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MSK Health
Brighton & Hove and West Sussex
Brighton & Hove and West Sussex
Shoulder pain is a common complaint, and can be for many different reasons. We use our shoulders to push, pull, lift. It is a stable base from which the rest of our arm moves. If your shoulder is very painful and affecting you in carrying out day to day tasks, it can be concerning. However, a shoulder complaint is rarely due to anything serious, and in most cases will get better by itself with time.
There are actions you can take to help yourself while your shoulder is sore. You could make a few adjustments to what you do, but try to continue to use the shoulder as normally as possible. Some examples of changing how you use your shoulder would be to:
How to Protect Your Joints Leaflet
It is safe to exercise even if your shoulder is sore or uncomfortable. Exercise is important to regain movement, strength and normal activity of the shoulder again. If you continue to go to the gym, an exercise class, or swimming you may want to change how much you do for a time.
There are some examples of exercises to do below. You can use our symptom tracker to check if what you are doing is helping you to improve.
X-rays and scans can help for a small number of people and in certain situations. However, most of the time it shows us things that are normal for the age of your shoulder and are not related to your pain. These sorts of findings will not help the shoulder get better. This is why your GP or Clinician has said it may not be needed.
Occasionally you may need some extra help to get your lower back pain better.
If you feel you would like to talk to a healthcare professional to help you further with your back you can fill in a self referral form.
Exercise is often used to help you improve your symptoms by increasing your muscular strength. We all need to improve our muscle mass (the amount of muscle we have) before being able to increase our strength, power and endurance.
Strengthening is a process that requires us to challenge our bodies with activity to be able to drive a change. These changes are not immediate and strengthening will take at least 6-8 weeks before we notice big changes.
Below are some ideas of how to choose what repetitions you should be using. Remember that you need muscle mass and strength before you can improve your power and/or endurance:
This is the process where we build muscle mass.
Rep range tends to be greater.
3 sets x 12-15 repetitions.
Improve your strength with lifting heavier loads.
Improve your strength by lifting more repetitions.
3 sets x 3-5 repetitions with a heavier load.
3 sets x 8-12 repetitions slowly.
Hard work (80%)
When you are ‘strong’ you can increase the speed at which you move a load.
4 sets x 4-6 repetitions.
50% maximal effort.
Explosive.
The goal is to be able to improve the amount of time that you can keep going for.
3-4 sets x 15-25 repetitions.
Light resistance.
Do you find it too difficult?
Is your pain worsening
Do you lose good technique/movement patterning?
If Yes, Regress.
Reduce the load.
Reduce the repetitions.
Reduce the depth of the movement
Have you just recently progressed?
Do you feel that there is still a challenge but your pain does not worsen?
If Yes, Maintain.
You might need a bit longer doing what you’re doing.
Do you find it easy?
Can you complete your whole program without a challenge?
Do you not have any flare ups?
If Yes, Progress.
Increase the weight.
Increase the repetitions.