Shoulder Pain: The Indirect Approach

health , pain management , physical health

I developed shoulder impingement from Turkish Get-Ups - grinding through reps without the mobility or form to do them safely. Direct treatment didn’t help. The fix requires an indirect approach: restore thoracic spine mobility, loosen pecs and lats, then rebuild rotator cuff strength. The shoulder is a symptom of upstream problems - fix those first, and it often resolves itself.

How I Got Here: Turkish Get-Ups Gone Wrong

In theory, Turkish Get-Ups are one of the best exercises for shoulder stability. In practice, I didn’t have the mobility to do them properly, and I paid for it.

What went wrong: I was drifting my arm forward during the movement, struggling to keep it stacked over my shoulder. Without realizing it, I was compensating - getting stability by shrugging up with my trap instead of properly “packing” my shoulder. The cue “pack your shoulder” sounds simple, but when you’re self-training, it’s hard to know if you’re actually doing it or just muscling through with the wrong muscles.

The real mistake: I never dropped the weight while learning the movement. I kept grinding through with bad form, which meant every rep was reinforcing the wrong pattern and accumulating damage.

The fix I’m working through now: Drop the weight dramatically. Focus on feeling the shoulder packed - the humeral head pulled down into the socket, not shrugged up toward my ear. It’s humbling to work with a fraction of the weight, but it’s the only way to retrain the pattern without making things worse.

My Problem: Shoulder Impingement

My shoulder issue is impingement - the ball isn’t staying centered in the socket. Here’s the anatomy: your shoulder is a ball-and-socket joint where the humeral head (ball) sits in the glenoid (shallow socket). Unlike the hip which is a deep socket, the shoulder socket is shallow - more like a golf ball on a tee. This gives you huge range of motion but zero structural stability.

What keeps the ball in the socket? Your rotator cuff - four small muscles that wrap around the humeral head and actively pull it into the socket. When these muscles are weak or imbalanced, the ball migrates. Usually it drifts upward because the bigger muscles (deltoid, pecs) overpower the rotator cuff and pull the arm up.

What is impingement? When the ball rides high, it pinches the soft tissues (bursa, rotator cuff tendons) against the acromion (the bony shelf above your shoulder). Every time you raise your arm, you’re grinding these tissues. Pain, inflammation, and eventually tears.

Why stretching alone won’t fix it: Stretching addresses mobility but not the root cause - a weak rotator cuff that can’t keep the ball centered. You need to strengthen those small stabilizer muscles so they can do their job of pulling the humeral head down and in.

The fix:

  1. Restore mobility first - If your T-spine and pecs are tight, your shoulder blade can’t move properly, forcing the ball into bad positions
  2. Strengthen the rotator cuff - External rotation exercises, especially with the arm at your side and at 90 degrees
  3. Train scapular control - Your shoulder blade needs to move in sync with your arm; wall slides and prone exercises teach this
  4. Avoid overhead work until stable - Pressing and reaching overhead with a migrating ball just accelerates the damage

The Indirect Approach

You can’t fix shoulder directly. You need to go through this sequence:

  1. Improve Thoracic Spine Mobility
  2. Improve Pec and Lat Mobility
  3. Maintain the length you’ve gained
  4. Wall Slides for strength and control

Step 1: Thoracic Spine Mobility

The thoracic spine (mid-back) is designed to rotate and extend. When it gets stiff, the shoulder compensates and gets overworked.

Exercises:

  • Small crunches over a peanut - Two lacrosse balls taped together, roll up and down the T-spine doing small crunches
  • Prayer stretch on foam roller - Kneel with elbows on roller, hands together, sink chest toward floor
  • Box T-spine stretch (more intense) - Put elbows on box while holding a broom stick, press down
  • Deep squat rotations - In a deep squat, rotate one arm up toward the ceiling while the other stays on the ground

Step 2: Pec and Lat Mobility

Once the T-spine moves better, address the pecs and lats which often pull the shoulder forward into bad positions.

Exercises:

  • Box lat stretch - Kneel facing a box, put elbows on box with palms together, sink hips back
  • Eccentric slow pull-up - Jump to top of pull-up, lower yourself as slowly as possible (5-10 seconds)

Step 3: Maintain the Length

After creating mobility, you need to maintain it with daily movement.

Exercises:

  • Half prone angel - Lie face down, arms out to sides, slowly raise arms while squeezing shoulder blades
  • Shoulder swims - Lie face down, arms overhead, “swim” them down to your sides and back up

Step 4: Wall Slides

The final step builds strength and control in the new range of motion.

  • Stand with back, head, and arms against wall
  • Slide arms up and down while maintaining contact with wall
  • This is harder than it sounds if your mobility was limited

Heavy Clubs for Shoulder Health

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Heavy clubs are excellent for shoulder mobility and strength. They replaced KB halos in my routine because they provide better shoulder mobility work plus grip and core benefits.

See Also

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