_edited.jpg)
FIX Long-Term Shoulder Pain in a Week
- chelsie462
- Sep 18
- 11 min read
This article is a transcribed, edited summary of a video Bob and Brad recorded in September 2024. For the original video, go to https://youtu.be/hrxE80v00Fk
Mike: Are you dealing with shoulder pain that's been lasting for weeks and struggling with activities like reaching over your head and reaching behind your back, maybe even your back pocket, or trouble sleeping?
Brad: Well, if you are, we have four valid options to help treat this and get you over it in a quick hurry.
Mike: You got over that fast.
Brad: Well, you know, I'm good. Today we're talking about shoulder pain, long-term shoulder pain, and one common thing is that people irritate their shoulder while they're in bed, like this, sleeping on their shoulder. I am actually dealing with it right now. I've had this for a few months now. I wake up in the middle of the night on my side because, for some reason, my body says, turn that way when I'm sleeping. I wake up, and my shoulder is uncomfortable.
Brad: One easy way to take away from this is how you sleep. If you know you're going to sleep on your side, get a habit of taking this shoulder and pulling it out so your trunk is at a little bit of an angle. This lets you think you're on your side, or you are on your side. You feel comfortable, your hips are there, but the shoulder is not being impinged with the body weight of the trunk. It's actually out in front; it works quite well.
Brad: I do make all attempts to sleep on my back. It feels better on my back, actually, and better on my shoulders. It's those old habits after 60 years of sleeping on my side; I just don't want to get over it, but this helps a lot.
Mike: Have you ever thought about sleeping on the other side?
Brad: Well, I do that, too, but I have the same problem. Both my shoulders are a little uncomfortable. I think it's from swimming for the last 25 years, but I can't give that up.
Mike: You've got a double whammy. Let's get into option number two.
Brad: Now, the next thing is if you have shoulder pain long-term and you have the painful arch syndrome, let me explain what it is. I've had this with many patients over the years. They'll say, "My shoulder hurts, but it hurts when I reach up, and then it hurts, and then I get it so high, and it's not painful anymore. I can do my work overhead, but when I bring my arm down, oh, it hurts right through there again, and when you get it down, it's okay."
Brad: That's called the painful arch syndrome. Now, this treatment is very easy to do. It can be really effective, and who is the surgeon that started this, shoulder surgeon?
Mike: You are asking too many questions.
Brad: Dr. Mark Kirsch. Anyways, let's go on with the treatment, and actually, this is similar to, who's our other therapist we work with?
Mike: Rick Olderman.
Brad: Rick Olderman uses the same thing, so it's a double benefit.
Mike: So what we're going to do is stretch out the tendon in the rotator cuff here. You can do this on a door frame like I'm showing. If you have a pull-up bar, you can use that instead. Brad will show an option using a stick if you have trouble reaching up this high. Simply grab onto the top of the door frame, and you're gonna lean into the doorway. You'll start to feel a stretch here. Hold it for three breaths or so. If you prefer time, you can do 15 to 30 seconds, and then relax.
Mike: As this becomes more comfortable and you want more of a stretch, lean into it and bend your knees slowly, and start hanging. This will help decompress even more within the shoulder joint region. If you're on a pull-up bar and you're fine hanging with one arm, you can do that, but it's a bit overkill.
Brad: Right now, if you can't reach the doorframe up there, or perhaps the integrity of your trim work is not good and it might fall off, then you simply take a stick about four or five feet long, maybe an inch or so in diameter. You can use a broomstick, a piece of PVC pipe. We're using the Booyah Stik; it works excellently. You can do it while sitting. You put it next to you, and make sure it does not move around. If it does, you take a shoe. Oh, here we go. I just happened to have my shoe. Put the stick in the shoe, and that works as a good break for that bottom. We're going to reach up as high as we can, and then I'm going to lean to the side. You can lean forward, whichever way feels better, and you're going to stretch and hold that.
Brad: There we go. I usually do this for about 10 to 15 seconds or a little longer. Should feel good while you're doing it as well as when you're done. If you're standing, which is one of my usual stretches I do, downstairs in my basement, I go like this and I stretch into it.
Brad: It's a nice stretch. There we go. If you happen to have a pull-up bar, you can just hang from a pull-up bar as well, or I like to do both as well. It works my back, so it's a double win for that. All right, let's go on to the next one, talking about, now, this is something that you do on a regular basis, or you've had good success with for shoulder problems.
Mike: Yes, it's from our friend Rick Olderman, but we have to move this door out of the way.
Brad: Yeah, because you're hiding back then. We'll have none of that. We want to be exposed.
Mike: Now, the next handful of exercises we're going to go through are from our friend Rick Olderman, who's a physical therapist. If you want to find out more about him, you can go to rickolderman.com. Brad, take it away.
Brad: Right, so the first stretch you're going to do, and then Mike's going to follow up with an exercise that these go together, you're going to go on your hands and knees. It can be done on your bed, but not so well. I prefer a carpeted floor. I'm going to do it here just for filming purposes. You bring your hands out in front of you, about shoulder width, and then you drop your butt down onto your ankles, and you're going to feel a stretch.
Brad: The whole idea is we're going to loosen up that scapula and move it in an upward position, as they're probably down or one of them, and particularly the painful side, the scapula is depressed. We need to un-depress it, make it happy, and move up. That was kind of a joke. If you want to emphasize it more, say, my left one, I want to stretch that side, I put it over on my right hand, and you'll feel the emphasis on that left side. Going to hold that for 15 to 30 seconds.
Brad: Do it two to three times, and after you get done with that, you're going to do the wall stretch, unless you can't do this because you're unable to go on your hands and knees. Mike's showing you options so you don't have to be on your hands and knees. Go ahead, Mike, I'm babbling.
Mike: You can either do this at a table with a chair, or you can do it standing at a countertop as well, whatever works for you. Again, you simply put your hands on the table. If you have a rolling chair or computer chair, you can roll your butt back, get the same concept we were just showing. You're just not going to get the leg stretch, but we're focused on the shoulder in this video, so it's fine.
Mike: If you have a chair that doesn't move, simply put your hands down. If you happen to have a towel or a smooth countertop, you can just slide your hands forward, go as far as you comfortably can. I'm going to hit my microphone on the bed, so I can't do too much. Hold for a few seconds, come back, and you can do that five to 10 times.
Mike: Now, another option or exercise you can focus on, you're going to need an open wall or door for this. Simply take your hands, pinky side touching the wall to the elbows. You're going to start slightly below 90 degrees here, and I'm going to push, slide my arms up. As I go up, I'm kind of shrugging. You can see in my upper traps here. This'll help if you're having shoulder issues. Get that shoulder up as high as you comfortably can. Not everyone can go this high. If you can only go this high, that's fine, just start there. Hold for a few seconds and come back down. So we're going to go up, high as you can, lean into the wall a bit.
Brad: Up with the shoulder blades at this point.
Mike: And then come back down. Now, if you're only dealing with one bad shoulder and you only have to work one side, you could do this with one arm. Just go up and back down. You can do them separately. If you're like me and you just wanna do 'em together, you certainly can. It's not gonna hurt anything.
Brad: There you go. I just found out that I'm working with someone who's doing this exercise, and he says it works really well to do it in the shower, and his fingers slide up and down the shower really easily, because they should just slide. You're not trying to drag or push into the wall; it's just simply a guide. Just something I wanted to bring up. All right, this is another nice shoulder exercise by Rick Olderman. It helps position the shoulder in the right position so everything works properly, and what you do is lie down. I like to put a pillow down just to raise my chest up a little bit, which makes the exercise easier. Doing this on a carpeted floor is best, not on a bed, which gives you a little more room. My right arm is the side that's a problem, and I'm going to lie like this, and the first thing I'm going to do is elevate the shoulder right there. That brings the scapula towards the midline or towards your spine, and then I'm going to lift up with a palm up towards the ceiling, and I'm just going to hold it there. We can do some isolation, about 10 to 15 repetitions, but you have to keep that scapula up. You will feel that middle trap muscle getting a little bit fatigued.
Brad: Now, if you want to increase the intensity, Mike is going to demonstrate a more advanced method, and it's a little more difficult. Go ahead, Mike.
Mike: So you're going to, again, squeeze the trap, but my arm is not going to be next to my side. It's going to be out a little bit away from me. It is off the ground completely, or mat, I'm on a mat here, and then you're going to do little oscillating circles. You can do this for roughly 30 circles or 30 seconds, whichever comfortable for you, and then relax. You're really going to start feeling some fatigue and muscular work in that scapular region.
Brad: That's right. So that brings that scapula back. After that, lie on your back. You don't have to have a pillow under your back, depends on how loose you are, but if you can lie like this, head down and out like this, and you can bring your arms up like this, if this is too easy and you want more of a stretch, then you would put a nice throw pillow or any pillow there, and it gives you more of a stretch, and you can see my hands do not want to touch the floor. This is a little too aggressive for me, so I would do it without that pillow. Ooh, okay, and that will also take 15 to 30 seconds.
Brad: Do that a couple of times a day at least. All right, so obviously, you're not going to do all of those exercises. Go through each one, find out which ones you have tight muscles or you're having good results that make the shoulder feel better. Personally, I do the sleeping one I talked about. I also do the stretch, and I do the one lying on the ground. I do not do the one that Mike does. It just doesn't seem to work for me, so I leave it alone, and I have good success. Now, if you happen to find yourself doing the W one, where you're lying on your back like I just demonstrated, and you feel that these muscles here are tight, a good stretch, and you have a massage gun, this can be a really good option to get those muscles loosened up. Mike, talk about it.
Mike: Yes, if you have tight pec muscles, oftentimes, that can bring your shoulders into a forward rounded position, bad posture over time, it's going to pull on your shoulder joint, causing a lot of issues. We need to fix that. Some people really need to get in there and massage along with stretching, so just massage the general pec region. You can hear it's working; my voice is vibrating, or you may have some tight lats, too, which can cause an effect, again, in your shoulder joint motion as well, so you can massage there as well.
Brad: What's going on with that massage gun? You got a weird-looking head on there.
Mike: This has a nice heat-cold option head, so if you want to warm it up, get some blood flow in the area, or cool it down, you can just press the buttons, and that's only on our pro models.
Brad: Yeah, the pro models. Yeah, that heat-cold option is really nice. It feels great. I'm just impressed with it. Plus, they're really shiny, and you can see yourself at the end. It's like a mirror.
Mike: Brad likes shiny things, looking at himself, apparently. If you want to check out more videos on shoulder pain, watch "How to Fix Shoulder Pain in Seconds (This Works!)"
Brad: All right. Have fun, be careful.
For this week’s Giveaway, visit: https://bobandbrad.com/giveaways
Bob and Brad’s Products
Pain Management:
Fitness:
Stretching:
Check out our shirts, mugs, bags, and more in our Bob and Brad merchandise shop
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.
