shoulder pain, so annoying

SHOULDER PAIN, THE BAIN OF MY EXCISTENSE
 
Shoulder pain is such a massive pain in the butt. Almost everybody I’ve ever met has, at one stage of their lives suffered some sort of shoulder/neck pain, especially if you do Jiu-Jitsu, a sport designed to mess you up physically and yet, still be totally addictive.
 
Because the shoulder is  a complex joint with multiple muscles and tendons running through it, with hard to spell names, I’m going to focus on what I feel are the most common problems and why getting a massage or playing with your balls wont fix them (lacrosse balls you sick people).
 
For starters, let’s look at shoulder impingement (usually a sharp pain in the front area of the shoulder). This is such a misunderstood injury! It hurts my heart. You do not have an incurable disease, you do not have to amputate, but most importantly, if your physio has a little look at you and then sends you for a cortisone injection you should fire them. Or just ghost them, I would do that to avoid the awkward conversation.
 
What you have is an imbalance in your muscles around your back and shoulder, your shoulder is being pulled out of its correct and happy position causing all sorts of trouble when you try move it in certain directions.
 
The shoulder joint is a ball and socket joint, the ball sits happily in the socket, but it’s like an economy airplane seat, not much room for crazy stuff. In this joint you have a bunch tendons and muscles running in between the ball and the socket. If, for example your upper traps are overworked and pulling your shoulder up into the socket things will start to get pinched and trapped when you move your arm in certain directions. That’s the pain you feel! When this action is repeated over and over you can start to get inflammation in the joint, called bursitis.
 
If you fix the way your shoulder is moving, you can release the pressure and pinching in the joint and the bursitis will go away. If you inject it, it will feel great for 3 days and then go back to feeling bad. Why? You didn’t change the way you moved, you just stuck some drugs in your shoulder.
 
Stretching isn’t the cure ether. It could help in the short term and the tight muscle pulling the shoulder in the wrong direction, if stretched or massaged, will release for a bit. Because you haven’t changed the way you move, you will fall back into your old movement pattern very quickly and the pain will most likely come back within hours or days.
 
Do you want to learn how to move your shoulder correctly? Yes. You do. Come see me.