Shoulder pain can be very common in a volleyball player’s life. Unfortunately, the repetitive motion of hitting, serving, etc. can cause major harm to the muscles and tendons in the shoulder. If you are a volleyball player who might be struggling with shoulder pain, call our office at 330- 491-0381 or visit our website at www.yourartdoc.com.
Volleyball is a game that requires overhead motions repetitively the entire game. The setting, spiking, serving, all require an overhead motion that can be straining to the muscles surrounding the neck and shoulder areas. It is not uncommon for volleyball players to experience shoulder pain after a practice or game because of overusing the shoulder. When those muscles do the same action over and over it can cause inflammation in the tissue which results in pain.
When we treat a volleyball player with a chronic or acute shoulder injury, we are focused on decreasing the inflammation present, cleaning up the scar tissue that has formed incorrectly in that tissue, and retraining the scar tissue to lay in a functional manner. This will allow the muscle to move without pain and the player to have full mobility while healing. Occasionally, scar tissue can heal dysfunctional like overlapping spider webs where we want it to lay nice and linear.
After we know the muscle is not inflamed and the scar tissue is forming in a functional manner, we can start to rehab and strengthen the shoulder. We start this process by testing the strength of the shoulder muscles and making sure all the parts are working and firing as one. Once we have ensured that is happening we can go ahead and start with some basic exercises. These do not include lifting heavy weights as some might believe. This is all bodyweight and eventually resistance bands working all the smaller muscles first and then working our way to the bigger ones. We do this at a steady pace so that we can still allow you to participate in your workouts and also strengthen with us at the same time. If we can get you well while you continue to play then that is our goal!
Once we have worked out the muscles and done the therapy, we also need to stretch those muscles to ensure that all the strength and mobility in that shoulder will continue to stay the way it is and not regress to where it was. After we stretch we will ice the muscles to ensure that we do not start the inflammation process all over again as we want to keep that inflammation away ensuring continued pain-free use of the shoulder.
If you are a volleyball player that has shoulder pain, weakness, or lack of mobility call our office at 330-491-0381 or learn more about our office at www.yourartdoc.com. Our office has many tools to make sure that not only do we get you out of pain but we keep you operating at top performance and pain-free!