Free Up Your Shoulders: Secrets to Shoulder Mobility
Shoulder stiffness and pain is a common problem among many of us.
Whether it’s because of recent shoulder surgery, arthritis (or frozen shoulder), overuse or poor posture — improving range of motion of shoulders by doing mobility exercises can definitely help you out with the stiffness and pain that you feel.
How to Increase Mobility of Your Shoulders:
Step #1: Look at Your Spine.
Step #2: Look at Your Scapula.
Step #3: Mobilize your Shoulders.
Step #1: Look at Your Spine.
Working on shoulder mobility requires us to take a few steps back and see how other joints are moving.
The spine is the one holding our appendicular skeleton (aka. limbs) in place. Making sure that your spine is in good alignment is the first step in managing a lot of shoulder issues.
Neck:
Poor posture and stiffness of the neck can cause shoulder issues and pain. If the joints of your neck are stiff – the nerve(s) around the neck gets impinged causing radiating pain (pins and needle sensation) on shoulder and arms.
Working on posture and getting rid of stiffness (neck stretches, mobility exercises, etc.) is essential to get rid of your shoulder issues.
Upper Back:
Working on the mobility and posture of the thoracic spine is one of the most fundamental things you can do to improve range of motion of the shoulders. Often times it gets overlooked as our attention is to keep hammering the shoulder joint to work on getting range of motion.
Thoracic mobility and good upper back posture is important to have good balance and mechanics of the shoulder.
Low Back and Pelvis:
You’re probably thinking . . . what could be the connection of low back and pelvis to shoulder motion? Let me explain.
Our pelvis is the keystone structure that influences our spinal posture and alignment. Most of the time, issues on the thoracic spine and neck can be due to imbalance on our pelvis. If your pelvis is not in a good alignment, it creates an upward chain reaction to our spine (specifically neck and upper back) which then distorts the mechanics of your scapula and shoulder.
Step #2: Look at your Scapula.
After working on the mobility of the upper back, the next thing to look at is how your scapula is moving. Most of shoulder issues come from poor control and coordination between your scapula and shoulder joint.
Moving your scapula in the right direction is hyper- important in addressing shoulder issues like shoulder impingement, rotator cuff tendinopathies, etc. The key here is to teach your scapula how to upwardly rotate and make sure it is wrapping on your rib cage as it moves.
How to do it? 1.) Manual therapy to help normalize the tension and imbalance on the surrounding muscles of your scapula 2.) Guided movement exercises to direct good scapular mechanics 3.) strengthening + coordination/control exercises of the muscles around the scapula.
When the joints and the structures are going in the right direction, we allow our muscles to do their job properly. Think of it like the tracks of a train station. If the tracks are properly positioned and it’s rails are going in the right direction, the train will always follow. If the tracks are not in good condition and it’s pointing you at 5 to 10 different directions, chances are you’ll be messing up the movement and direction of the train.
Step #3: Mobilize the Shoulder.
Once everything is set, start mobilizing the shoulder. Working on the spine and scapula first (in that order), helps the shoulder squeeze the gains of improvement in range of motion. Then adding strength on top of it seals the deal on making those range gains permanent.
How to do it? 1.) Manual therapy to loosen the shoulder joint and to prepare it for mobility exercises. 2.) Movement exercises designed to open patterns linked to the rest of the body is key to free up the shoulder.
In our day to day activity, our shoulders does not move in isolation. By design, shoulder and arm movements are always integrated with the rest of the body.
The end goal of physiotherapy is not to just to be completely pain- free or achieve full range of motion and strength. The aim is to bring back that integration of shoulder and arm with the rest of the body.
If you have family or friends suffering from shoulder pain, feel free to share this article and if you have any questions with regards to your shoulder health, you can send me DM on Instagram and I’ll be happy to entertain and answer your questions.
Peace out! ✌️
