If you’ve experienced shoulder pain you would know how irritating it can be – sometimes causing radiating pain out from the shoulder to the neck or back or down the arm, affecting your ability to lift the arm up without pain, put your coat on, sleep on the affected side, carry bags and luggage, work at your desk without increased aggravation and perform exercise without range restriction and pain and even weakness. These symptoms can greatly affect your everyday life, becoming tiring and restricting.
At Thrive Health Co. our Myotherapists see many clients with neck, upper back and shoulder pain. Common conditions we treat can include:
– Pain and tightness across the shoulder, along the shoulder blade and up the neck
– Pain and catching on the outside of the shoulder – affecting clients ability to reach overhead or reach behind them
– Aching down the arm toward the elbow
– Deep aching pain through the back of the shoulder blade
– Feeling of tightness and restricted range of motion in the shoulder
– Stiffness with neck and upper back movements
– Postural changes with rounded and stiffness in the upper back and rounded shoulders
– Numbness or weakness in the arm
– Pain at the front of the shoulder
It is common to experience neck, upper back or shoulder pain following a bout of enthusiastic gardening, exercising or cleaning, a long study or work session at the desk, or after doing an awkward movement that catches or creates a sharp pain – like a reactive quick reflex to catch something or lifting something that is too heavy. Although these issues sometimes come out of the blue, many times there is an underlying weakness, instability or faulty movement pattern that has occurred over time and that last thing you did was enough to set it off.
As Myotherapists we know that pain can inhibit muscles from working properly, creating further faulty muscle recruitment and overload other areas, asking them to do more work than they should. This situation starts to create a perfect storm for your shoulder issue where it feels easily aggravated and you may start avoiding exercises and movement. The key to a long term fix of that shoulder is symptom relief through hands-on, targeted treatment and understanding what movements are good for your shoulder with your Myotherapist, along with improving the mobility, stability and strength of the painful and related areas.
In your initial session we will have a chat with you about your symptoms to understand when you feel them, what makes it worse and if you know what makes it better. We do a thorough assessment, including feeling the affected area to get a sense of tissue changes, movement assessment of the affected and surrounding joints, muscles, ligaments and nerves, theses tests will also reveal any underlying weakness and faulty movement strategies your body may have, followed by hands on treatment. Your treatment will take up most of the time in your session and we may use a number of treatment techniques and tools such as:
· Deep tissue, trigger point and pin and stretch remedial massage
· Myofacial cupping
· Dry needling
· Electro dry needling
· Joint mobilisation
· Tissue stretching such as Muscle energy technique and proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation
· Neural mobilisation
Our main aim with the first treatment is to reduce your pain and discomfort, improve your movement range and ability and arm you with a few key stretches, mobilisations and exercises to get you started on your recovery. We will often suggest a follow up treatment within a week or two to re-assess and see how you have gone with exercises, from there you may be recommended up to 4-6 treatments over a varied timeline depending on your symptoms. We also find that ongoing maintenance treatments are very beneficial for the care our clients, with many clients booking in once per month or 6 weeks.
The beauty of working within Thrive Health Co. is our ability to refer to other amazing practitioners in-house. If we think seeing a chiro could really benefit a quick recovery, we have some of the best Chiropractors in Brisbane. Our very knowledgable Exercise Physiologist Rachel is an invaluable resource for really getting into the nitty gritty of identifying and improving movement patterns, addressing imbalances in weakness and strength and getting you moving better and stronger quickly. And if we think you may need some imaging and very specific rehabilitation, we can refer you to our Physiotherapist Mat.
Come and see how our Myotherapists can help get you moving and feeling better, make a booking by calling: 07 3716 0199 or book ONLINE
