Frozen Shoulder – Symptoms, Causes & 3 Nifty Exercises To Easily Treat It

Are you feeling intense pain and loss of motion in your shoulder? Do you think that you might have a frozen shoulder? In this video today I’ll be telling you about the symptoms and causes of frozen shoulder so that you can get more certainty on your shoulder problem. And if you find that you do likely have frozen shoulder then you’ll want to watch this video to the end and save this video so that you can catch it three nifty exercises to fix frozen shoulder.

My name is Dr. David Middaugh. And I’m a specialist physical therapist at El Paso manual physical therapy. And this channel is dedicated to helping people stay healthy, active and mobile. while avoiding and unnecessary surgery injections and pain medications. Please subscribe to our channel so that you don’t miss out on any of the helpful tips that we upload every single week.

So let me tell you the most common symptoms of frozen shoulder number one is pain, generalized pain all over the shoulder. But it hurts with end range movements, and it especially hurts at night. If you lie on that side, any sort of compression to this area tends to be quite painful.

People often have difficulty finding a comfortable position to sleep in at night. And because when you’re asleep you toss and turn and rollover without meaning to or knowing that you’re doing it.

It often wakes people up in the middle of the night if they end up in an uncomfortable position, the loss of motion tends to occur in every single direction. So being able to reach up out to the side forward, being able to reach across your chest and especially behind the back is difficult.

People commonly tell us that they have trouble finishing their belt to the belt loops or reaching back behind for a bra strap or scratching an itch. reaching over this way is also limited, every direction gradually becomes limited.

This is different from other shoulder conditions like rotator cuff tears tend to only be limited in reaching up overhead and behind the back. But reaching across the body and in some other directions tend to not be as much of a problem.

So just in case you’re wondering, do I have more of a rotator cuff problem or is this really frozen shoulder. And by the way, if you’re looking to fix a rotator cuff problem, then I’ve got a video for you that’s linked down in the description below. Go check that out. If you think that you might have a rotator cuff issue. And the last most common symptoms is being ages 40. And up.

This does tend to affect women more than men, although men do get it. And then they have a history of diabetes, thyroid problems and cardiovascular disease. Next is talk about the causes of frozen shoulder. Now there’s two types of frozen shoulder there’s primary and secondary primary means that we don’t know why frozen shoulder happened, it just sprung up suddenly, there isn’t anything we can tie it to.

And it just started to freeze up and feel painful secondaries when we can tie it to some injury or some trauma to the shoulder. It could be something trivial like you, you put a little too much weight on your shoulder than you intended to at a certain point I’ve had patients that the classic story that I think of that I personally saw in a patient is I had a guy who was fixing his pipes under his sink and was squatting down to get them to the sink.

And he in doing the job he lost his balance and fall backwards and reached with an arm backwards and fell a little harder than he probably should have onto his shoulder didn’t feel intense pain just feel like he shifted something but kept working didn’t have any issues. And over the next several weeks, his shoulder started to stiffen up and become very painful.

I’ve had I’ve seen people that have had frozen shoulder develop after a surgery, that’s another common time to get it as well. What you need to know about frozen shoulder though is that there are three phases and these phases can last quite a bit. On the shorter end, the whole process will take months you’re looking at like six months is average. And then the longer end it can go over a year.

So you got to set your expectations correctly. If you truly have frozen shoulder, you got to be in this for possibly over a year. Now the exercises that I’ll show you towards the end of this video here should help to limit how much it freezes and allow you to thaw a bit quicker than if you just did nothing. But you still have to be patient.

So many people get impatient, and they end up pulling the trigger and having some surgery for this and it could potentially make you worse. The first of the three phases is the freezing phase. When you’re going through this is the very beginning you start to feel a lot of pain in the shoulder. The tendons and ligaments right here are stiffening up and restricting the motion in the shoulder joints.

There’s a lot of notable things that happen like you can’t reach as far as you could just reaching up to wash your hair in the shower or fix your hair starts to become painful. reaching out for anything especially that has a little bit of weight to it. Like the common thing we hear is lady’s grabbing a heavier purse.

That really hurts your shoulder, whereas he didn’t have any trouble doing it before reaching for car doors or doors and buildings, that starts to become painful as well. And of course, lying on that side at night and just trying to get comfortable to sleep in, that becomes painful.

That’s the freezing stage, it’s it starts to stiffen up quite a bit and becomes quite painful, you know that you’re out of the freezing stage, when you hit the frozen stage, the frozen stages where you still might be getting stiffer, you might in fact feel quite a bit more stiffness and loss of motion.

But it starts to hurt less, it actually feels Okay, you at this point, people typically kind of get used to dealing with the loss of motion, they’re frustrated, of course, but they’re not as unhappy because they’re not in as much pain anymore.

They just don’t use their arm, they don’t typically look weird or different. They just user, the good arm, and their other arm just stays at their side. And they just don’t use it a whole lot, then when everybody’s waiting for when they’re dealing with frozen shoulder is when they get to the thawing stage, when the shoulder starts to finally free up to typically there’s even less pain, and you gradually get some motion back.

Now it’s important in this stage to make sure you’re doing these exercises I’m going to talk to you should be doing them throughout really as best as you can. But it’s especially important to do in the thigh stages, because you need to gain that motion as fast as your body will allow you to so that you can get full range of motion because one of the problems we see with people that get frozen shoulder is they don’t get 100% all their motion back.

Because of some of the side effects afterwards, they just get real stiff and the joint, they lose a lot of strength for sure. And they they’re never the same. They pick up their arms like this. And they’re kind of content at 80 90% of their motion. Because they lost so much before they’re happy to just have some back especially they’d have to have surgery.

But you should be able to get full range of motion. As long as you’re practicing these three nifty exercises that I’ll show you next, let’s go over to these exercises. Alright, I’m getting ready to do my exercises here.

The first one is going to be a shoulder rotation exercise, you’re going to need to lie down like I am here and get yourself a pillow it doesn’t matter the size or shape, I’d say on the on the thicker side is going to be better for you. You’ll see what I mean, you want to scoot over and give yourself some space for your arm, you can get the pillow under your elbow, and you’re going to position your arm as close to 90 degrees as possible. So 90 degrees right here.

If you’ve got frozen shoulder, you’re probably not going to get to 90 degrees. So it’s going to be more likely that you’re about right here before you feel like it stiffens up and potentially hurts that quick side note here, you don’t want to do anything that hurts your shoulder, you don’t want to force into pain, do not stretch it so much that it hurts This is not the the harder you stretch, the better it is situation.

You can tear your ligaments and tear your tendons doing this. In fact, the third, the first thing that a surgeon will do for you, if you end up talking to a surgeon is you’re going to want to do something called a manipulation under anesthesia, they’ll put you under anesthesia.

And then the surgeon is going to crank your arm in every single direction that you’re limited in and essentially tear your ligaments and your rotator cuff tendons in order to get the motion but it’s causing you an injury, if you can free up the motion on your own doing these types of exercises and limit how much it freezes up.

 And you can avoid that manipulation under anesthesia and get to the thawing stage so that you can get your full range of motion back 100% without ever having to set foot in the surgeon’s office. And of course, the manipulation under anesthesia doesn’t work which personally I’ve not seen work very many times that go to surgery, which just leaves you in a bad position later on.

If you end up having side effects from it, you can recover from frozen shoulder you just got to do the right things, which is starts with this right here. All right, so box over so get your arm on a pill like this and then you’re just going to go through rotation, chances are you can’t rotate very much like this for as a normal person can go all the way back like this, and go all the way in this direction.

Just put points your hand up towards the ceiling, and you just going to move it back and forth within your comfortable range of motion. That doesn’t hurt or stretch you. And that’s all you’re going to do this for two to three minutes, set yourself a timer, count the reps, and you may just move back and forth right here in this range of motion.

And what you’re trying to do is test your range of motion without pain. So as you approach the thawing stage, you should feel like you can get a little bit more a little bit more, maybe even seeing some people get a little bit more emotion while they’re in the frozen stage.

So you can kind of push yourself out of the frozen stage into the Tawing stage by being real consistent with this exercise. Now the frequency of this I would be doing this every hour, if I have frozen shoulder, the more, the better, as long as you’re not hurting your shoulder making it worse, like hurting it where it’s feeling more painful, you’re going to stiffen up, that’s a given.

But as long as it’s not hurting you to do this, the more you do it, then do this as frequently as possible. Generally, you want to take a break every two or three minutes for as long as you need another a few minutes. But you generally can’t overdo this exercise, this specific one, the other two that I’m going to show you next, you can overdo a lot easier.

But this one’s just a easy one to do, you can lie down, get comfortable, you can watch a little bit of TV or do something else while you’re doing this exercise as long as you’re lying down. And you should be able to get plenty of this in and gradually improve that range of motion.

The next exercise is a flexion and extension exercise, you’re going to reach up and reach down and back, you’re going to use a bed, you got to have a bed or a couch to where you can get your arm to go past the surface that you’re on. So that’s why you got to be on the edge like this. And you’re going to assist with your other hand whenever you need it.

The idea is you’re going to reach up as much as you can before it starts to hurt at the edge of the stiffness, and then you’re going to go back in this direction. So notice I’m not stretching, I’m not forcing it up or forcing it down in this direction, I’m using my muscles to take me through the motion, it’s very important because you’re going to maintain strength, in addition to the available range of motion.

If you force a stretch, that’s when you start to get into tendon and ligament injury. So you need to make sure that you use your muscles and not force a stretch to happen. So the another two or three minutes, you’re going to go up in this direction as comfortably as you can, once you stop, then don’t hang out there too long. And don’t push it. And you’re just going to go in this direction, and go as far as you can.

Now if you’re very frozen, you might just go to here. And to even with your body, most people can get there and just do that just move in the angles. And the directions that you can, if you find that you have a little more motion coming across your body than going up and over, work with it Do what you can here just trying to maintain your muscle activity in these directions.

Now, what you can add to this is kind of a beat, you know that was part eight years apart, B did this exercise is resistance. So if you’re reaching up just with your other hand, push it in this direction, just to challenge your muscles.

Now this shouldn’t hurt, you’re not stretching it. So this is a good thing for you just add some resistance as you come up. And then on this side as you come down on the set as you come up, and you’ll tire out pretty quickly. So you won’t even need to do a bunch of that. But this exercise is great if you can do it hourly. That’s awesome.

What I would recommend at the minimum is three times a day like around meals if you have three meals, breakfast lunch dinner, during right before right after your meals, so that you have some consistency with this exercise. And these need to be done every day. And for the third exercise, I highly recommend that you purchase this tool. It’s not expensive, it should run you roughly $10 give or take a few bucks. And it is a shoulder pulley.

So it looks just like this. There’s a bunch of different models of it. These are the ones that we have here in the clinic. Currently, we have some that have some metal bars sometimes and I’ll show you how to use this exactly, you have put this over your door and it’s got this rope it’s made out of nylon, with these handles right here.

And this is magic, if you talk about a simple fix for your frozen shoulder and avoiding going to go get injections manipulation, enter under anesthesia, all the stuff that you have to go do at the doctor’s office, this is a drop in the bucket 10 bucks, maybe 20 at most, and saves you a heck of a lot of pain later on. I put a link in the description below for Amazon to get yourself one of these. It’s an affiliate link.

So it hopefully you’ll make us a couple cents if we if you purchase one of these. But I don’t care about that, get your shoulder fix and get yourself one of these things right now. If you have Amazon, it’ll be shipped to you fairly quickly if you have prime. And you can start doing this exercise I’m going to show you next there’s other a bunch of other different options that you can do. These typically come with a little booklet of exercises and stretches.

Those are all going to be great for your rotator cuff problem. As long as you’re not stretching into pain or feeling like you’re tearing things you don’t want to push it real hard. So let’s go over the door and get this set up. Right so I’m here at my door and you’re just going to open your door.

Find the hard part right here and put it over the door so that it’s hanging over on the other side. Just hold it in position. I move it to about the middle of the door and shut your door all the way so that it doesn’t fly open on you.

You want to make sure you’re using a door that somebody’s not going to walk in on or just lock the door so that this doesn’t fall on top of your head, they sell some with metal hooks as well to just sit on there a lot easier. I prefer the metal hooks is just what we have right now. But this tends to work, okay, as well.

So then just pull up a chair to the front of your door, wherever you have this. And I reach so easily if you have frozen shoulders, and I’m able to do that you didn’t have to turn around, grab the handles here, untangle them, and they get to put the handles in your hands just like so it doesn’t matter how you hold it. Let’s pretend I have frozen shoulder on my right side.

What I’m going to work to do here for this exercise is I’m trying to reach up and shrug my shoulder blade simultaneously. This shrug is key here, you can’t just reach up and stretch it, you got to struggle with it. And the reason for the pulley here is so that you can use your good side to assist in getting higher without pain.

Or without stretching here, you might feel just the edge of a stretch, that’s okay. But you don’t want to push into an intense stretch because you’re going to potentially rupture your ligaments and tendons or tear your ligaments and tendons, which can slow down your process through this through this frozen shoulder.

So let’s say I can only reach up to right here. And I can go down as much as I want usually on on this side. When you come up, as your hand approaches your face right here, you need to start to shrug that shoulder as high as you can go. And you’ll find that you can get a little more emotion out of it immediately.

Just because you’re shrugging your shoulder up, if you don’t shrug your shoulder up, he typically will only go to about right here. But that’s trouble add a bit more emotion. And you’re just going to practice shrugging that side as you come up.

Do this for two to three minutes, you’re going to get tired, and a lot of people ask him to the other side to pick Yeah, do you know this side, shrug the other side as well. And just go back and forth and shrug on your good side go up as high as you can, on your frozen shoulders side, just shrug as much as you can up to where you feel a bit of a stretch.

And up and down. Now the question I get is can I hold there? Absolutely. As long as you’re not stretching, you just feel like the muscles working you’re shrugging muscle, maybe some shoulder muscles are working.

That’s cool, you can just hang out there and stretch. And the tendency I’m already kind of doing it is to tilt your head. When you shrug your shoulder your head wants to kind of go this way, maintain straight as best he can do, what I like to do is a little bit of a double chin.

Everybody knows how to make a double chin just make a baby double chin and try to look straight ahead so that you avoid that head tilt that wants to come on. As you struggle shoulder.

The head tilts important because if you are tilting your head every single time you shrug your shoulder, you’re actually training your neck and appropriately is going to affect your shoulder later on. So you know a one off head tilts here and there if you accidentally do it sometimes, that’s okay, but work to keep your head straight as you’re doing this shrug on this shoulder pulley exercise.

So in total, all these exercises shouldn’t take you more than about 10 minutes. If you do them all together, the one that you absolutely need to be doing consistently is that rotation exercise, that’s one that I would look to do every hour, this one and the shoulder flexion and extension exercise more like three times a day.

Although if you have the ability, and you feel comfortable doing it more often do so you can do it every hour as well. You basically need to move as much as you possibly can, while you’re experiencing frozen shoulders so that you can limit how frozen it gets how much stiffness you end up getting.

And get to the thawing stage as fast as possible. And then recover all your range of motion which this exercise helps you to get all the way up, you can pull it with the other hand and get to the full range of motion.

As you gain your full range of motion you should be getting you should be becoming more active in your daily life, doing more things and using the arm for more normal activities that you were doing before. do so as long as it’s not hurting you. And you don’t want to go you know, pick up weights or pick up something heavy pick up that heavy purse or take on some yard job that involves your shoulder too much.

You need to make sure that you don’t aggravate the shoulder so only use it within the comfortable ranges of motion that aren’t going to hurt you more in the long run. If you’re looking for more tips, go check out our playlist on neck and shoulder problems and give us a like and subscribe to our channel so you don’t miss out on anything that we upload that helps you stay healthy active and mobile and avoid surgery injections and medications. Catch you next time guys.