Make Shoulder Pain When Reaching Up Disappear Fast With My Secret 5-Step Framework.

Are you having shoulder pain when reaching up in the air? shoulder pain when reaching up affects over 30% of the population and can lead you to using your shoulder less and less to the point where you stop using it and you create a frozen-shoulder type of situation. And with this new frozen shoulder unable to move and stuck by your side, it may feel almost like an old, clingy new boyfriend who refuses to let it go, leaving you with only one arm to get through life.

So, if you don't want your shoulder pain to turn into a clingy new date, then let me give you the 5 step framework I use in my practice to relieve shoulder pain.

Here's Why We Have Pain When Reaching Up

Imagine a house with uneven walls and an unstable foundation that can tip over with a tiny earthquake or a gust of wind.

Would you want to live there?

Many of us will experience shoulder pain when reaching up not because of our age, but because our shoulders resemble the uneven walls within the house.Posture isn't just sitting up straight or having your shoulders back, it's a delicate balance of give and take between muscles, joints, and bones and applies to the way you sit, stand, and move.

Most damage to a house doesn't happen overnight; it happens because of repetition and time. The more you use a door handle, the faster it will wear down and the doors hinges will begin to break. The same can be said about the body.

By doing the same thing over and over like working on a computer, gardening, or reaching up constantly, you are not only creating your future posture; you are also overworking your muscles and wearing down the joints and bones that help you move into those positions. (I'll talk about the specific muscles in a little bit.)

All of this leading to shoulder pain when reaching up, shoulder impingement, and more.

Here's the good news.

Your shoulders and their current state can be corrected to the point where you don't feel any more pain. Not only that, but your upper body posture will also improve, which will increase your shoulder flexibility and even strengthen it.

This is what makes Train and Massage so effective at reliving not just shoulder pain, but all kinds of pain.

We use our 5-Step Framework/System to make sure we see results fast

The 5-Step Framework To Relieving Shoulder Pain When Reaching Up

There are 5 steps you can go through right now to relieve your shoulder pain when reaching up in 30 minutes or less. Here I will be teaching you how the 5-Step Framework works and why you must perform it in this order. After all of this, I will then go into the specific muscles you must work on to relieve your own shoulder pain.

Assess

Release

After using the assessments to identify the problem areas, we move onto step #2, which is release. There are many ways to achieve muscle release. One of them can be a massage we give to you to relax the overactive muscles causing your pain. Or, you can use a foam roller, myofascial cane, and other tools to release overactive muscles as well.

Here's why you must start here after assessing.

An overactive muscle is created by the nervous system sending continuous stimulus to the muscle, which keeps it from relaxing. This happens because of our posture. For example: If you are always typing on a computer or using your phone, there's a good chance you're slumping your shoulders forward and extending your head. This causes the muscles that help you get into this slumped-shoulders posture to work more because you're always in this position.

Now, the body sees this and says, "ok, if you like this position, I'm going to send more energy to the muscles that help you get into this position". This is how the body naturally creates an overactive muscle that begins to cause pain and needs to get released. I'll be teaching you which muscles to release in a little bit.

Stretch

Step #3 is to Stretch. After releasing the nervous system's hold on the muscles, we then need to stretch those same muscles. A muscle will shorten when it's activated, and the longer it's activated, the stiffer that muscle gets. So once we help the nervous system relax, the next step is to stretch the muscle out and help it get back to its normal size.

Here's why you must stretch only after releasing.

It's pretty simple actually, without relaxing the nervous system that's causing the muscle to stay overactive, then we would be fighting a losing battle against our own nervous system if we tried to stretch it without releasing it. Not only does this waste time, but it doesn't do much to help you because the nervous system only remembers that overactive, shortened position and will return there if the nervous system isn't shut off.

Re-Assess

Step #4 is to re-assess. The reason we want to re-assess in the middle is that steps 2-3 are designed to relieve the pain and help the body get back to its normal posture. So, before we try to anchor in the results, we must first check to see if we are able to see improvements with the work we did.

Activate

Step #5 is to Activate the opposite muscles with exercise. All of our muscles have an equal and opposite muscle that opposes it. The biceps have the triceps, chest has the lats, etc. These muscles work together to form balance, almost like having twins on a seesaw. If the twins sat on a seesaw and didn't do anything (lazy kids) the seesaw won't move up and down because the twins are the same weight. Their weight represents your muscle strength.

Now, lets remove one twin and replace them with the mom. What would happen? The mom, being SLIGHTLY heavier than the twin would create unbalance within the seesaw. The mom is your overactive and stronger muscles constantly keeping the seesaw (or joint within the body) on one specific side. All of this leading to more wear and tear on one side faster than the other. Did Arthritis pop into your head?

This is why after you release and stretch one side of muscles, the last step you need to complete is to strengthen the other side down to create balance.

That's what we need to do with your body. By activating the opposite muscles we just released and stretched, you get to build a stronger posture, avoid wear and tear on one side of your body, and avoid pain for much longer.

Here's why you do this last.

Training the opposite muscle before releasing and stretching the active muscles would be the same as playing a game of tug of war against your own body. You train hard, and you train for long hours, but without releasing or stretching the correct muscles in the right order, your body will only go back to what it knows, and that's your old posture.

Another way to think about it is this: which muscles are getting trained more? The ones helping you get into your posture 10-16 hours a day? Or the random muscles you train for 1 hour a day?

You won't see great results by trying to exercise prior to releasing and stretching.

Relieving Shoulder Pain When Reaching Up By Working On These Muscles In This Order

Latissimus Dorsi and Teres Major

The top rotator cuff muscle called supraspinatus is a muscle that helps with reaching your arm up. When this muscle becomes overactive and shortens, it can cause pain by becoming too overactive when lifting the shoulder. Our rotator cuffs are designed to help initiate a shoulder movement until our bigger muscles take over. But for some of us, this doesn't happen correctly, and our tiny supraspinatus ends up doing all the work, which causes it to become overactive and painful. Below is a video on how to release your supraspinatus using tools you have in your house as well as how to stretch it.

Supraspinatus

The top rotator cuff muscle called supraspinatus is a muscle that helps with reaching your arm up. When this muscle becomes overactive and shortens, it can cause pain by becoming too overactive when lifting the shoulder. Our rotator cuffs are designed to help initiate a shoulder movement until our bigger muscles take over. But for some of us, this doesn't happen correctly, and our tiny supraspinatus ends up doing all the work, which causes it to become overactive and painful. Below is a video on how to release your supraspinatus using tools you have in your house as well as how to stretch it.

Pectoralis Minor

The pectoralis minor or "pec minor" is a muscle that lies underneath our chest muscle but controls the scapula bone on the back. When the pec minor becomes overactive, it will pull the scapula away from the body and up towards the shoulders.

When this happens, reaching your arm up becomes extremely painful because the scapula that is now pulled up is blocking the shoulder from reaching its full range of motion. If the scapula doesn't move with the shoulder then it will block your range of motion and cause pain through compression. Below is a video with how to release your pec minor using tools you have in your house as well as how to stretch it.

Lower Trapezius

The lower trapezius (or lower traps) isn't a muscle you need to release or stretch, but instead, it's the muscle you need to activate to keep the pain from returning. The lower traps help keep the scapula down where it's supposed to be. The problem is, no one teaches how to train the lower traps, especially if you go into a gym.

Why? Because the lower traps is a muscle that's not only difficult to train correctly, but it's also a muscle you can't show off, which is why most trainers don't like training it. That's why I've included a video on how to train them properly, which you can find below.

Summary

Shoulder pain when reaching up, can be a sign of a postural problem. Just like a house with crooked walls needs a repair, so do your shoulders if you want to relieve your pain. And you can do that by releasing and stretching these overactive muscles, latissimus dorsi and teres major, supraspinatus, and pectoralis minor. After releasing and stretching those overactive muscles, the next step is to activate the lower trapezius to ensure your posture stays straight and your pain doesn't return. After completing all of these steps, not only will you have better posture, but you will also have less pain.