I had some good feedback regarding my article about what to do if your shoulder hurts doing pull ups. I hadn’t realised that there were quite so many people who were experiencing that problem. So I’ve put together a two-part article with a bit more detail about the exact protocol I carry out in order to get rid of my shoulder pain.
What was causing the shoulder pain?
When I last had shoulder pain, it was caused by two things:
- Poor soft tissue quality
- Lack of thoracic spine mobility
Let’s take each of those issues and address them in turn. I looked at soft tissue quality yesterday so I’m looking at thoracic mobility today.
Thoracic what?
Mobility. The amount of movement that you have in the thoracic (upper back) area of your spine. Anatomists divide the spine into four parts, which are, going from top to bottom:
- Cervical (neck)
- Thoracic (upper back)
- Lumbar (lower back)
- Sacral (pelvic)
In short, you need a certain amount of mobility in each part of the spine. For some parts (such as the sacral) this is very little for other parts (such as the thoracic) it’s quite a lot.
Unfortunately, because we spend a lot of time hunched over our keyboards typing away, most of us have quite poor thoracic mobility.
That tends to mean we overcompensate with forward head posture and excessive lumber spine mobility but both of those are beyond the scope of this article.
Why is thoracic mobility important for avoiding shoulder pain?
If you are hunched over, this can reduce the amount of room your arm bone has to move in the shoulder joint. This can cause your shoulder to impinge, which is a bad thing. It may also be the cause of your shoulder pain!
An impingement of the shoulder is basically where one of the structures (tendons or part of a muscle) gets trapped between the humerus (your arm bone) and the acromion of the scapula (the pointy bit that comes off the shoulder-blade). If you want more detail than this, try looking into Eric Cressey’s shoulder savers series.
How can I improve my thoracic mobility?
I’m glad you asked. The two techniques I use for improving my thoracic mobility are:
- Extensions off a foam roller
- Extensions off two tennis balls taped together
Extensions off a foam roller
Basically, you do a crunch-type movement over a foam roller, moving up and down the various vertebrae of the thoracic part of the spine. Don’t move into the cervical or lumbar areas as you don’t want extra mobility there!
The movement looks like this:
Extensions off two tennis balls taped together
Basically, you do a crunch-type movement over a couple of tennis balls taped together, moving up and down the various vertebrae of the thoracic part of the spine. Don’t move into the cervical or lumbar areas as you don’t want extra mobility there!
The movement looks like this:
Well, that’s what I have found useful in removing shoulder pain when it has troubled me in the past. I often come back to these techniques when I feel that I might be pushing my luck in the gym or if I start to feel tight.
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