hey everybody it's doctor Jo and today I'm going to show you my top seven
treatments for shoulder pain so let's get started
so one of my favorite treatments for shoulder
pain are pendulums. pendulums are a great way to kind of get your shoulder moving
open up that joint space get it relaxed get some of that pain out of there.
there's a couple of different ways you can do the pendulums depending on what's
causing your shoulder pain. if you just have general shoulder pain then you can
actively move your arms that's okay. but a lot of times maybe after a surgery or
a specific injury where you're not supposed to actively use your arm, you
need to use your body to kind of get that movement. I'm going to show you kind
of little combination, we're not after surgery, but you're just having some pain
and you want to relax it. so you can also use us a little weight in your hand to
help open up that joint. so I'm just going to use this as just a soup can,
vegetable can, and what this does is it just kind of helps pull that arm down a
little bit more to open up that shoulder joint. so if you're having some pain a
lot of times this feels really good. so with the pendulums you're going to start
off with just circles. normally a true pendulum you're using your body weight
to kind of move your arms. so you're not actively doing it to make the circle. so
you really have to just kind of make big circles with your hips and your legs. do
ten one way kind of reverse and do ten the other way. if you just have some pain
and you know it's not a severe injury you can kind of actively move your arm
as well, that's okay but just make sure you're not on any precautions where
you're not supposed to actively do it. then the next one is just a side to side.
so same kind of thing doing it mainly passively using your whole body just
this really does a good job of opening up that joint. but if you don't have any
precautions you can actively move that a little bit with your arm back and forth.
and so this feels really good it's just a gentle pull to kind of help relax
those muscles and get some of that pain out of there. and then the last one for
the pendulum is then just a front to back. so same thing kind of rocking with
your whole body. if it's okay to actively do it you can kind of
a little bit as well but a lot of times if you're having pain, doing it passively
just letting your body do the work is really what's going to make it feel the
best. so after you get that all kind of loosened up and warmed up then you're
going to go into a shoulder squeeze or a scapular squeeze. it sounds pretty easy
but again you want to make sure you're doing the technique right. so just kind
of squeezing your shoulder blades back or pushing your elbows back to squeeze
your shoulder. what you want to do is imagine my hand is right on your spine
in the center of the back and what you want to do is take your shoulder blades
and squeeze them together with your muscles. you're using your muscles to
squeeze it back and you want to keep your shoulders down. so it's not this but
it's really going back this way. some people use their elbows to squeeze back
a little bit, but if you feel like you're just using your elbows and not your
muscles then try not to use your elbows. but you really want to squeeze those
shoulder blades together keeping those shoulders down. so again not coming up
like this but squeezing back like that. so sometimes I start off using your
elbows helps kind of get that squeeze because sometimes if there's pain and
tightness those shoulder blades don't really want to move but I would just
start off with ten maybe two sets of ten depending on what your injury is. you can
kind of progress from there. so then the next one is just shoulder circles. so now
you're you are kind of taking those shoulders up and down. so you're just
making big circles at the shoulders kind of coming up then opening up your chest
going back in and round. so just ten one way and then make sure you reverse it
and then go back the other way. this ways usually a little bit harder but it
shouldn't be too hard to do. so ten one way ten the other way. you can do these a
couple times a day but again it really depends on your injury so you might want
to ask your doctor or physical therapist since I don't know what your injury is.
so now we're going to go into some strengthening exercises a lot of times
when you're doing strengthening exercises and you already have some
shoulder pain, sometimes it does increase the pain a little bit. now I'm not
talking about sharp shooting pain. that's you shouldn't be doing the exercise
pain, but kind of that achy pain a little bit deep in there working the
muscles kind of pain. sometimes that's in there and a great way to kind of help
calm that down while you're doing the exercise is using a TENS unit. and I
think a lot of people don't know that you can use the tens unit and exercise
at the same time but you can. so I'm going to show you a couple of the
exercises with a tens unit on. and the folks that easy at home sent me their
tens unit which is the EHE009. and so this is a really cool unit. it's it's
nice and simple, it's nothing fancy to it, but it does the job and it's not very
expensive. so it's you can get one and just put it on. if you're interested in
purchasing the unit make sure and click on the link up there.
so with tens units it has two channels for your option you can use one channel
or you can use two channels. one channel has two electrodes, two has four. I
usually like using the four electrodes because then you can cross it around the
pain. you want to make sure the channels are crossing. so then it goes through the
area here but you can use two that's usually for more of a specific area of
pain. but if you just have general shoulder pain where it's kind of you
know hurting in here maybe not a specific spot like a biceps tendinitis, I
would use four. you can use the two right there for just one channel if you want
to, but what I'm going to do is I'm going to do the four. so one channel is going
to be one there and then I usually kind of like then to put it up here a little
bit higher up. you can get it a little bit closer to the neck if you want to.
I'm just going to put it right there for this purpose and then I would cross it
so then I go in a little bit towards the PEC area and then cross it maybe go back
a little bit here. it doesn't have to be exact the placements don't have to be
exact but you do want those channels crossing. so see when the currents start
flowing it's getting kind of that area right in there. and so I'm going to turn
it on and then you can control each channel on each side and then just I
would just hit the shoulder one and start going. so it's on now and so that's
going to help calm down that pain a little bi.t so now I'm
going to go into a shoulder external rotation with a resistive band. if you're
using the resistive bands, there are different colors depending on what brand
they are, so I would always start with the lightest one. you want to keep your
elbows close to your side. when you're coming out you don't want your elbows to
come out that's a really important part. you want your thumbs kind of in the
upwards position. you don't have to lift them up but you want them to be on top
and you want to keep your wrists in a neutral position. if you're going like
this then you're gonna end up hurting your wrists and then your shoulder and your
wrists are gonna hurt. so try and keep them in a neutral position. keep those
elbows close to your side and just gently pull out until you get to a
little bit of pain. you want to stay in that comfort level but you don't want to
come out like that so keep those elbows tight and then control it coming back in.
that's just as important if not more important. you want to control that band
going out and coming back in. if you're just doing this you're one probably
gonna hurt yourself more and two you're not really getting an exercise. so when
you're doing resistive bands be a little careful because while you're doing it
sometimes it doesn't hurt, it's not sore, but you might feel a little sore later.
so again I would just start with one or two sets of ten, one to two times a day.
and if that becomes easy you can slowly start progressing it if you get to 20-25
and it's easy then you can increase your resistance of the band. so then the next
one is going to be a lat pulldown. so you want to anchor it up top somewhere. so
I've anchored my band on the ceiling. you don't have to anchor it on the ceiling.
you can anchor it on top of a door. just put a little knot in there and close the
door but make sure that you have a pretty good angle to get the lat
pulldown. so this is going to be a little bit
different where you're not doing a full lap pull down. you want to use your
shoulder blades or your scapula to kind of pull it down to get all those
depressing muscles. that depressing the muscles that depress the scapula and a
big part of that is the lats, but you really want to focus on all those
smaller muscles too, not just the big lat muscles. so what I'm going to show you
I'm going to turn around so you can kind of see what I what I'm doing, that I'm
not doing a full pull I'm just going about half way and then doing the rest
the scapula or the shoulder blades. so you want to just kind of get into the
position where you're going to do like a lat pulldown this way, but once you get
to about right here then you're doing the rest with your shoulder blades. so
you're really coming just a little bit in getting that pull down. so it's kind
of a downwards and an in motion to get those muscles down there lower that
don't always get work. so again you can do a full lat pulldown to help, but you
really want to get those smaller muscles too where you're just squeezing down and
coming back up. and sometimes it takes a little bit to get it figured out because
you might not do that very often but that really helps stabilize those
shoulder blades and that's what you want. so again just one to two sets of ten
couple times a day if you get to 20-25 and it's easy then you can go up on a
higher resistive band. but make sure that you're not doing a whole lot because
it's easy at the time and then get really sore painful afterwards. so the
last ones are gonna be down on the floor. oh hey up there. so the next one is gonna
be snow angels. you can do snow angels on the floor. you can also do them against
the wall, but I like when you're trying to learn how to do snow angels I like it
on the floor a little bit better because you have gravity to help you out. so snow
angels look easy but if you do them correctly they're actually pretty tough.
what you're gonna do is with your arms is kind of gonna look like you're making
a snow angel. when you start down here you want your shoulder blades and your
arms your elbows and your whole hand completely on the floor or the wall. and
you're just gonna start coming up but you want to keep everything on the floor.
if your arms are coming up your elbows start coming like you go like this
because there's some tightness, then don't keep going come back down because
the goal is to be able to get that whole range of motion with everything on the
floor including your shoulder blades elbows hands arms and everything. so
really just coming up and down and and if you can make sure you put your back
and your hips into a pelvic tilt as well. so everything you're just trying to kind
of push down into the floor or onto the wall and you can do a little
chin tuck as well as well. my ponytail's getting a little bit in the way, but
that's what you wanna do you want to keep everything flat down. then if stuff
starts coming up like this then come back down. don't try and take it all the
way back up because then you're no longer getting those stabilizer muscles
in your shoulders working. so the last exercise is going to be a plank Plus.
this one's a little bit more difficult so you might not be ready for it quite
yet. if you're having a lot of shoulder pain this is a little more stressful, so
make sure you work up to this. so a plank Plus is kind of how it sounds you're
getting into a plank position and then your plussing it up, kind of arching up.
and what this does is it helps your serratus anterior muscles those those
pushing out muscles. and I'm going to show you a way to put your arms so you
can get your lower traps as well. so it's a little bit different just regular
plank on your elbows. so what you want to do is when you come down into the plank
and you can start getting your arms in the position, before you go into a plank
and this is again it might be a little uncomfortable, but you want your palms to
be up. once you get your palms up you're going to go out a little bit with your
shoulders which is a little bit of external rotation. you can do this on
your knees doing a modified plank, but if you want to come up into the full plank
you can. once you get into the plank then you're going to do a plus which is
pushing up. kind of almost like you're trying to arch your back. so come down a
little bit and arch up and then come back down. so you should it's almost like
when you're doing the cat cow or cat dog where you're arching up with the cat,
that's the motion that you want to do. and by changing the the positions of
your shoulder a little bit, that helps activate some of the other muscles with
this being an involved one and having a lot of pressure on your shoulders make
sure that your shoulders and your elbows are in alignment, you know that you're
not too far out or too far in and just do a couple. you can see when I'm doing
it, it's it's a little tough for me to do while I'm talking so you know I would
just try one or two see how you feel and then you can slowly progress up from
there if you're not having any pain with it. so if you're interested in purchasing
the easy at-home tens unit, make sure and click on the link up there. and don't
forget to subscribe by clicking down there.
and remember be safe, have fun, and I hope you feel better soon.