Whole Body Revolution

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Sukie Baxter

Hunched Shoulders

Why Does My Shoulder Clunk?

Are you wondering: why does my shoulder clunk?

Clicking, popping and other joint noises can be alarming. They are rarely a cause for concern, however.

Read on to learn more about shoulder clunking and whether you should be worried about your joint.

Related:

Shoulder Clunking: What Are The Causes?

Does your shoulder make a clunking noise when you move your arm?

The most common cause of a shoulder clunk is lack of space in the joint. You may also have tight shoulder muscles that restrict the movement of your scapula, or shoulder blade.

Shoulder joints are designed for mobility. Your shoulder is a shallow ball and socket joint, similar to your hip. However, your shoulder is much less deep, allowing for tremendous range of motion.

Unfortunately, when shoulder muscles get tight, they can cause clunking, clicking, popping or grinding noises as they move across bony surfaces.

Tight shoulder muscles can also slightly displace the humerus (arm bone) in the shoulder joint, causing clicking and popping. This can also happen when shoulders are weak and lacking integrity, which allows the bone to move around too much in the socket.

How To Fix A Shoulder Clunk

Using the wrong muscles to move your arms and shoulders will cause neck and upper shoulder tension, limiting mobility.

In the past, the majority of the population was engaged in some sort of manual labor. This strengthened the larger muscles of the back and lower scapula.

Your shoulder girdle (the bony structures that make up your shoulder and joint) needs muscular support because it only has one point of bony connection to the rest of your body: your clavicle, or collar bone.

These days, most people spend multiple hours in front of a computer, in cars, watching television, and utilizing fine motor skills to operate cell phones and other hand held devices.

The larger, strength-based muscles of your back and rib cage weaken with this type of lifestyle. Then you’re forced to rely on smaller, less efficient muscles in your neck and upper shoulder. These muscles are designed for fine motor skills — not heavy lifting.

To fix this problem, you’ve got to retrain your body to use its powerful shoulder and back muscles again.

The Bottom Line

To get relief for a clunking shoulder, you have to do two things…

First, you have to create space for the scapula to move.

Second, you have to retrain your body to support the shoulder using the large, postural muscles of the ribs and back.

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Hip Pain

Exercise to Increase Hip Flexibility: How To Stretch Tight Hips

Battling chronically tight hips can be frustrating, but this easy exercise to increase hip flexibility will help you stretch your hip flexors. As a bonus, it will help you get strong, too!

Most of us in the western world spend far too much time sitting in chairs. That means that you never really use the full range of motion available for your hips — that is, unless you spend a good amount of time sitting on the floor as well.

Simply sitting down on the floor and then getting back up is probably the best and fastest exercise to increase hip flexibility. And if you do it without using your hands, you’ll be building up a lot of hip strength, too.

Related:

Exercise To Increase Hip Flexibility: Sit Down Get Ups

Here’s how to do this…

Find a comfortable place to workout, about three feet by three feet. Carpet is good; you can use a yoga mat, or a patch of lush grass, whatever you prefer. Some padding is ideal, though.

Then, without using your hands, sit down. Now, without using your hands, get up.

Repeat, but this time, find a different way to sit down (be creative! try to find all the ways you can bring your body to the floor) and a different way to get up.

If you don’t quite have the strength or hip mobility for this yet, use your hands to assist you. Finding a vertical column as a support is a great idea.

But don’t get too reliant on your arms. Eventually, you want to work up to sitting down and getting up completely hands free.

Do about 10 repetitions of this (down and up = 1 rep), rest for a few minutes, and repeat. 3 sets is a good starting place. After two or three weeks, you can begin to do this while holding weight – start where you’re comfortable and work up.

Benefits Of Sit Down Get Ups

1) opens up the hip joints and lumbar spine through movement (much more effective than static stretching)

2) strengthens your muscles while limbering you up at the same time

3) creates new neuro-pathways with repetition, so it will actually change the way you move over the long term if you keep it up

4) it’s GREAT for preserving mobility as you age

If you start this exercise now, then you’ll NEVER fear falling down and not being able to get back up. Don’t wait until you’re already struggling and at an advanced age to work on your hip mobility!