Got shoulder pain?
Did you know you can improve your shoulder range of motion and reduce pain by receiving a relaxing massage? Whether you’re dealing with stiff shoulders, a rotator cuff injury, or frozen shoulder, Manual Therapy can be an effective and relaxing treatment for shoulder pain. The combination of joint mobilization, soft tissue massage, muscle activation, and active stretching can greatly reduce shoulder pain and dysfunction. Manual therapy combined with Pilates exercise is also a wonderful combination to rehabilitate the shoulder by recruiting the weak stabilizing muscles, and is an effective way to treat more acute shoulder issues.
To better understand the anatomy of the shoulder, you can think of the shoulder joint as a golf ball sitting on a tee. Think about what would happen if the golf ball was off center by even just a few millimeters? It would fall off the tee! -- and that’s what happens in the shoulder. Well, luckily your shoulder is not going to fall off but you may not be able to lift your arm! When there is a muscular imbalance in the shoulder due to poor posture or under conditioned muscles, the joint loses "congruency", or proper alignment, and this can affect the function of the shoulder.
When the shoulder joint loses its congruence, the rotator cuff muscles can’t fire in an efficient way when you use your arm. This in turn may cause compensation patterns throughout the neck, shoulders, and arms. Who knew that pain in your neck could be caused by your shoulder?
Because this is such a common issue, the term “50s shoulder” has been used in the medical community to describe general shoulder dysfunction and pain that develops with age.
A common treatment for the “50s shoulder” condition is pain killers. But there is another way without the potentially unpleasant side effects of drugs!
