Video Transcript: Alleviate your Shoulder Pain with Isometric Exercises

So I am going to show you a really quick couple of exercises that are really great for shoulder pain. 

So a lot of times patients will come to see us because they're having shoulder pain.

Shoulder pain can be in the front of the shoulder, down the side, in the back, even up into the neck and the head. It's usually fairly disruptive to sleep, and definitely, if you're trying to reach up overhead, it can be really painful to do that. 

So there's really simple couple of exercises that I like to give to patients, especially when they're really feeling like the pain is very very acute, very early onset. They're very gentle, and these exercises should not increase pain.

If they are increasing pain, I definitely recommend, first of all before you do anything, that you check with your physical therapist. But if the exercises are causing any increase in pain, definitely double check that your doing them correctly. Your PT can let you know. 

So these exercises are what we call isometric exercises. Meaning is that when you do these exercises you are not going to actually be moving your arm but you're going to be concentrating on the muscles around the shoulder in a very specific position. 

What I recommend for every patient is that you make sure to grab a rolled towel or even a blanket or a pillow so that you may have something to just kind of hug your elbow and towards your trunk. And when you do that, what it is doing is really helping open the joint space. It's really great for blood flow. 

What you're going to do is this. You don't want your arm to be back here by your side. Then you think that's a great place for it to go. But, actually your shoulder blade tilts a little bit forward. 

So what we want to do is bring your elbow a little bit in front of us. So what it's doing is that the head of the humerus humerus which is the arm bone is just in line with your. This is a more open position it should cause less discomfort.

So what you're going to do is... You're going to take your opposite hand, this is the hand for the arm that doesn't hurt. And you're going to bring it and make this. And you're going to bring it inside of this hand and with this hand what you're going to do is your gently going to, we're going to push this hand gently down into the opposite. We're going to hold that for somewhere in the neighborhood of about 3 to 5 seconds. It's a gentle contraction and then you're going to release that.

Okay so you're going to do this again. You're going to gently pull in, contract and release.

So this is called an isometric internal rotation motion.

I'm going to gently pull in and release.

Then we're going to go to the opposite direction. We're going to do external rotation. 

So you're going to bring your opposite hand. You're going to bring it behind the hand of the arm that hurts. And you're going to gently push as if you're going to do this motion. 

It's your gentle, going to push and release your going to gently push out and release. And that's really only going to do.

So you're going to do these isometric contractions. You're going to hold each of them for about 3 to 5 seconds. It's a gentle contraction and then you'll repeat it anywhere from five to 10 repetitions, maybe two to three times a day.

The last thing I'm going to have you remember to do is try to make sure that your shoulders are not rounded. When you do this exercise it is really important to try and keep your shoulder blades gently down and backs backed in. Everything is relaxed as possible.

Okay, good luck! Keep us posted if they don't work.

Thank you.

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