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.