Your shoulders are incredibly flexible joints that allow your arms to move through a large range of motion. 

They are used in almost every activity and they take a lot of punishment on a daily basis. As a result, they are prone to a wide range of injuries. It's important to take good care of your shoulders because even small problems can quickly become debilitating if not taken care of immediately. 

The shoulder is prone to a variety of problems that can give you pain and limit your range of motion. Many of these are simply caused by wear and tear. 

For example, a common injury is tendinitis of one of the rotator cuff muscles called the supraspinatus. Through poor posture or overuse, the tendon becomes inflamed and painful. When the bursa becomes inflamed you develop what is known as bursitis. This can be extremely painful. 

Trigger points, small knots in the muscles, are very common around the shoulder and can refer pain and tenderness into the muscles or joints. The referred pain can mimic other shoulder problems like tendinitis and frozen shoulder. 

Headaches beat out backaches as the number-one cause of time lost from work. Approximately three out of every four people will have at least one headache within the year.

According to Dr Janet Travell and Dr David Simons, specialists in musculoskeletal pain, “It is now becoming clear that tension headache is usually due to trigger points.”

What are trigger points?

Trigger points are small knots that develop in muscles. These knots or mini-spasms cause pain to travel to different areas of the body. For example, trigger points at the top of your neck can send pain directly into your eye. 

The name "trigger point" refers to the notion that these knots can sit in your muscles for ages without causing pain until something “triggers” them to become active. Common triggers include fatigue, stress, poor posture, repetitive movements at work and cold drafts. 

Massage therapy is a proven way of treating trigger points for long-term headache relief. In one study, researchers found that chronic headache sufferers had dramatic relief after ten massages that focused on treatment of trigger points. 

Although you may get some relief with general relaxation massage, long-term relief depends on correctly identifying and treating specific trigger points which are responsible for your pain. Single muscle trigger points can often be eliminated quickly and easily, sometimes within one or two treatments. 
In more complicated cases however, it may take significant time and your active participation to get lasting results.

     As far as joints are concerned, the shoulder is truly remarkable. It moves in absolutely every direction. The only other joint that is even somewhat close in terms of the different types of movement is the hip. But even there, the mobility is much more limited. 

     You need a lot of movement in the shoulder to perform everyday activities. The ligaments that hold the upper arm bone, the humerus, in the socket are quite loose to allow for this wide range of motion. Because they are lax, they don’t do much to hold the shoulder together. 

     What really holds the shoulder together and stabilizes the joint are muscles that are referred to as the rotator cuff. There are four small muscles that run from the shoulder blade to the humerus. These muscles completely surround the humerus like a sleeve or cuff. They are very dynamic, contracting to stabilize the shoulder when needed or relaxing to allow you to move the arm freely. The movement of our shoulder is so free and easy that we often take it for granted.

Chair Massage: The Ultimate Employee Perk!

If your workplace offers it, consider your company progressive in terms of employee health. If you've never experienced it, well...in the US alone, more than $300 billion is spent yearly due to absenteeism, turnover, reduced productivity and more. It's easy to see why incorporating a regular regimen of on-site chair massage into your employee wellness program makes sense.  

Corrective Exercise Strategies for Neck Pain Prevention

Following NASM’s Corrective Exercise Continuum programming strategy can help address potential muscle imbalances that may be contributing to movement compensations which lead to a forward head posture and neck pain. 

First, inhibit the muscles that may be tight/overactive via self-myofascial release. Typically, this technique would be performed with a foam roller, but due to the regions being addressed, hand-held devices (such as a Theracane) may work best. 

Key regions that should be addressed using such a tool would be the upper trapezius (Figure 3) and levetor scapulae (Figures 4). If one also possesses rounded shoulders, foam rolling the thoracic spine (Figure 5) will also be important to help improve thoracic spine range of motion and decrease stress to the cervical spine.