I’ve seen health, fitness, and rehab professionals recommend intentially using light weights (<=5 pounds) to train the rotator cuff in healthy trainees to help prevent cuff injuries. The reasoning is that with increasing intensity you’re increasing the recruitment of the bigger muscles (pecs, lats, deltoid) that also provide rotational force and the benefit of the cuff muscles is reduced.
I’ve never really agreed with this reasoning and there’s a study in the new issue of Physical Therapy (August 2007) that backs me up. It showed that with increasing intensity, the bigger muscles were certainly recruited as needed but the rotator cuff muscles also increased their intensity of contraction as well.
So in other words, there’s no reason to limit loading in hopes of making your rotator cuff training more effective.
Bill
P.S. In the same issue, they surveyed a group of OCS’s (PT’s with an Orthopedic Certified Specialist designation) as to their frequency of use of ultrasound in the treatment of their patients. 83.6% of the respondents indicated that they would use ultrasound to reduce soft-tissue inflammation eventhough there’s a lack of evidence to support such treatment.