[Simon W]

Got a bit of a recurring problem here.  About once a month, after hard bouldering usually, I will wake up with a sharp pain between my shoulder blades which radiates out to my right shoulder.  This back/neck pain gives me that robotic look where I can't turn my head without turning my whole body.  The pain also spreads up the neck giving me a tasty headache to boot.

I do quite a lots of injury prevention work including, theraband for shoulders, reverse curls for elbows and yogic stretching for my back.  I recently saw a chiro recommended by a few climbers at The Works who clicked me into a more upright posture so I had less of the gorilla look going on.  I was really hoping that this work would have resolved my shoulder/neck issue but no luck.

For the last two days I have bouldered pretty hard on plastic and at the end of the second session my right shoulder was feeling a bit battered.  Then when I woke up this morning I could not lift my head from my pillow.  With ibuprofen and a couple of days gentle stretching this problem goes away but I'm trying to push my grade and would love to get it sorted once and for all.

Has anyone had any similar issues?  I'm in Sheffield so would also be interested in physio recommendations.

Help me please!

[Jim]

I had something similar last year, mostly my posture to blame, some physio sorted me out.
have a couple weeks lay off

[Falling Down]

Sounds like stiffness in the thoracic vertebrae - I've had it on and off for several years and it was a root cause of the two episodes of tennis elbow that I had.

A good physio will sort it out (Joe le sausage, Rick or John for example) and then keep up the weights and posture correction.  Note: It wasn't until I started doing weights seriously that it has finally been resolved.

Good luck.

[benpritch]

steve hodgeson at hallamshire physios. really knows his stuff especially climbing posture related things. sorted me out. not cheap but compared to the money i've wasted on other physios very worthwhile.

[Simon W]

Thanks for the replies!  What kind of weights are you doing.  Is it all pushing work to balance out the pulling we do when we climb?  Bench press, shoulder press etc?  High weight, low rep or t'other way round?