Use remedial massage to cure shoulder pain caused by canoeing

When you have a persistent pain in your shoulder, you need to do two things:

  • Cure yourself of the pain.
  • Identify the cause and correct it to avoid straining the joint further and causing more pain.

It is important that you pursue both of these and not only focus on getting rid of the pain. If you ignore the cause, then the pain will simply return.

Treating the pain

The best way to cure the pain in your shoulder is to use remedial massage. This is a targeted massage that is aimed at locating the specific points of tension in the muscles that give rise to pain and to release these, thereby relieving the pain.

The massage therapist will primarily massage the soft tissue in and around your shoulder. Special attention will be paid to locating the specific spots where the pain originates. Do not be surprised if some of these seem to be a little ways away from your shoulder, particularly the area where you experienced the first pain.

When one muscle is over-loaded and becomes painful you will begin to compensate for the movements that irritate that muscle, even if you are not aware of it. Other muscles in and around the area become strained because of the changes in movement and, in turn, become painful. Remedial massage is the one way to locate these areas and to relieve all your pain.

It is also possible that the pain from one strained muscle will be referred to other spots in the area. A remedial massage therapist will be able to locate and help to cure this pain.

If you don't use remedial massage to help to cure your sore shoulder, after a while you won't be able to move it through its normal full range of movement and you could eventually damage the shoulder joint itself.

Treating the cause

If you are getting pain in your shoulder, you need to treat the cause as well as the symptoms.

Any sport's training involves the repetition of movement of a muscle, or set of muscles, which can eventually become overloaded. For example, if you get pain in your shoulder from canoeing, you must review your paddling style. It may be that there is an imbalance in the way you paddle, which means that you are overloading one particular muscle more than any of the others. If you correct your style, you should find that your shoulder pain will disappear.


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