Dry Needling for Shoulder Pain

Dylan Murray

**This blog post is specific to Dry Needling points for the shoulder. If you are unaware of what Dry Needling is or how it works, I recommend first you read our introductory blog “The Healing Power of Dry Needling” **

The shoulder is the most complex and mobile joint in the human body. Movement is achieved through synchronisation and coordination of almost 20 muscles across 4 joints. Each muscle has tendons; each joint has cartilage, supporting ligaments & bursae. All of which can be a source of pain. Amongst all this there is also a network of nerves passing from the spine to the fingertips.

With so much structural & functional complexity, there is significant overlap in symptoms & pain locations from different tissues. Furthermore, as one muscle becomes dysfunctional, a domino effect of changes across other related muscles can occur, slowly changing the coordination & function of the entire shoulder. This can make identifying specific pathology and correcting dysfunction a challenging task, even for a trained Physiotherapist.

Conditions that Dry Needling can help improve

Tendonitis / Tendinosis / Tendinopathy
Bursitis
Subacromial Impingement
Rotator Cuff tears
Shoulder instability
Thoracic Outlet Syndrome
Osteoarthritis
Muscle Stiffness
Restricted range of motion

In my experience the rotator cuff muscle group is by far the most common & impactful contributor to lingering pain experienced in the shoulder.

If one contributor to your pain is coming from trigger points in the rotator cuff muscles – below are the locations you may experience discomfort. The deep red zones indicate the most common location, the shaded areas less common. Do any of these areas look familiar?

Supraspinatus

Infraspinatus

Teres Major & Minor

Subscapularis

Keeping in mind – this is just 4 of nearly 20 different muscles, with each muscle having its own pain referral zones. If you are interested, simply google image search “trigger point referrals” and you will be bombarded with images of trigger points all over the body and their mapped out referral zones.

I could be here all day describing the different trigger points, and I am passionate enough about it to do so. But I doubt many of you out there are passionate enough to go on that journey with me.

The point is – Over my years of experience it has become increasingly obvious that, to some degree, inefficiency in muscle tissue is always a contributor to people’s pain experience. The important question is how much. The only way to answer that question is to release them, and the most time efficient technique to release them is Dry Needling.

Dry Needling can be applied to target several trigger point locations around the shoulder within a single treatment session. Then, based on which muscles require treatment, we can implement specific drills to stimulate & correct underlying movement limitations which created your symptoms. A topic for another time.

If you think Dry Needling might help with your shoulder pain, contact us for an appointment. We’d love to hear from you.