Why does my shoulder hurt when I lift my arm?
We have a lot of patients that complain about shoulder pain. There are adjustments that we do in the office to help with this pain, but there are also at home remedies that can help.
The reason that you would get shoulder pain is because the big, strong muscle along your chest called your pectoral muscle is too tight. The reason that this muscle gets too tight is due to when your posture begins to become rounded, moving forward in the shoulder and your head is forward.
How do I get my shoulder to stop hurting?
One of the things you can do to help while at home is to use a massage ball. Any sort of hard, rubber ball that fits into the palm of your hand will work and Amazon has specific massage balls that will work as well. You can even use a lacrosse ball. What you will do is you take that ball and you’ll want to stretch out two areas in your shoulder.
What is the best exercise for shoulder pain?
The first one is your pec muscle itself. You will take the ball and place it over the top of your chest. Don’t place it in the joint or right on the shoulder blade. Then in a doorway you’re going to lean into the ball. You will want to put a good amount of pressure and angle your body back a little bit and roll it around to find the most sore spot. Once you’re there, you’re going to start moving your arm back and forth. Brining your arm up to where it is parallel with the wall and then keeping it at the same height brining it backwards. Where people will make a mistake is instead of moving the arm they’ll just continue to roll which is fine and a nice massage, but without pinpointing the pain and moving your arms you wont get a deeper and more effective stretch for the area.
The second place that you’ll want to work is the back of your shoulder that is not the shoulder, shoulder blade, not your arm pit, but close to that area. You’ll place the ball again and lean against the wall. Roll again until you find the right spot and then start moving your arm back and forth. You’ll probably find more areas on this one. So then, roll again, arm back and forth and keep repeating until you find all of the areas that are sore. With each spot, you’ll want to spend about 30 to 90 seconds. Some little areas will take a lot less, maybe 10 or 15 seconds, but definitely don’t go over 90 seconds. You won’t do any lasting harm to yourself, but you’ll be very sore.
The second thing that you’ll want to do is the doorway stretch. In a doorway, stand in the middle facing forward and put one arm on either side. From there, you squeeze your shoulder blades together. Make sure that your head is above your shoulders and not leaning forward. Once you are positioned correctly, you are going to learn forward and hold for 30 seconds. Do not bounce while holding or leaning, but lean in as far as you can. Then bring your arms up a little bit higher on the door frame and repeat. You can continue to move up as needed and you can also lower your hands farther down and repeat the stretch that way.
If you’re an extremely flexible person, you might consider doing this stretch one shoulder at a time. Find your shoulder joint and place it against the door frame. Now you’re going to start to turn your body away and place your arm along the wall and stretch. You can move your arm further up the wall as needed and repeat the stretch, but you’ll want to spend about 30 seconds on each spot. Definitely no quick stretches. This will help to elongate the muscle. You will also want to place heat over the area, on your chest, and around the side that hurts. Consider placing arnica lotion on it as well. Arnica is a powerful flower that will help to decrease the inflammation.
Once you start doing all of these home activities, it won’t be very long until you start to feel less pain in those spots and be able to, once again, enjoy laying on your back at night.
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