Save Your Shoulders - Part 3: Protecting Your Rotator Cuff Muscles

In the previous article (Part 2), we looked at taking care of the upper trapezius (the top of the shoulders). And in part 1, we looked at effective body use to protect your shoulders.

Let’s focus now on looking after the muscles that connect the arm to the shoulder blade, particularly the rotator cuff muscles.

Try to sense these muscles as you continue reading; These muscles originate on your scapula, and cross your armpit to the head of your humerus.

They do small turning movements of your arm and stabilise the head of your humerus in the socket of the scapula (the glenoid fossa) when your pectorals, lats and deltoids are doing big movements of your arm.

They are sometimes known as the SITS muscles from the initials of their names - Supraspinatus, Infraspinatus, Teres minor and Subscapularis.

Applying pressure and the link to shoulder strain

Whether you are doing Hands Free Massage or with your hands, applying pressurealong with performing sliding or turning techniques without moving your body puts quite a demand on your rotator cuff muscles and your deltoid.

Standing still and doing these techniques with pressure will soon begin to overwork these muscles, leading to fatigue and possible strain.

This problem has been becoming more prevalent in recent years - as more massage practitioners have been using firmer, deeper massage techniques, without thinking about, or feeling, the ramifications of potential overuse of the shoulder muscles.

Learning to work Hands Free is a great step toward protecting your body from strain, however it’s not enough to merely switch to using your forearm and elbow to apply more pressure. Good Hands Free Massage Training should place a strong emphasis on how to protect your shoulders.This is especially important when working Hands Free, as we often use more power than we would when working with our hands. And more power, if not delivered effectively, can result in staining our shoulders.

Note:You have to be even more careful about this if you’re using your forearm or elbow while applying pressure, because of the close connection between your shoulder and your working forearm/elbow.

Saving your SITS muscles and deltoid

Incorporating the body use practices covered in the first article on Saving your Shoulders (Good Bodyuse to protect your shoulders) encourages you to generate power from your legs and trunk so that you can work most effectively with the least effort.

The role of your shoulders is to transmit this powerfrom your trunk to your arms, while staying relatively relaxed.

Try this to protect your shoulders

• To slide forward: sway forward to slide your hand, forearm, elbow forward.
• When changing direction: turn your whole body to change the direction of your arm.

Both these movements use your trunk to generate movement and support your arms, reducing strain on your shoulder muscles. This helps distribute effort through larger, more stable muscle groups like your legs and core, rather than overloading your deltoids and rotator cuff.

To recap the 3 parts of this ‘protecting your shoulders' series…

Over these three articles, we’ve explored how to protect your shoulders by using your whole body effectively in massage. Part 1 highlighted the importance of generating power from your legs and trunk rather than relying on shoulder strength.

Part 2 focused on keeping your shoulders -especially your upper trapezius - relaxed to avoid chronic tension and fatigue.

Part 3 built on these foundations, showing how to protect the deeper shoulder muscles, particularly the rotator cuff and deltoid, by moving with your whole body rather than pushing with your arms.

Together, these strategies support a more sustainable, fluid, and injury-resistant massage practice.

This article is adapted from “Foundations of Hands Free Massage” by Darien Pritchard (to be published later this year).

About the Authors

Darien Pritchard from Dynamic Massage and Hands Free Massage Training, has been a massage trainer since 1982, and has served on the General Council for Massage Therapy (UK). He wrote the career-maintenance book Dynamic Bodyuse for Effective Strain-Free Massage (2008), and the student text Anatomy, Physiology and Pathology for Massage (2nd ed, 2023). For four decades, Darien has pioneered a focus on how massage practitioners can protect their hands and body whilst using them most effectively, including developing the original Hands Free Massage training 25 years ago - the skilful, sensitive use of the forearm and elbow to save the hands.

Leora Sharp from Hands Free Massage Training, has been a massage practitioner since 2008 and very early on in her career, realised the importance of needing to work as Hands Free as possible. To that end, in 2009 she trained with Darien and was so blown away with Hands Free Massage, that she offered to assist him on his 8 Day Advanced training. Her role slowly transformed into co-teacher and she then started teaching solo in 2016. She is continually bowled over how amazing HFM is and the benefits it brings to practitioners to sustain their careers. Alongside teaching HFM, Leora has a private practice at Neal’s Yard in Bath and designs websites for complementary health professionals.