing THE SAME shoulder stretches? Just doesn't seem right to me - a big clue suggesting that the author doesn't really treat shoulder problems.
I really felt like: 1) readers are poorly guided (if at all) as to what exercises to do, and 2) where the reader is guided, it appears you get a lot of "cookie cutter" shoulder routines.
The other interesting thing about this book are the exercises. At first I was impressed at the sheer number of exercises. But then I thought, "Isn't it interesting that there are EXACTLY 100?" I mean there aren't 90, or 103, but exactly 100.
Of course this can only mean that someone planned it that way, and to do that, you have to come up with 100 shoulder exercises for people to do. While this may strike some as being hard to do, its really not - you simply count each little shoulder motion as an exercise. For instance, one shoulder exercise is the "forward and backward arm swing". To do it, you lean over a chair and swing your arm forward and backward - that's ONE exercise, 99 more to come up with. Okay, now swing your arm side to side - Okay, that's ANOTHER exercise, now there's only 98 to come up with. Okay, now swing your arm in a circle - Okay, that's ANOTHER exercise, 97 more to come up with...
Well, you get the picture - literally. The book actually takes up three entire pages to show you these three ridiculously simple exercises: swing your arm forward (p. 55), swing your arm side to side (p. 56), and swing your arm in a circle (p. 57). 100 useful shoulder exercises? You be the judge - but that's how they came up with 100 exercises to fill the book...
In summary, after reading the whole book, it might have some usefulness if you don't have a shoulder problem but want to prevent one - I say that because there's ONE shoulder routine described in the book that is clearly presented. Short of that, if you are going to buy the book to get rid of shoulder pain, good luck sifting through the 100 exercises and figuring out which ones to do. But who knows, maybe you'll get lucky and pick ones that will be good for your shoulder. On the other hand, maybe you'll pick some that are actually bad for your particular shoulder condition...
Well, perhaps that's why the book tells the reader that, "You can greatly improve your chances of a full and rapid recovery by promptly visiting your doctor upon feeling pain..." and "...you should follow your medical professionals recommendations to the letter for the best results". On that we can agree.
-----Comprehensive Review Below-----
When you open it and begin reading, you'll start with "Part 1" and come across a short introduction - which lists some signs that indicate you may have a shoulder problem. This struck me as funny, because I'm assuming that if you do have a shoulder problem, you probably already know it - so I'm not sure what the purpose of the list is. Furthermore, I can't imagine anyone picking up the book, reading the list, and saying to themselves, "Oh my gosh, I've got a shoulder problem!" But you never know...
The next section is "Who gets shoulder problems?". Now some people may, but I personally don't care about who gets a shoulder problem - I've already got one and I'll bet the majority of readers already do too. I kinda felt like this was a waste of pages.
After that comes a section on shoulder anatomy. It's pretty thorough, so I can't knock this section too much. Of course this kind of info you can get pretty readily on the internet in about 60 seconds by typing in the title of the chapter, "shoulder anatomy".
Okay, next comes the section, "Common Shoulder Conditions". This section offers the reader a brief review of the most common types of shoulder problems, such as frozen shoulder For each condition, the book describes the condition, lists its symptoms, its common causes, how to assess for the condition, and the treatment. While this might sound good, it's really not all that helpful if you're trying to figure out which shoulder condition you have - that's because most of the shoulder conditions listed have similar symptoms!
For example, if you think you may have frozen shoulder because your range of motion is limited, it would be hard to say for sure after reading this section because limited range of motion is not only listed as a symptom of frozen shoulder - but its also listed as a symptom of arthritis. Likewise, pain when sleeping on your side is a symptom of shoulder impingement, so one might think, "Maybe I have that" - but wait, that's also a symptom of a rotator cuff problem! My analysis of this section is this: at first glance it looks useful - but when you actually try to use the information to figure out what's wrong with your shoulder, you can only come up with a bunch of "maybe's". And if the book didn't want you to self-diagnose yourself - why put this info in?
Continuing on, we have the section called "Shoulder Rehab". This chapter tells you the importance of seeing a doctor, getting your shoulder evaluated by a professional, and how "your therapist will design a treatment plan for your specific condition". It might just be me, but if that's what I really should be doing - getting professional help as the book (over) emphasizes - why buy the book? I thought this was suppose to be a SELF-help book, but I guess I was wrong...
Alrighty then, on to "Part 2". This section starts out with a short chapter called "Preventing (re) injury". Here you learn about the importance of sitting and standing up straight. Quite interestingly, the book then goes into what it calls, "the green, yellow, and red zones". Here it talks about three shoulder motions, abduction, flexion, and extension, and teaches you how far you can move your arm before you will be putting your shoulder at risk of injury. As you might have guessed, the red zones are the zones you want to avoid, and represent the very end-ranges of shoulder motion. Sounds like a good idea, right?
Well, I had two problems here. First of all, the book tries to teach you how far is too far to move your shoulder. It does this by first having you move your shoulder in a comfortable range. For instance, the book instructs you to stand against a wall, and then the directions for shoulder abduction read, "Raise your arms in front of you at shoulder height with your palms facing each other. Now spread them to just where you can't see your hands anymore. Does this hurt? If not, this is your green zone- and you can perform most activities in this zone and not hurt yourself." The initial problem here, is that the corresponding picture showing you the zones for abduction have the person lying on their stomach, while the directions...
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55 of 65 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Seems geared more toward prevention than treatment of acute injury, May 10, 2010
This review is from: Healthy Shoulder Handbook: 100 Exercises for Treating and Preventing Frozen Shoulder, Rotator Cuff and other Common Injuries (Paperback)
This book is a very comprehensive look at a range of different exercises for the rotator cuff, as well as prevention programs aimed towards different activities, including baseball, basketball, football, golf, hockey, swimming, tennis, volleyball, wrestling, construction, and office/desk job. it has exercises that are passive (he calls them "gentle" but i'll get back to that), on the floor, on a roller, with a cane, on a wall/door, and then some with resistance (band/dumbbell)
However, despite the comprehensiveness of the book, he doesn't actually present a program for acute injury. There is one "rotator cuff routine" on page 18 that appears to be for more acute injuries since it is placed rather awkwardly in the section describing the different rotator cuff injuries that can occur. I was completely unable to do all but one of the exercises in this routine when i was first injured. It was very frustrating and I felt as though the title of the book (especially the "treating" part) was misleading.
Dissatisfied, I bought Jim Johnson's Treat Your Own Rotator Cuff, and I did just that - his 5 day a week routine (with number of seconds/number of sets very clearly described) helped me start making small strides towards mobility. Johnsons's book also has a very informative section describing the shoulder and what exactly is happening, as well as why it is useful to do the exercises at all. Now, 6 weeks later, I can finally start in on some of the more sport-specific routines in the Healthy Shoulder Handbook.
All that said, I think that this is a great book for *prevention*, and I will use it as my shoulder recovers to prevent future injury.
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