Exercises for Frozen Shoulder
As a massage therapist, I have met many clients with various stages of frozen shoulder syndrome. Typically, I meet these patients after they have been through some physical therapy. Doctors often recommend that their patients get a professional massage so that the massage therapist can utilize stretches for frozen shoulder relief.
Frozen shoulder syndrome, also known as adhesive capsulitis of the shoulder joint, is a stiffening of the shoulder in which movement becomes difficult or limited. Frozen shoulder is typically accompanied by inflammation, swelling, and pain when attempting to move the shoulder. Adhesive capsulitis can often be alleviated with specific stretches and exercises. Let's look into these home remedies in more detail.
Disclaimer: Nothing written in this post or any post on DonnyPodcast.com should be taken as medical advice. If you want to know if anything discussed in this post is right for you and your health goals, consult the appropriate doctor.
What Causes Frozen Shoulder?
Officially, we are not certain exactly what causes frozen shoulder. However, there is a strong correlation between immobilization and frozen shoulder. In other words, frozen shoulder syndrome often occurs after the shoulder has had a limited range of motion (ROM) for a prolonged period of time. Typically, this long-term immobility occurs as the result of the injury recovery process: having your arm in a sling.
The only way to determine if you have frozen shoulder syndrome is to get a diagnosis from your doctor. Since most cases of frozen shoulder get better on their own, and the treatment for frozen shoulder syndrome is usually physical therapy, people (with their physician's approval) can usually do simple stretches and exercises to alleviate a case of adhesive capsulitis.
Stretches For Adhesive Capsulitis
To understand how and why stretches could help with frozen shoulder, we first have to understand how the shoulder works. Many sources of information about how to thaw a frozen shoulder mention stretches and exercises for the shoulder, itself. That's all good and helpful in its own right, but since adhesive capsulitis seems to be related to a lack of range of motion in the shoulder and many people don't know why this condition has occurred in the first place, wouldn't it make sense to address what is limiting the range of motion in the first place?
Sometimes the limitation in ROM is obvious, such as having one's arm up in a sling for weeks on end. But for others, there seems to be no reason why they were stricken with this shoulder malady. So why do some people seem to mysteriously get adhesive capsulitis out of nowhere?
Based on the theory that limits in range of motion are a likely factor in how frozen shoulder is caused, it makes sense to address the posture. As discussed in great detail in my post about how to alleviate tech neck, the available range of motion of our shoulders is dramatically affected by our posture. You can do a simple test at home to prove this:
- Move your shoulders forward.
- keep your shoulders forward while you attempt to raise your arm as high as possible without pain or discomfort.
- Take note of where your arm stopped.
- Bring your shoulders back in a comfortable, straight posture.
- Now, keep your posture straight and your shoulders back as you try to raise your hand straight above your head.
- Now, when you take note of the position, you've probably noticed that your ROM in your shoulder is significantly better when your shoulders are back, your head is held high, and you're standing in a good, straight posture.
Therefore, to thoroughly do stretches to relieve frozen shoulder syndrome, stretches to improve the posture are a must.
Stretches to Improve Posture
In regard to stretching for good posture, there are several key stretches that I mention in my post regarding stretching to relieve tech neck :
- Prayer stretch
- Towel stretch
- Doorway Stretch
These stretches focus on opening the shoulders, straightening the upper back, and reducing forward head posture.
Since the upper body's posture affects the lower body's posture and vice-versa, a few of the stretches mentioned in my post regarding stretches for low back pain may be helpful:
- Low lunges
- hip flexor stretches with a yoga block
- Standing quadriceps stretch
- Also, stretching calves helps with low back posture and pain.
Stretches for the Shoulders, Specifically
It makes sense that there is some overlap between stretches for upper body posture and stretches to help with frozen shoulder syndrome. A few good stretches for the shoulders are as follows.
The deltoid stretch, sometimes called the cross arm stretch, is one that many of us are very familiar with from high school sports or even gym classes. Simply hold your arm out in front of you. Keep the arm straight, and pull it gently toward the centerline until you feel a comfortable stretch. Stretches can be done twice a day, holding gently for a maximum of one minute. Stretches can be done safely 5 days per week.
There are multiple variations of how you could stretch your triceps. My favorite way to do this stretch for the triceps is to stand in a good, straight posture, raise the elbow of the head, and then gently pull the elbow toward the opposite shoulder with my other hand as depicted above.
As discussed in my post about stretches to relieve tech neck, the towel stretch is another good one that may help to prevent or alleviate shoulder issues.
A variation of the prayer stretch that is different from what I mentioned in my stretches for tech neck post is a standing prayer stretch in which you place your hands on a stable object, rather than placing your elbows on the object. This can be done by gripping the back of a park bench and bending forward at the hips, keeping the back and neck straight.
Did you know that your biceps are a shoulder muscle, too? In fact, the biceps travel right up into the top of the humerus and even have an attachment on the scapulae. Sometimes when people have pain in their shoulder, it's actually their bicipital tendon that is sore. It may be hard to distinguish pain in a biceps tendon from a rotator cuff impingement.
To do a stretch for the biceps you can actually do a doorway stretch as you would to stretch the pectoral muscles. Except, you would make sure to do the stretch with a straight arm, not a bent elbow. With a straight arm, you can feel the stretch in the biceps as well as the pecs.
Exercises For Frozen Shoulder
For exercises to thaw a frozen shoulder, I'm putting them in two categories: posture exercises and shoulder joint exercises.
Exercises for posture
As I mentioned earlier in this post, our posture affects our shoulder joints' range of motion. And, it just so happens that some exercises to prevent adhesive capsulitis (or relieve it) are also exercises that help to improve posture. Here are a few that I discussed in detail in my post about exercises for better posture:
- Rows: there are a variety of rows, some of which are very accessible for seniors. In my posture exercises for pain relief post, I mention a way to do rows with a towel, for example.
- Skydivers: It's a calisthenic exercise where you lay on the ground a mimic the position of a skydiver.
- Reverse Snow Angels: An exercise similar to skydivers in which you are on your stomach making snow angel motions without your arms, knees, feet, or head touching the ground.
Sword Raises
Sword raises you might argue are an exercise for the shoulder joint, itself. But, you can't deny that it engages the rhomboids, traps, and rear delts. Therefore, it is an exercise that improves posture. The rotator cuff muscles definitely still get a good workout with sword raises. The following steps are how to do sword raises:
- Strap a resistance band you can comfortably work with to a hard point, such as a banister or a fixed pole.
- Stand with your left foot closer to the hard point and your right foot being the further foot away from the hard point. In this stance you're shoulders and feet make a straight line away from where the band is attached.
- Hold the band in your right hand, and place your right hand at your left hip.
- With a nearly straight arm, use your traps, lats, and deltoids to slowly, steadily swing your arm diagonally upward, as if you're unsheathing a sword and raising it high above your right shoulder.
- Like any other muscle-building workout, 1 - 3 sets of a maximum of 12 repetitions may be good enough for most people to stimulate muscle growth and tone.
- Repeat this same thing by reversing your stance and working the left shoulder.
- Above all: Here is another reminder that I am not advising anyone to do any of these exercises. I am just informing my readers of what exercises out there are typically recommended to help with frozen shoulder. Whether or not you should do any of these exercises at all is something that only your doctor can decide. Consult your doctor to determine if anything written in this blog is right for you and your unique situation.
Lateral Rotations With a Resistance Band
Similar to sword raises, lateral rotations work the lateral rotators of the humerus, including the rotator cuff. Here is a basic explanation of how to do lateral rotations with a resistance band:
- Fasten a resistance band to a hard point.
- Stand with one foot closer to the hard point than the other. With your feet shoulder-width apart, you're making a straight line away from the hard point with your feet, hips, and shoulders as you are standing.
- With your distant arm's hand, grip the resistance band.
- Keep your band arm's elbow down and next to your ribs.
- Now with the resistance band arm, rotate your upper arm (humerus) so that you are causing your hand (which is holding the band) to go from the center of your body to as far to the side of your body as possible without discomfort.
- Slowly allow the resistance band to bring your hand back toward the hard point (where the band is tied).
- Keep your elbow down and next to your ribs all throughout the repetitions.
In the following video, sword raises and lateral rotations are both demonstrated by Athlean-X.
This next one might be called by many names: wall crawls, finger crawls, hand crawls, and hand-assisted humeral flexion. Whatever you want to call it, it could be considered a stretch for frozen shoulder. With adhesive capsulitis, the joint capsule, itself, becomes tight and thickened. Therefore, doing hand crawls up a wall may actually cause stretching of the overly shortened joint capsule. Another factor to consider is the distribution of synovial fluid.
The shoulder is a synovial joint. Synovial joints contain a fluid called synovial fluid. It is believed that when the shoulder is held still for prolonged periods of time this lubricant is not distributed very well over the joint surfaces. It's thought that a lack of synovial fluid could cause the joint to become irritated with motion, resulting in inflammation and pain. So, crawling your hand up a wall can help to gently move your arm upward, stretch the joint capsule, and distribute synovial fluid over the joint.
How to do wall crawls for frozen shoulder:
- Stand in a good, straight posture with your shoulders square with the wall.
- Place the frozen shoulder arm's hand on the wall.
- Using your fingers, walk your hand up the wall to a distance that is comfortable for you.
- This technique can be versatile. You can crawl your hand up and down the wall repetitively, and you can hold positions that feel like a bit of a stretch for several seconds. You can even crawl left and right if it feels right for you to do so.
Pendulums
The pendulum swing is a nice, gentle way to passively move the shoulder joint. To do this exercise, bend at the hips so that your torso is closer to being parallel with the floor. Hold a small weight in your hand such as a soda can or a bottle of water. Let the arm holding the bottle dangle in a relaxed way. Using your legs, move your body in small circles to cause the arm holding the bottle to swing like a pendulum.
You can swing the pendulum arm in different directions, in circles, or in a straight line. Remember only to use momentum to cause the arm to swing. Do not allow the muscles of the arm to move the arm during this exercise. This exercise may help to stretch the joint capsule, distribute synovial fluid, and warm up your shoulder for the other exercises that I have written about in this post.
This video by AskDoctorJo demonstrates several different exercises for frozen shoulder, including some not discussed in this blog post.
Video by AskDoctorJo
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