I was prescribed physical therapy but decided to do it myself, like some of the others who have responded. Slowly but slowly I forced my arm further and further up until eventually I could raise it above my head like before. It didn’t take too long, and I figured that as long as I did it slowly and paid attention to my pain level, I would be okay, and I was. I think that’s the way to go. Just force it little by little!
I had a minor (compared to some examples given here) issue for over a year. At the time I didn’t know what it was, only that it would wake me up at night and I couldn’t sleep in my favorite position. It also limited certain yoga poses. What scared the daylights out of me is the evening it released. It started with a pain in the shoulder the over the course of several hours expanded into throbbing down the whole arm. At one point during the night I almost asked H to take me to the ER. I iced the area and it calmed down a bit…by morning the pain was gone. It wasn’t until later in the day that I realized I had full mobility once again. Very very strange.
It took several months of foam rollers, tennis ball trigger point massage and stretching to get the other muscles (mainly the biceps) to fully regain their strength and mobility since they had been held in a limited range while the shoulder was stuck.
A good PT (one that will work hard to stretch it out plus giving you exercises - not one that just sits there and tells you what to do) can make a huge difference. It’s finding a really good one that times a bit of time and research (ask around for one close to you).
My shoulder is killing me. I’ve gone through it once before but didn’t fully resolve. I’m doing yoga now and the most painful part is raising my darn arm! I can’t decide what helps more, ice or heat. Any thoughts on that? I’m popping ibuprofen, stretching and contemplating going back to my sil the chiropractor. I signed up for a monthly massage, I’m thinking next visit I’ll have them only work on my shoulders.
My PT uses both ice and heat. She uses heat before the stretching to loosen things up a bit and the ice afterwards to reduce inflammation.
Raising to the side or in front or up high? Each one involves different stuff. Two very basic exercises that help build strength in the joint while freeing up the impacted areas are: basic floor presses and overhead presses. See what you can do. Here’s the best way to do a floor press: lie on your back, raise a weight in each hand straight up over your body, lower one, raise it, lower the other, raise it. This isolates the movement for front movement. Overhead press is even simpler: pick up a weight, touch one end to the front of your shoulder, raise it as high as you can without arching your back, moving around, etc. Just lift the one arm while the other hangs down. Lower it. Do some and then switch. A 3rd exercise helps with raising strength toward the front: sit on an incline bench or chain, do the same as the floor press except now you’re at an angle so you’re using different muscles and no body motion. Start with very light weight and build up. These simple things build up the joint while freeing it. You can also do some of these things with a cable stack if there’s one around but I think free weights are better for you because the slight movements in your arm move your shoulder just enough to work it looser.
Another simple way to help an arm that can’t raise is with a tension band. Be careful with the really thin ones because they can snap. You want a thin one that feels more like a cord than a strip of rubber. Just stretch it out. A typical start to this is to loop it around something sturdy and push or pull against that. You can also use your other arm - which I think is best - or another body part. Work it around, meaning don’t try to make it move back and forth in the exact same movement like a robot. People aren’t robots and our joints require flexibility so work it around as much as you can and you’ll see rapid improvement, especially if you can stand a bit of pain from the work.
Sorry if I"m repeating anything, I didn’t read throught all the posts.
I was having Frozen shoulder symptoms and finally went to the doctor about 8 months ago. Weakness, couldn’t lift things, when I put my arm behind my back I couldn’t raise it past my waist. I’ve had a bone spur by my neck for years that had been bothering me and basically stopped doing all weight exercises in my arms the last 8 years or so…I used to have such toned arms.
Anyway, Doc told me that I didn’t have frozen shoulder yet, but I would if I didn’t start exercising. Gave me exercises to do and wanted me to see the PT. Well…I’ve been to PT before, and I didn’t want to spend the money. So I decided to do the exercises first. They helped, and of course I used NSAIDS at first for inflammation. I started jazzercise. I’ve been at it almost 6 months, I only did the arm ones gently and not always, but …I can hardly believe the range of motion I have again. I didn’t start it for that…but it’s amazing what constant movement does. If you don’t want to do a class like yoga or jazzercise, then you need to continue with your arm exercises.
ACUPUNCTURE…I went to my acuputurist to help me with my inflammation. To me, it’s just a miracle. She also unlocked my 80 year old aunts arm. After I went about 3 times for the inflammation, she told me that lots of reps Aren’t good, they just inflame more. Better to do the stretching a few times a day, less reps. You can even sit at your desk, put your hands together behind you and just pull a few times for 10 seconds.
good luck!
There are some good exercises in this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJ-hm8bzOsk I liked the pendulum ones.
Monday report: I tried to do many of the exercises mentioned here plus the ones on the handout from the orthopedic surgeon. Mucho pain. Very little ability to stretch at all (y’all know what I mean - trying to stretch arm above head when I can barely move my elbow away from my body). Then I remembered a stretching book I bought years ago that was excellent. The philosophy of the book is to stretch, resist, stretch, resist, etc. In other words, you do a gentle stretch of a particular muscle, say your hamstring, while sitting on the floor with feet out in front, then you contract the hamstring muscle gently, for example by pushing your heels against the floor with slightly bent knees, like trying to bend your leg at the knee using your hamstring muscle. So you stretch your hamstring, then contract your hamstring with slight resistance, then stretch, then constrict. Hope that makes sense. Anyway, that method got me really flexible years ago when I needed it for a new sport I had taken up. The theory is that lots of inflexibility is caused by muscle memory, so you distract your muscle/brain momentarily and when you go back to the stretch, voila!
So I tried it with my left arm, and it didn’t work just like that, but what did work, amazingly, was when I tried stretching but at the SAME time slightly resisting. It worked like a charm! With my right hand I gently pushed my left arm up. Nothing. Then I started resisting with my left arm, very gently, and very slowly and with very little pain I was able to get my arm parallel to the floor. Later, I got it about 45 degrees from vertical. I needed advil to sleep, but by morning I think the pain was less than it has been. I’m trying this with all the exercises and find it hurts less during the stretch and I am able to stretch further than when I am not “resisting” the stretch.
Anyone else out there with a current frozen shoulder, let me know if you try it!
@Barfly - I have had frozen shoulder twice. Once in each shoulder. Both times the doctor prescribed PT. I can’t imagine trying to get rid of it on your own. Even with PT it took about a year for my full range to come back the first time. This last time while I am done with PT it’s still not 100% after 9 months. When they do PT they do stretch and resist exercises. So you are on the right path. Still I would try and get to a PT they can really help. This last time they did do some sort of acupuncture to try and unlock the muscles. While it helped some I probably wouldn’t do that again.
@barfly. Another one you can use a towel. That was my favorite and i think did the most. Hold a towel behind your back, your good arm above your head and the bad arm behind your back at the waist. With your good arm, pull the towel straight up as it lifts your bad arm, until it just begins to hurt. Hold it like that for 10 seconds, 5 reps.
As you do it each day, and your tendons loosen up, you can pull up further and further with no pain.
One of the exercises I did in PT was to stand in a doorway with my “bad” arm bent at a 90 degree angle, hand pointed upward, elbow and hand against the doorjamb. Then I rotate my shoulders/upper body away from the bad arm (i.e. rotate to the right if your left arm is in the doorjamb). Stop when it begins to hurt and hold for 30 seconds. Repeat twice more. A different version of this exercise is to stand in the doorjamb with your bad arm extended at shoulder height with your hand held flat, parallel to the floor. Rest the thumb on the hand of the bad arm against the doorjamb and then rotate your shoulders away, same as in the first exercise. Hold for 30 seconds when it starts to hurt (and it WILL hurt!). If you do 3 reps of these two exercises a couple of times a week, it should help.
Another thing that helped me was trigger point massage, an idea I got from this 2010 CC thread on frozen shoulder - http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/967842-this-book-cured-my-frozen-shoulder.html. I used a TheraCane and found that it gave me some relief when the pain was really bad. But PT is really what did the trick.
My husband did PT about 1-2 times a week plus vigorous home PT exercises no matter how painful. It has been abut 6 months but I can see that his range of motion is starting to improve and the pain level has greatly decreased. This is a very painful condition. Good luck to you.
I just downloaded a neck and shoulder yoga dvd from amazon prime. Yoga has helped me with my hips, I hope this can work too. I plan on doing it every day with my back and hip one. I hope to be as limber as gumby a month from now.
@eyemamom, Gumby! Ha!
Haven’t read through all the replies, but here’s my somewhat-related experienced:
A few years (maybe 5?), I injured my shoulder. I was using a weight machine and released the foot release before the overhead lifty-thing was completely back. The weights made me over-extend my right arm back behind my head. I had some pain in my upper arm and I was unable to lift my dominant arm higher than shoulder level. Raising my arm did not increase or cause pain, but my arm just wouldn’t go any higher than shoulder height. Saw an orthopedic surgeon who examined me and took x-rays. The diagnosis was shoulder impingement. He saw a little protrusion on the x-ray (I’ve forgotten the term he used) and thought I might need surgery. I was told to take ibuprofen for 6 weeks and return if it wasn’t better/healed. The ibuprofen had no noticeable effect, but I happened to mention it to a female colleague. She steered me toward a book by Clair Davies on trigger point therapy.
According to the book, this is very common in middle-aged women. Some female doc in the 40’s did a lot of research into trigger points and referred pain. I ended up seeing a massage therapist who was familiar with trigger point therapy. It took a while – 6 months maybe?? – and I regained complete range of motion (to the best of my ability to tell.) I was very happy to avoid surgery.
A big THANK YOU to everyone for posting such detail. I had just started feeling a shoulder pain on Saturday, and had been babying it ever since. And the pain and stiffness was getting worse by the hour. After reading these posts, I made myself start moving the muscles and even though it was not pleasant, I feel that 12 hours later I am turning the direction of this shoulder/arm issue around.
My husband doesn’t understand how much non-college info I glean from this site!
Barfly, I can give you lots of encouragement. I had a frozen shoulder almost four years ago. I too saw an orthopedic surgeon and he prescribed physical therapy, pain killers (Vicodin), one steroid shot, and a course of an anti inflammatory. I went to therapy for a few months, two or three times a week to do a progression of exercises, have heat and ultrasound, and have manipulation of the shoulder joint. I had a bad case, couldn’t sleep, or even walk in the beginning. I feel like all of the above prescribed treatments were lifesavers. It took a few months, but the shoulder eventually loosened and became much less painful. In therapy and while doing the exercises I often got big “cracks” in the shoulder which were attributed to breaking adhesions. Whatever they were, it made the shoulder feel better. If you’re able, I’d give it a try for a few weeks to see if it helps. I have no pain anymore, and complete movement of the shoulder–there’s only a bit of grinding, but it doesn’t bother me. Good luck!!!
My exercises at the PT always started with a warmup on an arm bike. I then used a 2 lb weight to do circles when the arm was hanging down. Then there was a combination of using a finger ladder to make my hand climb, moving small cones up and down shelves, pulling the bad arm up behind my back with a towel (ouch, very painful), raising a light dumbbell up 90 degrees in front of me, a kind of wall pushing and turning, and so many more. The therapists corrected positions and stretched the shoulder. It was so helpful. They always ended with heat and electrical stimulation of the joint.
Hugs to all of you! This thread just makes me cringe at the thought of this type of pain. And I just can’t stop following it.