SHOULDER PAIN AND DYSFUNCTION

The shoulder joint is the most complex joint of the human body. When it comes to shoulder pain, there can be so many different factors contributing to the discomfort. This makes treating shoulder pain the most challenging of all complaints for sports practitioners.

COMMON SHOULDER COMPLAINTS

Rotor Cuff Injuries
Frozen shoulder
A/C (acromioclavicular) joint inflammation/ sprain
Upper fibres of the Trapezius muscle – extreme tension
Pain shooting down the arm

COMMON CAUSES OF SHOULDER PAIN
Almost every patient we see for the first time, have had chronic shoulder pain for months, and even years. They have spent thousands of dollars and tried many different kinds of therapy in search of the cure to their pain and dysfunction. The reason I believe this to be the case is because just about every practitioner including shoulder specialists and surgeons, purely address the symptoms of shoulder pain and rarely the underlying cause. This means that the patient gets short - term relief from the practitioner and are lead to believe that continued short term symptomatic relief is the answer to their long term pain.

In our opinion, practitioners get caught trying to diagnose where the pain is coming from. Once they establish where the pain is coming from, they begin to treat the pain (symptoms) accordingly.

HOW DO WE ADDRESS SHOULDER PAIN?
Our first step is to diagnose what the underlying cause of the patient's shoulder pain really is. Is it……

postural
muscular imbalance between the muscles at the front of your shoulder and the muscles between your shoulder blades.
RSI from playing sport or work
Injury playing sport ie bump playing football, fall in gymnastics.

Once the patient is correctly diagnosed, we begin to treat the underlying cause of the shoulder pain, whilst addressing the symptoms. This gives instant improvement to shoulder function and pain, however importantly allows commencement of treatment that will give the patient indefinite relief from their shoulder pain.

HOW DO WE TREAT AND ERADICATE SHOULDER PAIN AND RESTORE FUNCTION?
The two main causes of chronic on going shoulder pain is from muscular imbalances that affect the positioning and functioning of the shoulder joint. This can either be a localised imbalance, ie the pectoral muscles at the front of the patient's chest are stronger/tighter than their opposing muscles between the shoulder blades (rhomboids). The weaker muscles between the patient's shoulder blades and upper back allow the tight muscles in the patient's chest to pull the shoulder joint forward. This compromises the functioning of the shoulder joint, which in turn places more load on the rotor cuff muscles which are purely designed to stabilise the shoulder joint.
In this case tight muscles need to be released through deep tissue myofascial release, in conjunction with a strengthening program dedicated to eliminate the weakness in the muscles between the shoulder blades and upper back.

In more chronic cases where patients have tried all kind of treatments without success, we find that the cause of the pain is not solely related to the shoulder joint in isolation. In these cases treating the body as a whole can very quickly alleviate symptoms and restore function to the shoulder joint where as other modalities and therapists have failed because they were only treating and addressing the shoulder joint in isolation.
In these cases postural imbalance causes by discrepancies between muscles in the hips, back and trunk and lower limbs affect the positioning of the shoulder joint creating pain and dysfunction.
In these cases, we quickly diagnose the postural imbalance, then address the tight muscles through hands on treatment and strengthening the weak muscles using functional compound exercises. The symptoms in most cases are quickly eradicated and continued strengthening of the entire body soon after eradicates the postural imbalance that was causing dysfunction of the shoulder joint.
Once symmetry is restored to the patient's body, they no longer become reliant on the exercises, nor treatment. We are yet to have one single patient have any shoulder pain re-occurrence after being treated and symmetry restored.