Fix Your Frozen Shoulder 1-How Does This Happen?

This video launches a new series I have on Fixing Your Frozen Shoulder at home. Over the next few episodes we’ll get into common compensation patterns that lead up to frozen shoulder and which massages/stretches and then exercises you can do to alleviate frozen shoulder symptoms or even keep it from coming on.

What is frozen shoulder?

Frozen shoulder, aka adhesive capulitis, is experienced as pain (often sharp) when moving your arm out to the side or overhead. Sometimes I’ve seen folks where it hurts to lift their arm in front of them, but usually it’s to the side and above. It can be difficult to put a shirt on overhead (ladies, bras=not fun) or brushing your hair.

How do we get frozen shoulder?

Like everything we hear nowadays, sitting (or standing) with your arms bent in front of you with hands on a keyboard, screen or steering wheel. The bicep muscles connect into the pec minor, chest muscle, right in front of your shoulder. So, when you bend your arms like a T-Rex all day, you’re shortening that lever and the back of the arm/shoulder get ticked off about helping hang your arms in front of you for hours at a time. Ergo, you have tight biceps, triceps, chest and rotator cuff.

Anatomy of the Shoulder Girdle

The shoulders are this crazy prehistoric wingspan we have. They only attach at the sternum! The collarbone acts as the harness and the shoulder blades should actually float on the back of the ribs! Thing is, if your shoulders are stuck, there’s a few different joints in this wingspan that can become weak or just that your brain forgot it can move your arms a certain way.

The shoulder blade is different from the arm/shoulder joint. This means that your shoulders can be stuck in a spot for years and you wouldn’t know it cause your ball-and-socket arm joint can still move pretty freely. I find that in order to fake good posture, we think shoving our shoulders down our back is helpful. But, this locks out our mid-backs and eventually makes things like twisting all but impossible and leads to a host of other problems like lower back pain. The vast majority of adults I see fit into this category and this was before we had a pandemic and had all our meetings shoulders up.

Biomechanics of the Shoulder

Another thing our fitness professionals tell us to do is ‘pinch your shoulder blades together’. Well, this too, forces pressure in places of our spine that aren’t supposed to be there. Not saying adduction (what this motion is called) isn’t needed for everyone for posture, it’s just over-simplifying the process.

What we need more of is abduction of the shoulders and proper rotation. The poster child I always use here is Bruce Lee. Look of a picture of that man and you can see all the muscles around his mid back and shoulders. Dude, had great biomechanics. This means more rotator cuff strength, which a lot of our fitness paradigms don’t work enough.

Breath Component of Frozen Shoulder

When we breathe, the collar bone should move up and down. This means that shoulder girdle is getting massaged with every breath cycle. A lot of us are upper chest breathers, meaning only the collarbone moves, but the shoulders are so stuck, our wingspan isn’t getting ‘stretched’ with every breath. We therefore can’t properly fix a shoulder impingement without looking at the breath and that those blades, again, should be oscillating on the ribs. This will be part of a later module.

Fascial Chains of Shoulder Impingement

A lot of shoulder issues are also about how you use your hands. My last YouTube course was on carpal tunnel syndrome. A lot of that content complements what we will cover in this course. There’s some overlap, but the differences really will help any stiff shoulder issue.

In this course we will go through the major fascial chains of shoulder impingement and look at common tight spots and underactive areas. Each segment will have a self-massage, stretching and reactivation aspect to remind your brain and your body how to operate your upper body and work towards things like a pull up.

Thanks for watching!

Wrist and Forearm Stretches

We’ve all felt that wrist pain and tension from a long day of typing, gaming, working out, cleaning or yard work. I wanted to offer some of my favorite tools and tips for loosening up the hands, wrists and forearms.

Here’s a video for some simple wrist extensor stretches and a forearm massage:

There are also a couple tools from over the years that I find really help (and are worth the investment) in keeping my hands and forearms loose. If your hands are tight, you won’t be able to access the muscles in your upper arms and shoulders correctly. I can’t tell you how many times someone has walked into my studio wanting to be better at planks/push ups and so much of it has to do with tension in their lower arms. We get that loosened up and BOOM, they recruit their core much better and have more stability in the shoulder girdle.

Breo Hand Massager

Breo Hand Massager

This thing can be too intense for people some people—personally, I love it. This hand massager also does trigger point release all over the hand and will size to conform to the shape of your hand. If you have arthritis or an autoimmune/inflammatory condition that affects your hands, I would not purchase. It has a heat function that I love any time, particularly in winter. I actually sleep better on the nights I do this and notice that I’m not as apt to clench my fists when I sleep—yes I do that too. It will leave an imprint in your palms for about 10 minutes, just a heads up.

Armaid

This thing is amazing if you do repetitive gripping—

• Bodyworkers

• Manual laborers/those who do a lot of work with tools/handiwork

• Athletes—golfers, tennis players, weight lifters, climbers, aerialists

• Knitters/sewers/crafters

• Gamers

• Artists

It easily pivots around and so you can do both sides of each arm. You can also purchase more intense trigger point release balls that intensify the experience. That said, you can size this thing really tight, so I feel like I get a good experience without the turbo props. I bring it with me when I do aerials and it helps my forearms from seizing up in between climbs. Relieving tension in the forearms also helps loosen up the shoulders, making proper form and bodmechanics easier.

Taking care of our hands is something that we often neglect until we start feeling pain. Keeping your forearms loose will not only help head off some more painful conditions like carpal tunnel pains and tennis elbow, you’ll better access the supporting muscles of your shoulder blades and core as you use your hands. The uncoiling massage I’ve created takes this to a completely new level. I’ve had great success with helping people alleviate various arm pains as well as chronic neck pain and even lessening headaches. I recommend these tools and tips for self-care for my clients in between sessions.

If you purchase from the links provided, I do receive a small percentage as an Amazon affiliate.