There are varying degrees of shoulder pain, from a slight impingement to a completely torn rotator cuff. Today I’d like to focus on the early stages of shoulder pain as that’s where most of the myth resides.
When I say early stages, I’m referring to impingements in your shoulder. There’s just enough pain there to be a nuisance, but usually not enough to stop you from doing your day to day activities. Usually this pain shows up when you’re putting on a jacket, putting items away on your shelf, or even slightly more severe – pain when you’re lying on your bed sleeping.
Most people who suffer from any of the above think “it’s not that serious and it will eventually go away by itself”. The problem with that statement is it’s simply not true. Let’s take a quick look at the image below to understand why:
As you lift your arm, the tendons and bursa between your shoulder and arm get compressed. Now imagine repeating this dozens (or hundreds, depending on your job) of times a day. As you probably expect, it just causes more irritation to the area and further damages it. Keep it up and you can start to expect tears and a really weakened arm. At that point, you’ll be looking at steroid injections or even surgery depending on how torn it is – you definitely want to avoid this!
So you can see how sitting back and “letting it heal itself” may not be the best option. Instead, work on loosening the muscles around the shoulder and strengthening the rotator cuff muscles, which you can also do with our Curve Sidekick Tool. As they say, prevention is the best cure!
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