Shoulder Pain And How Massage Helps | Jenna Baker LMT

As central hubs for the upper body, the shoulders bear a lot of strain and can undergo pain for a variety of reasons. Everything from basic repetition to specific injuries affecting the shoulder can cause problems. 

At the offices of Jenna Baker LMT, we can help whether your shoulder pain is due to long-term buildup or a specific injury. Let’s go over a couple of the most common reasons behind shoulder pain developing, what you can do about them, and how massage therapy can help get to the root of the problem while decreasing your symptoms. 

Shoulders and Posture

Likely the single most common source of shoulder pain across the globe is one we have some control over: Our posture. There are numerous different posture-related issues that may affect the shoulders, the most frequent of which generally include sitting at a desk all day long with terrible bodily support. 

The most common posture issue to be aware of is slumping of the shoulders, which tightens and shortens the Pectoralis major and minor muscles in your chest. This, in turn, tightens your upper shoulders and neck, causing the muscles around your shoulder blades to overstretch and weaken. So even when you look to stand up straight, the muscles are too weak to do so. 

In addition, the ligament and capsule of the shoulder are lax when you slump for long periods. This means the joint is not as stable as it should be, and the shoulder is at far greater risk for injury during sports or any heavy activity. 

Shoulder Injuries

As we noted above, posture can play a big role in your risk of shoulder injury. However, not all injuries to the shoulder take place for this reason. It’s always possible for athletes and other highly active people to sustain shoulder injuries even if they practice great posture, often just due to poor luck. However, reducing your chances of this happening due to poor shoulder support and maintenance is something you have control over, and you should pay particular attention to it if you’re highly active in upper body areas. 

How Massage Helps

Massage therapy is aimed at not only decreasing your pain, but getting to the root causes of it and eliminating these for good. In cases of a specific injury not due to posture, this just means assessing the injured area and helping the healing process.

For others, however, massage helps not only with pain relief, but with altering posture itself. We’ll first massage your muscles to relieve tension and knots, helping decrease your pain. From here, though, we’ll move to specific muscles in the chest, neck and even the biceps – we will release tension and re-lengthen these muscles so they interact properly with the shoulder joint and blade during standard movements. Over time, this will allow the joint to function normally and heal tissue, removing your pain.

For more on how massage therapy can help with shoulder pain, or to learn about any of our massage services, speak to the staff at Jenna Baker LMT today.