Pressure Point Release for the Shoulder

Welcome, we’re here at Body Works Sports Physiotherapy with Holly. She’s going to help us demonstrate some pressure point release for the shoulder to loosen up tightness.

Behind the shoulder

  • Start with the ball behind your shoulder, finding the tender spot or pressure point where you feel the muscle is tight
  • At first you can do a bit of just pressure into it, breathing and imagining it softening
  • Then rolling around in a circular motion, trying to get a bit of mobility in the tissue.
  • Once that starts to loosen up a bit, then you can do a horizontal rolling at the back of the shoulder blade, rolling back and forth to get some rotator cuff muscles to loosen.

This is a really nice release for the shoulder, if you have any kind of rotator cuff pain or shoulder pain. Next we’re going to move around to do a point on the front of the shoulder, into the pectoralis muscle or the chest muscle.

Front of the Shoulder

  • Put the ball in front of you at the wall in front of the shoulder where your chest is, and putting some pressure
  • Often this is a really tender spot for people, so we start with just pressure point first and then some gentle rolling.
  • You don’t want to be too aggressive on putting pressure through the chest area.
  • After you do the pressure point you should feel that your mobility is a little bit better. Then you can do a little bit of rolling around to get the tissue moving better.