1. Relieve Your Shoulders
When you notice a pain in your shoulders, the first step would be to relieve the shoulders as much as possible. Although logical, this is important to prevent the pain from becoming worse. The advice is to rest until the symptoms disappear, and prevent lifting anything heavy. If the symptoms do not disappear of become less painful, our advice is to have one of our own physical therapists look at your shoulders and diagnose the problem and its cause.
2. Fix Your Posture
If your shoulder pain is recurring, your posture may the culprit causing pain. A wrong posture can be caused by sitting at a desk incorrectly, sitting in a car incorrectly, or standing for long periods at a time. We recently wrote a blog about how to improve your posture. If you need any help, our physical therapists are licensed to help you correct your posture.
3. Warming Up
Do you regularly suffer from shoulder complaints after exercising? Try to prevent this by doing a warm-up before you start making strange movements with your shoulders. Especially in swimming or racket and throwing sports it is wise to do a warm-up in advance.
4. Assess Your Workplace Critically
Shoulder complaints are often caused by a wrong sitting posture. Assess your workplace and make sure your desk is at the right height, and your chair is positioned correctly and at the right height. Your arms must be able to make a 90 degrees angle while in resting position. Sitting incorrectly is often easily overlooked as a cause for our shoulder problems. Preferably we learn to maintain a good seating posture while in school.
5. Keep Your Muscles Moving
Your muscles will stiffen when you stay in the same position for too long. This is also true for your shoulders. Stretching, stretching exercises, or a walk to the water-cooler are little efforts that go a long way. If little movement is not within your pain threshold, we recommend seeing one of our physical therapists at your earliest convenience.
6. Balm It Up
Sometimes applying a little balm may relieve the nagging pain in your shoulder. Balms like Counterpain or Tiger Balm may temporarily relieve shoulder pain. Tiger Balm can also be used to increase blood flow to the shoulders before exercising.
7. Physical Therapy
Does your shoulder pain persist? Physical therapy can help you get rid of the symptoms. Manual therapeutic techniques can introduce specific exercises in order to provide more strength to your shoulder muscles. You can use our Pain Away – Booking App to book an appointment immediately. If you want to inquire for more information, feel free to contact us.
8. Rest
Tension in your shoulders may arise when you are stressed or tired. Shoulder complaints can persist for a long time, and bring down your quality of life. So ensure sufficient sleep, healthy food, and the necessary breaks during a day.
9. Warm Your Shoulder
The use of heat, such as visiting a sauna or applying heat packs, will help increase blood circulation and therefore your muscles to relax. Similar to stretching, it helps lactic acid to drain out of your muscles faster. Therefore, the correct application of heat instantly reduces the pain.
10. Painkillers
Painkillers will not resolve long-term symptoms. There might even be an extra risk by overloading the shoulder because there is no sensation of pain anymore. On the other hand, if the pain in your shoulders is instant and is keeping you awake at night, taking a painkiller might make you finally relax your muscles and increase the rate of recovery. Again, painkillers are not a long-term solution and you will recover faster from shoulder pain when diagnosed and treated correctly.
