If You Experience Shoulder Pain- Read This!

Do you Experience Shoulder Pain When Working Out?

So you do a few push-ups, a few dumbbell shoulder presses and a few reps on the chest press machine and you start getting this niggling pain in your shoulder leading up to your neck.  It really pulls on you and you find it so uncomfortable that you can’t go any further.

Sound familiar?  I used to get this a lot.  Now, I don’t experience it as much because I take some precautions before lifting weights and exercising.  But below are a few things you can begin doing to make sure you experience it less and focus on building your upper body without pain and discomfort.

Warm-Up

Yes, good old-fashioned warm-ups.  Especially if the shoulders are going to be heavily involved.  My recommendation would be to do some form of cardio where you are pushing blood into the working muscle. That is the general idea, to force blood into the muscles where they are warm enough to take a heavier load.  You do not want to be working out when your muscles are cold.  Also, forget stretching altogether.  There is no need and you may end up restricting movement by stretching a cold muscle.

Retract and Retract Some More

Stand up, or sit.  Now sit up tall.  Now I want you to pull shoulder blades back, then drop them down.  As if they are sitting in a pocket in the middle of your upper back.  Just below the neck. Feels weird, doesn’t it?  Well, this is our spine in a natural position believe it or not.  This SHOULD be your default position when working your Deltoids and Back.  When you don’t, your shoulders are forced into an unnatural position where they are pulled forward and your Trapezius muscle then takes some unnecessary load.  Every time you do some shoulder presses, or chest presses, I want you to pinch your scapula (shoulder blades) back and down.  You are now allowing the shoulder muscles to work more effectively.

Train Your Back Muscles

Similar to the point above.  I can’t stress enough how important it is to have your stabilising muscles in check.  Making sure your back muscles are strong enough to support that natural position I spoke about above.  Make sure you perform plenty of rowing movements and deadlifts (if you can execute it safely and correctly) as these will no doubt strengthen your Back.  Stabilising your shoulder becomes more easier and you should experience less pain.

Massages

Whilst these are not direct solutions when you experience pain, these certainly do play a role.  Surrounding tissue around muscles can be tight and overworked. When this occurs, some muscles are overworked and come into play when they shouldn’t, and due to this, other muscles take less load on.  Similarly, weak areas that are tight can be pulled into unnatural positions and can cause pain.  Remember that time you did a few push ups and felt pain in your shoulders?  You weren’t able to use the correct muscles which is why your shoulder muscles were overused.

Rotator Cuff Warm-Ups

No, I’m not talking about grabbing some dumbbells and doing some external rotations whilst swinging your shoulders about.  I’m talking grabbing a cable/bands and carefully working the rotator cuff.  The best way to think about the Rotator Cuff is to imagine it as a type of sheet that covers and protects your shoulder muscle.  You need to strengthen it over time and force blood into it.  So please ensure you do these safely and in a controlled manner.  The main reasoning behind strengthening it is due to the fact that these muscles can be over-powered when you constantly work on heavy lifts such as shoulder presses and bench presses.  So you need to keep them healthy.

Implement and keep a note of these tips and you should see some differences in your training.  Though if you continue to experience discomfort, get yourself seen to by a physio as they are in a far more better position to help you.