Shoulder Pain and the Connection to Posture

The most important thing that you can do to reduce, or even prevent shoulder pain is to fix your posture!

I know, you’re tired of hearing that your posture is terrible. But when it comes to your body, posture is incredibly important. Our bodies are designed to move and be positioned in a certain way. As we alter that with poor posture, our body has to work harder- or move in inefficient patterns in order to accomplish the movement that our brain tells it to. Today, we’re specifically looking at how it affects your shoulder joint.

Our shoulder is an amazing joint. It allows for so much freedom of movement, but that also comes at a cost. The trade off between mobility and stability is somewhat predictable. The more stable a joint is, the less mobility it has (such as the knee). The arm’s only bony attachment to the rest of your skeleton is via your clavicle (collar bone). There are muscular attachments and fascia that help to hold it together, but just think about that for a minute…

This muscular attachment allows for great flexibility and movement of the shoulder, but it also means that it is prone to problems if the alignment and mechanics get out of sync.

So, picture someone with great posture. What do you imagine? Military posture? Well, that’s not entirely necessary. But keeping your shoulders back is incredibly important to helping the shoulder joint working optimally. The rotator cuff muscles help to hold your joint in proper alignment as you raise your arm.

If your shoulders are rounded forward, your rotator cuff muscles become compromised and forced to work in an inefficient position.

The result is that they may not work as well and over time (or perhaps due to trauma) your shoulder will begin to hurt as you move your arm.

The most important thing that you can do to reduce, or even prevent shoulder pain is to fix your posture! Scapular retraction exercises are among the easiest and best ways to solve your problems.

The key is to squeeze your shoulder blades together in a downward and together motion. You want to feel the skin in between them pinch together. If you can hold a pencil between them- you’re doing great! Do this several times a day, for 15-20 repetitions each time.

This helps to strengthen your scapular muscles, which helps to hold everything in place while the arm moves.

You should even do this if don’t have shoulder pain as a preventative measure to promote good posture and shoulder positioning.

This is overly simplistic and won’t cure a lot of complicated cases of shoulder pain. If this doesn’t resolve your shoulder issues, contact your physical therapist and they will do a detailed evaluation to find out what is happening and get you on the right track to improved function!