This guide offers an approach to rehabilitating shoulder pain and/or stiffness, with helpful tips and exercises to get you moving again.

Shoulder pain can be really painful and frustrating. It can occur for lots of different reasons. As Chartered Physios we have come across a few key things that we have found to be useful when dealing with shoulder pain and stiffness through our combined 40 years experience in the Health & Fitness industry. 

Adjust or avoid aggravating factors | in the absence of trauma, pain in the shoulder region often relates to a number of contributing factors. Modifying aggravating factors can be a good way to reduce symptoms. This is known as deloading. You may not need to stop the activity all together. As your symptoms improve you can gradually and progressively reintroduce the activity.

Desensitise | decrease tissue sensitivity with myofascial rolling and neural mobilisation at the neck, shoulder and upper back. Try rolling/massaging the neck, thoracic and shoulder muscles as a starting point.

Build Strength & Tissue Capacity with Loaded Movement | use shoulder focussed exercises to build tissue strength and capacity locally. It is also usually really valuable to work the entire body as many of the benefits of exercise are not specific to one body part. 

It's important to seek help from an appropriately qualified health professional, such as a Physiotherapist, who can help you with  a diagnosis and finding the right solutions for you. Check out this short video to see an example of what rehab for shoulder pain might look like.

*These are suggestions only and do not constitute medical advice. We always endorse seeing an appropriately qualified health professional.