Erase Shoulder Pain Once and For All!

This article is a transcribed, edited summary of a video Bob and Brad recorded in March 2025. For the original video, go to https://youtu.be/oMeBJEb9FE0?si=rRu6ltof-D1DcFkb

Mike: Are you struggling with nagging shoulder pain, whether it's bothering you at work, making it hard to sleep, or just slowing you down?

Brad: Well, you're in luck, because today we're going to show you four different exercises or techniques to help that pain get better. And we're going to use Sam to show you why it works and how it works. It's really an educational tool that'll make you win.

Mike: Now today we're going to talk about how to erase your shoulder pain once and for all. So what we want to do is use Sam here as a model, kind of explaining how your shoulder blade may be causing your shoulder pain. But before we get into that, we do want to mention all these tips came from our friend Rick Olderman, who is a physical therapist.

Brad: All right, so should we get into shoulder pain? And one of the causes that is not addressed for chronic nagging shoulder pain is the position of the scapula or the shoulder blade. Now what happens is the scapula actually gets depressed, or goes in a downward position. So here we have the shoulder blades equal, and what happens is it can drop down and drift down from poor posture and a number of other things. And we're going to show how to correct that, because when this drops down, there are muscles that connect from the shoulder blade to the neck and to the skull. When those muscles get stretched out for long periods of time, they react with pain, tightness, knots, all those things that make problems: headaches, neck aches, as well as pain into here.

Brad: We're going to show you how to get it back up, resolve the problem, and then correct the pain, and win. That's how I talked before about winning. You win when you eliminate the pain.

Mike: So we're going to go through the four different techniques here. Two of them are more stretches or exercises, and the other two are more of a positioning trick you can try.

Brad: See, with Sam, we just put it where the screw goes on and put the nut on, and he's fixed. You can't do that on the human body, but we'll show you how you can do it.

Mike: Well, you could; it just might hurt.

Brad: Orthopedic doctors are real good with that.

Mike: They do it all the time.

Brad: There you go. All right, let's go.

Mike: So the first one we're going to do is called all fours rocking, at least from Rick's program. Some people might call it a child's pose in yoga. You could do this in a kneeling position, or you could do it in a seated position, because we realize some people don't feel as comfortable.

Brad: Now, this you could either, you could do on the bed effectively, or on the floor, whatever you want. Do you agree?

Mike: Yes. You can even do this standing in a doorway, but let's not get into that right now. So first, what we're going to do is place your hands out in front of you, and as I sit my butt towards my heels, this is elevating and lifting my shoulder up. Most times, people have pain with this when they try to lift their shoulder forward. So we're letting momentum and our body weight kind of stretch it out and do the work for us. Your shoulder muscles aren't activating here; they're more passively getting stretched. So people find it easier to lift their arm up overhead more.

Brad: Right, and look, you can't see it through Mike's shirt, but my hand is on his shoulder blade. It's way up here; it has moved. Go back up once, Mike. So we started out down here. Go ahead, go back, and look at that motion. The shoulder blade moves upward, just exactly what we're talking about. So we get some stretching there. We're also going to show an exercise that the muscles above are going to pull it up, locking it into place.

Mike: So what we're doing here is stretching a lot of the lat muscles, just to get it not so tight. And what you're going to do is once you're down here, you can hold this for roughly 15 to 30 seconds, and come back up. You can do this five to 10 times. If you notice one side typically is where your shoulder pain is, say this is my painful side; if I reach over more, it's going to stretch it even more.

Brad: Good option. So if your knees are painful and you cannot do that, simply go to the supper table, put your hands, and if you have a chair that has wheels, you can do this: hands here, slide out. We get the same stretch on the shoulders as Mike was doing. And again, you can cross over. Do you have a towel?

Mike: No, because they're at the laundry bin right now, so we have a pillowcase.

Brad: Take a towel or cloth on your table, if you have a chair that does not have wheels, and simply go the opposite direction. There you go, stretch. And again, do it the same frequency, or as it feels good, as Mike mentioned. And again, if it's feeling good while you do it, after you do it, you're right on. Do it at least three times a day throughout the day.

Mike: Now if you are busy, and you're at work, and you can't get on your hands and knees or do that, there's actually a third way you can do this that I kind of thought about and talked with Rick yesterday actually because we had a live event.

Brad: What is it? Well, hurry up, tell us.

Mike: So it's the same concept: you just go to a door frame, or a railing of sorts, and you grab on with your hand, and then you start bending down, and you're getting a nice stretch this way too.

Brad: Nice.

Mike: So you can also do it that way. So if you're in a doorway, just grab the inside of the doorway and pull, and you have to kind of sit your butt back a little bit.

Brad: There you go.

Mike: You can also grab higher up, but I have a railing; it's a little different here.

Brad: I think they call it a door jamb.

Mike: Whatever.

Brad: All right, good. So we now stretched the scapula so it's starting to move up. Now again, as I mentioned, we need to do the next exercise that'll tighten the muscles above to help pull it up. It's working; it's kind of like the yin and the yang.

Mike: Kind of, but I'm going to get this out of the way right now.

Brad: Mike's going to demonstrate. You're going to demonstrate this, right?

Mike: Yeah, I can clear my wall space.

Brad: There we go. Let's clear the wall space, the floor space.

Mike: Okay, so for this one you need a wall. And say my left side is the painful side again; you are going to put your elbow to your pinky on the wall, start low, and then start sliding up the wall. My thumb is facing away from me. And go up as far as you comfortably can. If you hurt here, just go here and stop. Hold for a few seconds and come back down. Just keep doing this; we're going to go 10 repetitions. If you are able to go all the way up, you certainly can. If it feels weird for you to do one side, you don't feel balanced for some reason, you could do two, but you don't have to.

Brad: So you're not leaning into your arms; they're just touching lightly, correct?

Mike: Yes, and when I go up, what you want to think about is, once I'm here about 90 degrees, I kind of start to shrug a little bit to get those muscles to help to slide it up the wall. So that's what I'm going to do with this exercise.

Brad: So when your arms are sliding up the wall, your shoulder blades are literally sliding up across your rib cage. And how many reps?

Mike: We can do 10 repetitions. At the top, I would hold it for roughly 10 seconds or so and then come back down.

Brad: Sure. Good. And do that three times a day as well.

Mike: Yes.

Brad: And do both of these, right back to back. First do the stretch here in one of the manners that we did, and then do the wall slide.

Mike: Now the next couple of tips are more for positional things you can try if you're having shoulder pain when sitting down, working, or even sleeping. So why don't we do sleeping first?

Brad: Sleeping first, yes. We'll use this as our bed. Yeah, this is really nice. We've mentioned these tips in the past, but they work well. And if you haven't seen them. You'll find them very helpful. And I think they're helpful to prevent future shoulder pain. Particularly, I could sleep on my back, my side, anywhere I wanted when I was younger, but now I sleep on my sides, and my shoulders aren't comfortable after a couple hours.

Mike: So if you're a back sleeper, typically, just getting some sort of gap under your arm can feel good. You may need one to two pillows. First off, make sure you don't have too many pillows under your head when you're on your back, because then your neck's crunched up, and this is going to affect your shoulder blade as well. So make sure you have good posture here. You can take one pillow across your body like this, maybe enough; you might need two pillows, one alongside you and this way. Get breathable pillows, or you might get warm.

Brad: Breathable?

Mike: Breathable pillows.

Brad: Well, and I gotta admit this is, if you haven't tried it, it is quite comfortable. It makes a big difference on that shoulder.

Mike: Yes, now if you're a side sleeper, for camera filming's sake, we'll just switch it to my right side. We would suggest sleeping on your non-painful side, and then again taking a pillow, one or two of them, and placing them under your arm for support.

Brad: I wanted to show them a little trick. If I don't have two pillows, I just fold one in half, and then that fills the gap when you go to side sleeping; that way you don't need, yeah, I like that. It's your choice.

Mike: And then again, you might need one, maybe two pillows to get some support on your arm. Typically with shoulder pain, you're going to have to mess around with what position's most comfortable. Some people round a little bit more forward, some people more back. Unfortunately, there's not a perfect answer; just kind of figure out what you can do to fall asleep. Now if you have to sleep on your painful shoulder, for whatever reason, maybe you have some other issues like hip pain or back pain, again, we're going to want to have a couple pillows there, one folded. And you're actually going to make, I call it a trough. What do you call it?

Brad: Bob patented the canal.

Mike: So we have a nice little gap there.

Brad: Right there.

Mike: So what we're going to do is my head is being supported up here, and then my rib cage is being supported here, taking pressure off the shoulder joint itself. And I'm not lying directly on this, because I'm still getting pressure; now it's not comfortable. But you kind of lean a little bit away, I guess. Don't have someone pull your arm if it hurts already.

Brad: I've done that with patients, but I do do it gently.

Mike: You weren't gentle there. So I'm kind of like at a 45-degree angle now, I would say, versus like a perfect 90.

Brad: Yeah, these pillow tricks while you sleep are really, really helpful. And the good thing about it is they don't cost you anything, except for if you need to get some pillows from somewhere.

Mike: And our last tip is more for when you are sitting. So, Brad.

Brad: Oh yes.

Mike: Do you want to show them that?

Brad: Yes, now this is, I really like this. It feels comfortable. This is one thing that made a significant difference with Bob's right-sided shoulder pain. He would be at the computer, working and typing away, with shoulder pain. And then Rick Olderman said, "Did you address your posture sitting at the desk?" And he suggested this. What we want to do, if you look at this, is when I have my forearms, and they touch, watch my shoulders; they both depress or go downwards. So I'm putting some stress through those muscles we mentioned.

Brad: If we can elevate it, take the weight of the arm off the shoulder so they're like floating there, and you can do that if you have a desk, a computer work chair that actually has adjustable armrests, up and down; some people have them, and they're not aware of it. Usually there are some buttons underneath: push, raise it up so we get that. If you don't have that, take a pillow, fold it in half, squeeze it in there. Can I do two? Might as well do both sides.

Mike: I suppose.

Brad: Even the non-painful side, put this in here. There we go. Looks kind of weird, doesn't it? But when you put your arms on here, really, it's nice and cushy, has some give, it takes the weight. I can just feel it, and I've got healthy shoulders, relatively speaking. I can feel the comfort level is much better, and I can do my work. Now, if you find this consistently helpful, it takes the pain away. You probably want to invest in a chair that has adjustable armrests that are padded, and then you don't have to deal with pillows every day.

Mike: I'd like to see someone just go to the office and bring two pillows in every day. I think it'd be kind of funny.

Brad: Well, that would be, yeah, everyone. Can you imagine a place with 30, 40 offices?

Mike: Pillows everywhere.

Brad: Everyone's got pillows under every.

Mike: Now if you're on a recliner or a couch of sorts, you typically want to have the painful side towards one of the armrests if you're on a couch. And then again, you may need to put a pillow, say this is the side of the couch, up here, just for a little more elevation and support on that side. So it can work in any seated position. If you're driving a car, you can check for your arm supports as well on the side, because normally they're there.

Brad: Right, right.

Mike: So having it supported while you're driving can also help.

Brad: As a matter of fact, I've got a friend who's dealing with that right now as we, well, not right now, but.

Mike: This instant?

Brad: Well, no, but you know.

Mike: Give all those tips a try. They all kind of work together, so make sure to do all of them and see how your shoulder is feeling. If you're still having some issues, you can watch "Our 5 Most Effective Shoulder Pain Exercises (Rotator Cuff, Arthritis, Impingement)." So this is more of a strengthening video.

Brad: Yeah, good for the rotator cuff, arthritic shoulders, and impingement. So everything works together, as we know. The shoulder's a complicated joint, actually.

Mike: It is complicated, just like you.

Brad: Thank you, I knew you were going to bring something like that up. All right, have a good day and keep your shoulder healthy.

Medical Disclaimer: All information, content, and material on this website are for informational purposes only and are not intended to serve as a substitute for the consultation, diagnosis, and/or medical treatment of a qualified physician or healthcare provider.

Affiliate Disclaimer: Keep in mind that we may receive commissions when you click our links and make purchases. However, this does not impact our reviews and comparisons. We are highly selective in our products and try our best to keep things fair and balanced to help you make the best choice for you.