Are you dealing with shoulder pain while performing movements overhead?
Shoulder pain while going overhead can present in many different ways. In the gym, you may have difficulty with pull-ups, push presses, or jerks. On the tennis court, you may have difficulty going overhead for your serve causing you to change your mechanics, decrease performance, and maybe have to give up the sport altogether.
At Hercules Performance and Physical Therapy, we work with highly motivated athletes and active humans who DON’T LIKE TO SETTLE FOR SECOND BEST. We all want to be able to hop into a pickup game or into a metcon and be able to perform all the movements pain free. More importantly, these activities bring us joy in life. We don’t want to have to give up these special moments for pain.
Here are a few common reasons for overhead pain and how to fix these low hanging fruit so you don’t have to miss a moment in your sport or favorite activities.
Lack of Mobility: Can you bring your arms overhead fully? An easy test for this is to sit against the wall with legs forward. Now raise your arms overhead to the wall. Can your hands touch the wall? If they can, you probably have plenty of ROM. If you can’t, you likely need to spend a few minutes each day opening up your lats and shoulders. Trying Hanging from a bar with abs engaged for 3 sets of 15-30 sec each day. This is also a great wya to open up your upper back after working all day.
Lack of Strength: Are you symmetrical side to side? Grab a a dumbbell and find a 10 RM on each side. If your painful side is under 90% compared to the other side, you need to work on strength. This is a gross way of determining the need for strength , but is easy and only takes the amount of time to warm up and find a 10 RM on each side. Maybe 10-15 minutes. If you are in pain without a weight or can't even complete a rep, please consult with a doctor of physical therapist at Hercules Performance and Physical Therapy to assess your shoulder pain. Don’t wait on PAIN! Don’t put off YOUR ACTIVITIES! Enjoy every moment of life and do everything you want in life.
Lack of Proper Mechanics with your Activity: This is Hercules Performance and Physical Therapy’s bread and butter. Each sport has different demands, but movement has a lot of overlapping similarities and mechanics especially when we are talking about pain production from these movements. This requires more individualized approach. However, film your self first and watch it back on film. If it looks funky to you, then fix your movement or consult with us today to get assessed for your movement related pain to create a plan to get you out of pain and playing again. Not all therapist and coaches look at the actual movement your having difficulty with! We will work with you on the activity you need to get back to like a golf swing, tennis swing, a throw, a snatch, etc.
These are few ver quick test you can run at home to get down to more of the root cause of your pain with your favorite actviites. However, don’t put of pain and please please dont give up on your favorite activities because of pain. We are here to keep you playing and moving!
Schedule a free 15 min Discovery Call with Hercules Performance and physical Therapy to get you started on the journey back to pain free playing of your sport or favorite activities.
-Dr. Alec Spano, PT, DPT, CSCS, Cert DN
