Fix Your Shoulder Pain—Before It Gets Worse!

This article is a transcribed, edited summary of a video Bob and Brad recorded in April 2025. For the original video, go to https://youtu.be/NAisF0uzwAY

Brad: Oh, if you have a sore shoulder that's dragging on and just won't get better, this is for you.

Mike: We're going to show you the five best exercises and stretches you can do on your own to help cure your shoulder pain before it gets worse.

Brad: There you go.

Mike: Now, when it comes to shoulder pain, this can help with issues like reaching overhead becoming painful. Maybe you try to reach behind your back to put a coat on, and it hurts. Or maybe you just have some general arthritis in your shoulder from an old injury.

Brad: Right, so technically, we're talking about impingement problems, or depressed scapula issues, or arthritic pain- that general stiffness and pain.

Mike: So, we're going to go through those three categories and give you some options that you can try.

Brad: Alright, the first thing we're going to talk about is impingement problems. Now, some typical symptoms with impingement are when you reach up, you get that pain, like getting things out of the cupboard, or painful arc syndrome. And what that refers to is: it hurts as you go up with your arm, and then once you get to a certain point, it's okay. And then when you come back down, oh, it hurts again; going back down, probably have impingement problems. Now I want to talk about how I had an impingement problem from swimming, which is very common with swimmers. One thing that consistently helped me was a cross-friction massage. You can do this with your hand or your fingers, like Mike is showing. You need to find the tendon, and you'll know that when you find it. Now, I always had to go out in this area a little bit, but you'll find it just starts in one area, and when you hit the tender spot, you're hitting that tendon, which is being impinged on and frayed a little bit.

Brad: What I found was my fingers would get sore after doing that, particularly if you're, you know, you've got a little arthritis in your fingers. And then I did use a massage gun with a round head. If you happen to have one, that works really well. Get it going, and it travels back and forth this way, just like your fingers travel back and forth; the tendon goes up and down. So, cross-friction means you go across, just like Mike is doing. Two fingers right over that tendon. Now, when you do this, after about 30 seconds or so, the pain should resolve, and it should feel better; then you know you're doing the right thing. Give it a couple more minutes till your fingers get sore, and then it should feel good, kind of a cool sensation; you know you're doing the right thing. If you're using the massage gun, do not go straight into it like this; you're just going to beat it up. Turn it sideways. So you're going to cross that tendon, find the spot, and you'll find your fingers don't get nearly as painful or tired when doing this. It's just a nice option if you have a massage gun.

Brad: And the nice thing is, if you want to get a massage gun, you can use it on all parts of your body with the exception of the neck or anything in your head.

Mike: So, what we're actually doing is massaging the rotator cuff tendons. Here, they all kind of insert into this general region. If you're in the front, that's more your biceps tendon region. But oftentimes, with impingement, those muscles are getting impinged between the bones when you're lifting overhead. So, we're just trying to get some blood flow in the area to make it feel a little better.

Brad: That's right. And this is feeling really good for me, and my shoulder is not even impinged right now. Now, there is another option that we learned from Dr. Mark Kirsch. He was an orthopedic surgeon, did a lot of shoulder surgeries, and he came up with this treatment for impingement and found great success, reducing the number of surgeries he's had to do. You simply need a pull-up bar. We have the Hanging Handles, or anything that you can hang from, and there Mike is demonstrating. Simply hanging, this can actually stretch the Coracoacromial ligament, which allows the impingement to go away. We're not going to get into detail. Mike, can you talk about how long to do this?

Mike: So, what we're doing is just making more room for your rotator cuff tendons to move around. So, what you're going to do is start in a nice standing position. Hopefully you can get your arm up here overhead, and then you're going to slowly sit down. And what I'm doing, it's kind of nice with this because I'm against the wall; you don't have to have a wall. But notice my feet are still touching, and you're just going to go down. As I go down, notice my shoulders are getting further and further overhead. And then, once you get to this spot where you start to feel some pain, just stop there, and you're just going to stretch. You can do, early on, maybe you can only do 10 seconds; that's fine. Build up time over time. That's funny to say. But build up your duration of hanging over time.

Mike: You're not going to be able to go, you know, 30 seconds, a minute, two minutes, right away. Just do what you can tolerate. You can even fully hang without touching your feet down. But this is going to really stretch things out, and early on it's probably going to be too painful. So, make sure to keep your feet planted on the ground, and just stretch slowly, and it should feel good.

Brad: I usually hang for 30 seconds at the most, and it seems to be successful. I know in the book he talks about people really hanging for like minutes, which is pretty extreme.

Mike: You can do 30 seconds, rest for a couple of minutes, do 30 seconds again. It doesn't have to be all at once, but if you're having some pain, you can kind of stretch it out. Also works for other issues like back pain and anything else?

Brad: Really, decompression of the back, absolutely. So anyways, I do this for maintenance without any shoulder pain, just so it eliminates future problems.

Mike: I think we should get into the next topic: what may be causing your shoulder pain and stretches.

Brad: There you go. The next one. From who?

Mike: Rick Olderman, a physical therapist and friend of ours. So, what he often talks about with shoulder pain is a depressed scapula. The scapula is your shoulder blade in the back. In some people- I'm exaggerating here, but it can literally be depressed like this.

Mike: Their whole shoulder may not be leaning like this, but if they have a depressed scapula, it can cause a whole array of issues when you're trying to lift or move your shoulder. So, well, you want to actually stretch it out and get it back in place. So, we're going to show you a couple of options for that.

Brad: There you go.

Mike: So the first stretch you're going to do, you're going to be on all fours. If you cannot get into this position comfortably because your knees bother you, I will show another option, or Brad will if he makes it back in time. So, what you're going to do is place your hands down in front of you, and I'm going to sit my butt towards my heels here. Notice as I'm doing this, my shoulders are starting to elevate and go overhead. Once I'm in this position, you can crawl your hands forward a little bit more, and what you're doing is stretching the lat muscles down here, which, if they can be tight, can cause that scapula to depress more. We're going to sit here for 15 to 30 seconds, and then come back up slowly.

Mike: Now, if you have one side that's more painful than the other, which is the case for most people, say it's my left side, I can reach over, and I'm going to get more of a stretch there. Again, breathe and relax, and try to do it for 30 seconds.

Mike: Brad, do you want to show how they can do this in a seated position?

Brad: That's right. Absolutely. So you go to the kitchen table, or any table or cupboard; a smooth top is preferable. Put your hands on the counter. If you have a chair with wheels on it, the hands stay planted on the tabletop, and you roll the stool away, and you get the same stretch on those muscles Mike just talked about. Same thing, you're going to hold it. Sometimes I like to just stretch and relax, stretch and relax, and then maybe hold for 15 to 30 seconds.

Brad: If you do not have rollers on your chair, which is pretty common, and you have a smooth tabletop, take a towel. And simply slide forward. Instead of the chair moving, your hands are sliding across the tabletop, again for the same protocols as far as repetitions and time. Plus, you get your tabletop nice and clean. There you go.

Mike: Now the next thing Rick mentions is actually working on elevating your shoulder blade up and kicking in the right muscles. So, we're talking about your upper trap muscles to help. So, for this, you're going to need to go to a wall space. Take the painful side, I'm going pinky to elbow on the wall, and then I slide up. Once you get to about 90 degrees, start to think about shrugging a little bit to help activate the upper trapezius muscles there and the levator scapulae, which is another nerdy muscle name. And then hold again for 15 to 30 seconds. Come back down, and you can repeat this 10 times.

Mike: Now, if you have, both shoulders are sore, you could certainly do both arms at once, or sometimes you can just do this for maintenance, because it kind of feels good.

Brad: One thing I always tell people is to go back down, get to that 90-degree point. Once you get to that 90-degree point, I tell people to think about bringing your shoulder to your ear, and that helps those muscles tighten up and strengthen the proper muscles to elevate the scapula, so that we eliminate the depressed, becomes elevated or back into neutral. Depressed scapula; we hate to have a depressed scapula.

Mike: Yeah, we gotta make it happy again.

Brad: There you go.

Mike: Now, we got one more topic, and that's for people that just have stiff or arthritic shoulders.

Brad: Alright, now if you do have arthritic shoulder pain, where it is just general stiffness, or it can be some notable pain, the first thing that might come in handy, and a lot of people respond well to, is simply heat. You can simply take a shower, use warm water over it to warm it up, and then do the stretches afterwards. You can use a hot pack like this. Gel pack- some of them you can actually put in the microwave for a specific amount of time. It should say right on the hot pack, and put it on there for 15 minutes or so to get it to warm up. And then, start out with some gentle stretching. Actually, before we go into that, because that's pretty aggressive, let's talk about the Booyah Stik stretch.

Mike: Yeah, so you can talk about the Booyah Stik, I guess. You can also massage it with a massage gun, as we showed earlier.

Brad: Well, you know, actually the one thing we didn't show, if you're going to have, if you have tight shoulder muscles. It may be out here, but you may want to get the pec muscles in the front, get underneath, and it should feel good. If you're doing this for arthritic pain, don't do it if it creates pain. And then, to get on the backside, you almost have to have someone else do it if you have a gun like this.

Brad: Other stretches, I like, these are my favorites. I use a Booyah Stik. You can use a pool cue. And simply, this is one of my favorites; I call it the paddling. Like you're paddling a canoe, stretching this shoulder. I go straight behind, like this, and you can do that one, obviously, with both arms.

Brad: You can put the stick behind your head and stretch that out a little bit. It all depends.

Brad: If it creates sharp pain, do not do it. Just do gentle stretching. The other one I like, and this is actually Bob's favorite one. It's called, we call it the chicken wing! Reach behind here. If you have it, have the flexibility, it's not painful. You can do this. Gentle, gentle, no sharp pain. I can't emphasize that enough for arthritis.

Brad: I do this for maintenance at least three times a week or more. And then finally, that leads into the hanging: with a stick, reach up here, hold onto it. Now, watch what I do. I drop and bend my knees, and I'm getting a stretch. Again, gentle stretch.

Brad: Hold it for 15 to 30 seconds at the most, and maybe you're only going to tolerate pressure on, pressure off, for maybe five to 10 repetitions. Use good judgment. Do not overdo it. If you want to get a little more aggressive, this is something that works well, just like we did before for impingement.

Mike: Yep, same concept, just stretching out and hanging from a pull-up bar. We explained that earlier, so I don't think we need to go into detail again on that.

Brad: Yep, exactly. Alright, so depending on your particular symptoms that we had mentioned, you can go through these, pick out the ones that work- in other words, that feel good while you do them, or as well as after them. Don't do the ones that create pain. That's not how to approach this.

Mike: Now, if you want to check out more videos specifically on how to use a massage gun for shoulder pain, you can watch "How to Use a Massage Gun For Shoulder Pain."

Brad: Have a good day. Be careful.

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