What causes pain in the front of the shoulder?

Pain in the front of the shoulder is a common complaint seen in a physical therapy office. Often the patients who experience this pain have difficulty with pressing motions while at the gym. The common pressing motions that cause this type of pain are overhead presses, bench presses, and several variations of olympic lifting.

Anterior Muscle Pain — Muscles Involved

When pain is presented in the anterior shoulder there are 3 common structures that are involved:

1. the supraspinatus tendon
2. bicep tendon
3. subacromial bursa

This is caused when the synergy of the shoulder girdle is thrown off. There are 8 main muscles that attach to the head of the humerus directly and when these muscles are not working together properly a patient will develop poor movement patterns and ultimately develop impingement (pinching in the front of the shoulder). What we typically see in clinic is that the global, larger muscles are doing all the work and the stabilizing, smaller muscles are taking a back seat.

In order to overcome this pain it is important to strengthen the muscles that are affected, but you must do it properly. Putting tensile force through the affected muscles helps to repair and bring blood flow to the area of dysfunction. It must be noted that you want to do this gradually and with control, meaning low weight, high repetition (3 sets of 20 reps), and a slow tempo.

The video below will go into detail about how to get back to pressing motions at the gym without completely giving up exercising while recovering.