How To Relieve Rotator Cuff Pain At Night

One of the most common things we hear from our physical therapy patients with shoulder pain is that their shoulder hurts at night. Usually they say their shoulder hurts lying on their side. This eventually leads them to reach out to us for help. Many people are living with shoulder pain and know they should do something about it, but when it starts affecting sleep they pay attention.

Long story short, shoulder pain at night is a common indication that your rotator cuff is the issue. This blog will cover why this happens and what to do about it. Keep reading to learn how to relieve rotator cuff pain at night.

If you’re dealing with shoulder pain and want to work with us, book a discovery call by clicking the button.

Why Does My Shoulder Hurt At Night?

When a patient tells us their shoulder hurts at night, we are looking for an underlying cause. A healthy shoulder shouldn’t hurt when you sleep on it.

The most common thing patients report is that lying on their side hurts. Lying on your side typically isn’t a CAUSE of shoulder pain, it is a SYMPTOM of something else going on.

Here are four common factors that can contribute to shoulder pain at night:

• Repetitive shoulder movement during the day

• Poorly balanced training program

• Poor shoulder mobility

• Poor shoulder strength (especially rotator cuff strength)

If this sounds like you, keep reading. We’ll get into solutions below.

How To Treat Night Time Shoulder Pain

Let’s dive into how to treat night time shoulder pain. Shoulder pain at night is your body telling you that something is wrong. There are some short term and easier changes you can focus on to help reduce the chance your shoulder will hurt. However, we want to focus on longer term changes because these will actually solve the underlying problem.

How To Sleep With Shoulder Pain

Sleeping position is such an individual thing that we sometimes hesitate to try to change it.

To put it simply: if trying to change your sleeping position results in getting LESS sleep, just don’t worry about it.

The point of changing your sleeping position is to make you more comfortable so you sleep better. If you end up sleeping worse because you’re uncomfortable in other ways, this is counterproductive.

Long story short, experiment with sleeping positions but don’t stress too much over it. This isn’t the most important thing.

In general, we recommend one of two sleeping positions for shoulder pain:

• On your back

• On your unaffected side hugging a pillow

These positions should help take some pressure off your shoulders and allow you to sleep better.

Repetitive Movements Can Cause Shoulder Pain at Night

If your job requires you to do repetitive movement (lifting, reaching, etc.), this can be a cause of shoulder pain. Repetitive movement can overload your shoulder and cause inflammation.

The simplest thing to do here is try to take more frequent breaks and/or set up your work environment so it is less stressful on your shoulders.

For example, a painter experiencing shoulder pain could do the following:

• Instead of working on only painting the ceiling (overhead work), alternate between painting the ceiling and painting the baseboard.

• Set up staging and ladders to allow different shoulder positions while painting the same area.

A small amount of extra work can go a long way in making your work more efficient and comfortable. The same logic applies to someone with a desk job.

What About Shoulder Pain When Lifting Weights?

If you are having pain while training your upper body, the simplest thing is to modify your training to avoid the positions that are bothering you. Obviously this isn’t a long term solution on its own, but it's important to modify training short term.

Most people with shoulder pain have the most trouble with:

• Overhead pressing

• Weight bearing exercises such as push ups

We usually recommend patients take these kinds of exercises out of their program while we work on foundational mobility and strength, then we work them back in.

Long Term Solutions for Shoulder Pain

The above modifications can be helpful, but it is important to address the underlying causes of shoulder pain at night if you actually want it to go away.

The general categories of things to work on to relieve shoulder pain are:

• Shoulder mobility

• Shoulder blade control

• Rotator cuff strength

• Smarter training programs

We’ll cover some ideas for each of these areas and link to other blogs we’ve written covering these topics in depth.

Shoulder Mobility Exercises

If you have better shoulder mobility, you can get into more sustainable positions and your shoulder doesn’t have to work as hard. This is especially true for overhead positions.

Here are a couple overhead mobility exercises to try:

Banded lat stretch

Thoracic spine bench mobilization

Here is a link to another blog going into more detail about overhead shoulder mobility.

3 Overhead Mobility Exercises and When To Use Them

Shoulder Blade Control Exercises

The control of your scapula (shoulder blade) is another important component of shoulder health. This is related to mobility as well as stability. A mobile and well-controlled shoulder blade means all the muscles around your shoulder can work efficiently.

Here are some of our favorite ways to improve scapular mobility and control:

Serratus wall slide

Quadruped scap circles

Rotator Cuff Exercises

As we discussed above, when patients have shoulder pain at night it can indicate rotator cuff irritation. Training your rotator cuff regularly means your shoulder is stronger and more resilient.

Here are some basic rotator cuff exercises to get you started:

External rotation

Internal rotation

Leaning lateral raise

Here is a blog all about how to know if your shoulder pain is because of your rotator cuff.

Is Your Shoulder Pain From Your Rotator Cuff?

More Effective Shoulder Strengthening

The final piece of the puzzle here is making sure your upper body training program is well balanced. This can be a complex topic, but here are a few general guidelines to consider.

• Make sure you are warming up. The exercises above are great options.

• If having one “shoulder day” seems to irritate your shoulder, space the same exercises out over 2-3 days instead.

• Make sure your pressing and pulling volume is balanced. For example, if you do a ton of bench press or push ups, balance this out with back exercises such as rowing and pull downs.

• Use full range of motion and focus on good control of the weights. The point isn’t to sling around as much weight as possible, it’s to get strong and healthy.

Shoulder Physical Therapy in Lakeville, MA

At Wagner PT & Performance, we help people deal with shoulder pain all the time. It’s a very common issue. If you need help dealing with shoulder pain at night, click below to schedule a free discovery call. You can also call or text us anytime.

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