What You Can Do When You Have Shoulder Muscle Pain

Many people live with shoulder muscle pain, upper back muscle pain, and neck muscle pain. You don’t have to.

What Causes Your Muscle Pain?

Typically shoulder muscle pain, upper back muscle pain, and neck muscle pain are all in the same muscle, the trapezius. The picture only shows one side of the trapezius to show the muscles underneath. When you put both halves together it makes a large diamond-shaped muscle that reaches from the middle back up to the base of your skull and out to the tips of your shoulders.

Sometimes upper back, neck, and shoulder pain can be from other muscles, like levator scapulae which runs from your shoulder blade up into your neck, or in teres major and teres minor which run from your spine to your shoulder blade. In the picture, you can see the teres muscles on the right side connecting to the spine next to the white area of the trapezius and running diagonally down and to the right to connect to the shoulder blade. You can see levator scapulae attached to the shoulder blade just above the teres muscles and running up into the side of the neck.

That’s the end of the anatomy lesson. We cause the pain with our posture as we are sitting at our computers and while we are driving. While doing these things we typically hunch our shoulders forward and up which creates strain on these muscles. When we have done it long enough the muscles start to complain.

How to Relieve Shoulder, Neck, and Upper Back Muscle Pain

The actual problem isn’t in these muscles at all. For the pain we are talking about, the problem is actually that your pec muscles are chronically tight. We use the pectoralis muscles to pull our shoulders forward when we are hunched over the computer keyboard or the steering wheel. Because we hold them that way for extended periods of time they effectively become locked in place. That stretches out the trapezius and other muscles in the back making them weak. The back muscles are the ones that hurt because they are struggling to maintain some form of posture and get really tired.

To relieve that usually all we need to do is release the pectoralis muscles. Most people think that a back massage or shoulder rub will take care of it. While that feels good and may ease the pain temporarily, it isn’t fixing the problem. Getting a massage and having the therapist work on your pec muscles is a good choice.

Here is a less expensive way to deal with the problem by stretching it out yourself. Find a door frame  that you can use. Hold one arm straight out to the side and bend it straight up at the elbow like you are make half of a goal post. Put your extended arm against the door frame so that it will hold you up as you lean forward through the doorway. You should feel a nice stretch in your chest. When you have stretched that one out good then do the same thing with your other arm.

To prevent the problem in the future make sure that you take breaks and stretch out your arms, shoulders, and back after you have been sitting a while. Have you ever noticed that after a cat has been in one place for awhile it will stretch out before going very far. That is a good idea for us too.

I hope you have found this helpful. Do you have any tips for preventing muscle pain? Please share it in a comment below. I would also appreciate it if you would share this with your followers on the social networks.

Wayne Woodworth

Related posts:

1. Why is Massage Therapy Effective?
2. Why Do You Get Headaches and What Can You Do About It?
3. The Benefits of Magnetic Massage for the Client and the Therapist