Our shoulder joints are one of the most important and most functional joints in our entire body. It allows for a huge amount of movement which is crucial for living life to its full potential be it reaching for a snack from a high cupboard or hitting a serve in tennis. Being such an important joint any small niggle or stiffness can have a huge impact on our quality of life, which can lead to the question, what is actually causing my shoulder pain?
Thankfully even though the shoulder is quite a complex joint, most of the time the cause of pain can be quite simplistic. This blog will cover the most common cause of shoulder pain and how it differs from conditions like a frozen shoulder.
Sub-acromial Pain Syndrome
This is just a fancy term for pain that occurs under the bone at the edge of your shoulder called the acromion. This pain can occur for several reasons; be it a dominance in strength in one set of muscles called the medial rotators built up during every day life, a strain of the stabilising muscles during high impact activity or explosive movements or be it from poor posture most of the time shoulder pain occurs because several of these factors can impact the shoulder at the same time.
However, what we do know is that even though there are many different causes for this kind of pain the mechanism of what is happening inside the joint is usually very similar. What happens is due to this imbalance within the joint this can cause the space between the ball of the joint and the acromion to become smaller which can irritate the important structures such and your nerves and tendons that run through this space. This space is at its smallest when forward to grab something or reaching behind your back, this can therefore cause those achy pains in the front of the shoulder as well as the sharp pain that can occur as you reach to grab something.
Frozen shoulder
A frozen shoulder is one of the other causes of shoulder pain. This is where the capsule, a small sheath or cover around the joint starts to contract and become tighter which stops reduced how far you can move, this can happen for many reasons unfortunately it can come on for no apparent reason or could be down to a trauma but we do know that the most common way to develop a frozen shoulder is by keeping your shoulder still for a long time. So the moral of the story is keep those arms strong and moving.
Thank you for reading,
George Stacey-Stevens
Director at Cirencester Physiotherapy Centre
PS – If you’d like to book an appointment at the clinic with myself or any other physio, please give us a call on 01285 238240 or email us at contact@cirencesterphysiotherapycentre and we’ll be happy to help!