One of the many things I look at during my movement assessment process is overhead arm elevation. The information you gather on the person’s ability to perform such a basic task is often invaluable when designing someone’s performance therapy or training program.
Can we correct scapular winging in a matter of minutes? This obviously depends on the cause of the scapular winging. But in this post, Michael Infantino shows some impressive videos of a patient with scapular winging before and after dry needling the serratus anterior.
Shoulder instability is a common pathology encountered in the orthopedic and sports medicine setting.
But “shoulder instability” itself isn’t that simple to understand.
Would you treat a high school baseball player that feels like their shoulder is loose when throwing the same as a 35 year old that fell on ice onto an outstretched arm and dislocated their shoulder? They’re both “shoulder instability,” right?
There exists a wide range of symptomatic shoulder instabilities from subtle recurrent subluxations to traumatic dislocations. Nonoperative rehabilitation is commonly utilized for shoulder instability to regain previous functional activities through specific strengthening exercises, dynamic stabilization drills, neuromuscular training, proprioception drills, scapular muscle strengthening program and a gradual return to their desired activities.
I’ve had great success rehabilitating dislocated shoulders and helping people return back to full activities without surgery. But to truly understand shoulder instability, there are several key factors that you must consider.
Shoulder impingement really is a pretty broad term that most of us likely take for granted. It has become such a junk term, such as “patellofemoral pain,” especially with physicians. It seems as if any pain originated from around the shoulder could be labeled as “shoulder impingement” for some reason, as if that diagnosis is helpful to determine the treatment process.
Unfortunately, There is no magical “shoulder impingement protocol” that you can pull out of your notebook and apply to a specific person.
I wish it were the simple.
A thorough examination is still needed. Each person will likely present differently, which will require a variations on how you approach their rehabilitation.
But the real challenge when working with someone with shoulder impingement isn’t figuring out they have shoulder pain, that’s fairly obviously. It’s figuring out why they have shoulder pain.
Stabilizing the scapula during range of motion is often recommended to focus your mobility more on the shoulder than the scapula. As with everything else, as simple as this seems, there is right way, a wrong way, and a better way to stabilize the scapula during shoulder elevation.
In this video, I demonstrate the correct way to stabilize the scapula, and show some common errors that I often see.
This month’s Inner Circle webinar is a live demonstration of How to Assess the Scapula. In this recording of a live student inservice from Champion, I overview everything you should (and shouldn’t) be looking for when assessing the position and movement of the scapula.
Here’s a quick and simple way to assess for scapular dyskinesis, but something that is often overlooked!
This month’s Inner Circle webinar is on How to Coach and Perform Shoulder Program Exercises. While this seems like a simple topic, the concepts discussed here are key to enhancing shoulder and scapula function. There are many little tweaks you can perform for shoulder exercises to make them more effective. If you perform rotator cuff or scapula exercises poorly, you can be facilitating compensatory patterns.
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