Everyone that drinks coffee has watched the barista collect the coffee grounds from the grinder in a small portable sieve attachment, tamp it down with a plunger and connect the sieve to the machine.

They do it hundreds of times a day. It’s a routine.

A friend who had been working as a barista for several years asked me about her sore right shoulder.

“Everyone gets it” she said. “The soreness never goes away”.

Sometimes the pain would get so bad that she’d have to stop making coffee completely for a few days. Not a good thing for a barista.

She’d had physio treatment and her Doctor had give her pain killers and anti- inflammatory’s, which helped sometimes. He’d told her she had bursitis, which didn’t mean much to her at the time.

But the pain wasn’t going away.

She said the worst time was as she was compressing the coffee grounds in the portable sieve. She mimed the action and grimaced as she was speaking.

I was amazed at the way she performed this action. I’d half-watched it being done hundreds of times but never paid much attention. Now I could remember the classic action as being the same every time I watched it, with every barista I’d watched.

Apparently it’s important to get the right amount of compression to get a good coffee. For lots of people this means they have to lean on the tamper to apply enough downward pressure using their body weight.

My friend was experiencing pain at the front and side of her shoulder and down her upper arm with aching at the back of her shoulder blade. This is where the ‘Rotator Cuff ‘ muscles come from, the back of the shoulder blade.

They’re a group of three small muscles, and they join the back of the shoulder blade to the top of the arm bone. Their job is to turn the upper arm to position it for any task, including tamping the coffee down.

When a barista turns their upper arm inwards, their thumb turning towards them and their elbow poking out away from them the lower rotator cuff muscles are stretched and weak and the top rotator cuff muscle is put into a strained and compressed position which catches the bursa between the arm bone and the shoulder blade when tamping the coffee.

This is preventable.

Instead of loading your body weight onto the rotator cuff muscles you can use the strength of the much bigger muscles of your shoulder and arm, lat. dorsi, pec. major and triceps to pull down while tamping the coffee.

Pull your elbow into your side. Hold the tamper with your thumb at the top of the handle. Push down through your elbow using triceps and down through your shoulder using pec. major and Lat. dorsi.

And if you have to – add some body weight.

Your rotator cuff will love you!