Education is key when it comes to taking power over your own health and wellness. I look at the role movement can play in your health, wellness and recovery to full and optimal function. The articles are not meant to take the place of medical advice and should not be used as such.
Best Habits for Healthy Shoulders
Carol Robbins 
How I fixed my rotator cuff issues, impingement syndrome, and recovered from frozen shoulder
My elderly aunt (in her 90s) is going for an elbow replacement. Much like arthritic knees and hips, this joint can be resurfaced, but the surgery is is difficult to recover from as you will only have the use of one arm for several weeks. If you've ever had a shoulder out of commission, you will know how hard it is to get dressed, button shirts, open cans or anything that involves holding an object with one hand while you twist off a top, carry items, and so on. It's particularly hard when you live alone and don't have someone to help you.
Recently I had a conversation with her where she expressed wonder about how she came to have such an arthritic elbow joint. "Where would I have got this from? No one in our family ever had this before." My aunt was a nurse in her working life, and yet she only considered the genetic influence in her diagnosis.
Yet, my aunt has not been on her hands and knees since she was a baby, does not raise her arms above her head regularly, and has never hung from a bar. Skills that I teach to active agers such as quadruped (see below), hands and feet (down dog, transitioning from standing to sitting), getting up and down from the floor, crawling, reaching and hanging are all very helpful when it comes to providing a variety of skills and abilities for the hand, wrist, elbow and shoulders and provide unique loads to those joints and tissues.
When we think of shoulders, we usually think of the ball and socket joint on the top corners of your torso. But the shoulder complex consists of the upper arm bone (humerus), the shoulder blade (scapula) and the collar bone (clavicle). The interaction of these three parts on the rib cage completes the shoulder "girdle."
In the early 2000s, I suffered greatly from shoulder issues. I had a frozen shoulder, impingement symptoms and classic rotator cuff issues. I could not sleep in my preferred sleeping position, on my side, without pain, and I was losing sleep. I started investing in softer, thicker, loftier, expensive mattresses and pillows in order to be able to sleep, without any luck.
A lot of my time and focus as a movement professional went towards studying shoulder mechanics and exercises for shoulder health. But even as a pilates professional, my shoulder issues weren’t resolved.
When I started studying Restorative Exercise, my pleas for help with shoulder issues started getting me somewhere. I learned that there is a world of movement for shoulders that isn’t addressed in many modalities like Pilates and yoga, and even strength training.
Humans are meant to use their arms in many ways, including overhead hanging, swinging and brachiating. I installed monkey bars in my back yard, hanging bars inside and out, and my shoulders eventually became robust and trouble free with this new program.
Surprisingly, what made the biggest difference with the smallest effort was changing my sleep habits. I went from those top of the line expensive mattresses to a mat and futon. (See this post for more on that.) The answer to my shoulder issues wasn’t more cushioning, it was less! The pressure from the floor is a load that informs our joints and tissues, and when the pressure becomes too much, it triggers a change in position, and that allows circulation into those previously compressed tissues which keeps them healthier.
This exercise is for the shoulder blades and is done under "load" i.e., you are weight bearing. Many people find being on their wrists a problem - please watch this video if you are one of those people for a modification that serves your wrists better than bolstering under the heel of the hand!
To summarize, shoulders are a complex system and you can target them from the hands up, or from the shoulder blade down, but a variety of skills and loads are important to keep them healthy. Easy lifestyle changes can include getting up and down from the floor, napping on firmer surfaces such as a thin mat (or even a yoga mat) and sleeping on a harder surface such as a futon. You don't need to be able to do a pull-up to have strong healthy robust shoulders. A simple hanging program can go a long way to improving your shoulder mechanics.
