Shoulder Pain
What is it?
- Tendon inflammation (bursitis or tendinitis) or tendon tear
- Instability
- Arthritis
- Fracture (broken bone)
How can we help?
A physiotherapist can use their extensive knowledge to help relieve your shoulder pain. We will assess your strength and range of movement to identify problems and areas for improvement, incorporate diagnostic tests to assist in identifying the condition you are suffering with, and create an appropriate management plan with exercise prescription to improve your function and strength, even more than prior to the injury! This will support getting you back on track to enjoy the activities that are important to you and make day to day life easier. There are planty of things that can be done to reduce discomfort, so don’t let yourself suffer needlessly!
What does a Physio Assessment Involve?
Do I need a Physio Assessment OR a Sports Massage?
Pre-event Sports Massage
If you have a sporting event such as a rugby match, 10km run, marathon training sessions or a triathlon coming up then sports massages can help to prepare your body by ensuring that your muscles and soft tissues are supple and ready for activity.
Post-event Sports Massage
Sports massage can help to accelerate recovery following activity enabling you to get back to training.
Maintenance Sports Massage
Some people will use sports massage to keep them fresh during training for large events but also when managing a long-term issue that has already been assessed and diagnosed. It can also help when you are working on posture improvements.
So at what point do I require more than a massage?
Some people think a Sports Massage is the answer to their problem, when the problem may be deeper rooted, or stemming from a totally different location on their body. If you have neurological symptoms (like pins and needles or numbness) or we suspect that there may be an underlying cause for your aches and pains then we’d often recommend a deeper investigation with a physiotherapy assessment.
Our bodies are cleverly made up of so many different parts which are designed to work perfectly and efficiently in sync with each other. If a cog in our wheel becomes imbalanced, weak, tight, injured or dysfunctional, we run into issues, and here’s the interesting part – you may experience pain in completely different parts of your body! Weird right? Some common examples of this are, back issues stemming from a weakness and imbalance in the hip or even feet!
Most of us are also sitting more and moving less, which can lead to muscle imbalances and weaknesses that have a knock-on effect to the way you move. When left untreated these imbalances can eventually result in pain and dysfunction. With non-traumatic injuries, pain is often the last thing to be felt and there’s usually stiffness or weakness well before pain comes on. In professional sport players are screened regularly to identify these imbalances so Physio’s can intervene before pain.
So, when you’re faced with the decision of whether you need a sports massage or physio assessment remember….
- Maintenance – assists in managing longer-term issues, and addressing on-going postural or repetitive strain issues.
- Post-event – accelerates recovery and ensures on-going training is not disrupted.
- Pre-event – assists in event preparation, ensuring muscles and soft tissue are supple and ready for activity.