Stretching the workday: small movements, big returns

I used to see frozen shoulder mostly in patients over fifty. This year, three of my patients with the same diagnosis were under thirty-five. The common thread: long hours at a laptop, often hunched over a low coffee table.

The body adapts to what you ask of it. If you ask your shoulders to hold a forward, rounded position for nine hours a day, the tissue in front shortens and the tissue behind weakens. A weekend hike doesn't undo that. Daily, small countermeasures do.

Every forty-five minutes, stand up. Reach both arms overhead and lean gently backward for fifteen seconds. Roll your shoulders backward, not forward. Press your shoulder blades together as if you were trying to hold a pencil between them. None of this requires equipment, and the cumulative effect over a week is more than a single yoga class.

If pain stays past three weeks, gets worse at night, or starts radiating down an arm, that's the point to come in. We can usually avoid imaging and avoid surgery — but only if we see you early.