Shoulder Mobility & Stability
Shoulders should be able to move freely and without pain.
Are yours stuck or causing you discomfort?
Let’s get those shoulders working correctly.
Today we are talking about all things shoulder. The shoulder is a complex joint with many muscles crossing over and attaching to it. It is meant to be a joint that has a great amount of mobility. However, by nature the shoulder is an unstable joint and is often compared to a golf ball on a tee or a beach ball balancing on a seal’s nose! Therefore, as you can suspect this joint is subject to injury easier than others. We must get our shoulder joint mobile, but we need the perfect balance of stability as well.
·
Many things can happen to cause this area of the body to have pain and or decrease range of motion. To name a few, some include rotator cuff tear, biceps tendon strain, AC joint injury, labral tear, arthritis, and even a cervical disc derangement. What’s that last one mean? That sometimes the discs in your neck can impinge on a nerve that causes pain to radiate into the shoulder, and even down the arm into the hand. Crazy right?
·
Many of the shoulder pathologies listed above, although different structures, are caused by poor shoulder function and inactivity of the deep stabilizing muscles around the joint. You heard that right. So if you haven’t been stabilizing your shoulder correctly for years while either at your job that requires heavy labor, at the gym lifting things overhead, or even while simply going about your day with poor posture - it will most likely cause pain at one point or another!
·
No matter if the pain is coming from the rotator cuff or discs in the neck, you more than likely have faulty shoulder mechanics. This can mean that you overactivate the big muscles like the traps and lats and you underactivate the smaller deep muscles like the serratus anterior and external oblique. The deep stabilizing muscles therefore become weak, causing an unstable scapula, leading to improper load and activation around the joint, eventually causing shoulder pain! This is where correcting your shoulder mechanics comes in.
·
In the office we perform different exams to distinguish the cause of your shoulder pain. It’s not always black and white though! Sometimes we may find multiple causes to your shoulder complaint. However, this doesn’t change much. The neck and upper back are so intricately connected to the shoulder that most times if the shoulder is the issue, we are also addressing the spine as well. We do this with adjustments and rehabilitation to the joints and muscles surrounding the shoulder to get them firing when they’re supposed to. Other avenues of treatment we may take include incorporating dry needling as well as cupping therapy into treatment of the shoulder.
·
It often takes some time with the shoulder because we are unraveling years of faulty mechanics. It is well worth it, though, when you are able to lift things overhead again without pain and even better, keep that pain from coming back!
·
In the video below, I go over how to test your shoulder MOBILITY, and then give you ways to improve it at home. In the video for next time which will be added to this post in 2 weeks, I go over shoulder STABILITY, specifically when holding weight overhead. I then go into how to work on increasing your stabilization at home!
