Handling Shoulder Pain While Performing
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August 30, 2025
Athlete reports: “Right here. I can feel like the tendons and ligaments feel super tender and super tight. Like just when I fully straighten, I feel like a pull right here. And just like doing this, I feel like a pull. And I feel it whenever I keep throwing.”
So he sent that on the 17th, and then on the 23rd, he sent the text that I'm going to include here, which is basically that it was gone and it was handled. What we did and what we focused on… so he's a quarterback who's going into the season, or getting close to the season. So what we did is put a big focus on exercises where he would pull back into position, where the goal was shortened on the backside and lengthened on this front side.
What we want to do when there's some type of tightness in this front side, like he's feeling, is get into deep positions without doing or experiencing that feedback, but actually contracting the tissues on the back. Because when we can contract the tissues on the back, like let's say that we're going to do a shoulder high T where we're pulling back as far as we can. The goal is to completely lengthen here and completely shorten on the back.
You know we can do that. We can do external rotations. That type of work—the goal is to shorten the backside, and lengthen the front side. And that's what allows that tissue to actually shorten. Because when it's tight, that is it shortening, right? There's some type of small injury or whatever it was that causes the body to have to lock that down. So all we want to do is get to the point where that can lengthen again by shortening the backside.
Also later on, we did work where we shortened the front side, and the backside can lengthen. So we just want to get that tissue to be able to go to that full length again. That's what we did to help him get through this process.