Do you often suffer from sore shoulders or tension after getting up? Here you will find out the most common reasons – and learn about effective measures against shoulder tension.

Sleep should be healthy and restful.

Nevertheless, you wake up in the morning neither relaxed nor healthy – this is often due to severe pain in the shoulder.

This article provides helpful advice and information on the subject.

Where does shoulder pain come from after waking up?

The complaints can be very different:

  • Sometimes they deprive you of sleep and don’t go away all day.
  • The reasons for this can be varied – and depending on the type, you have to resort to other measures.

In essence, you can break down the causes of night shoulder pain as follows:

  1. Developed pain
  2. Pain from the wrong mattress
  3. Pain from untrained arms
  4. Pain from surgery

Below, I’ll briefly cover each of these 4 types of pain (and provide tips on what to do about them).

Developed pain

Nobody wants to feel pain, that’s clear.

If someone trains himself to suffer from such complaints, it happens unknowingly and above all unintentionally.

The good news: What you train yourself can be weaned off again.

Note: This guide is not a substitute for a doctor. If the pain persists, you should definitely seek a discussion with a specialist.

How to train yourself to shoulder pain while sleeping

Training is mostly done in the wrong position (you are likely to lie on your side so that the body tenses during the night).

  • If you also pull your legs up at the same time, your back will become hunched up and this often leads to pain in the shoulder area.
  • Another reason: More and more people sit in a similar posture in the office all day long – which means that the body can no longer relax.

This is often accompanied by daytime sleepiness and a lack of energy.

How does the pain arise in the first place

Your body is a complicated machine. Inside are bones, joints with their soft masses, muscles and tendons.

Everything is coordinated.

If you do not work evenly on the body, one muscle group will shorten while another is not used.

This means that the muscles pull on the tendons and bones unevenly. Joints are pulled apart or compressed.

All of this causes pain over time.

The consequences are:

  • Hip pain
  • Pain in the buttocks
  • Back pain
  • Osteoarthritis
  • Herniated discs

And of course back pain too – these are often just an indication of other chronic postural problems.

Tip: Limit the unequal workload to working hours. Stretch yourself in your free time and counteract it with autogenic training or fascia rolls .

How to train shoulder pain after sleep

I would like to start with some good news here. The unwanted training of the pain occurs during sleep.

 

You can also train yourself off of this pain during sleep. It depends on the correct sleeping position :

  1. Basically, sleeping on your back is the healthiest.
  2. The load on the shoulders is often greatest in the lateral position.
  3. The prone position relieves the shoulders, but hinders breathing.

If you suffer from shoulder pain, you should therefore think about changing your sleeping position.

Of course, you can also try to improve your lateral position with the right pillow first. There are even special side sleeper pillows and stomach sleeper pillows that support the body during the night and alleviate stress.

Train off shoulder pain

There are 2 exercises in training:

  • Sleep on your back
  • Sleep on your stomach (temporarily)

I know that lying on your back isn’t necessarily the most comfortable, and sleeping on your stomach isn’t comfortable either. But that’s only because of the wrong sleeping positions in front of it.

 

You have got used to the old positions. The muscles have grown accordingly. Now you have to get used to it.

One rule of thumb applies. The more uncomfortable sleep feels on your stomach or back, the more disturbed your sleep was.

The success against shoulder pain after sleep

Keep sleeping on your stomach and back for two weeks. Then you won’t feel so uncomfortable anymore.

However, the body is trained all around (and over time it also gets used to the new sleeping position.

But be careful:  sleeping on your stomach all the time is just as unhealthy! Breathing becomes restricted, which can subsequently lead to further health problems.

You should therefore only try sleeping on your stomach temporarily – and then ideally switch to the supine position.

Don’t overdo it with getting used to it at the beginning. Take it slow and use a flat pillow. Then don’t turn back on your side while you sleep.

Note: In this guide you will find out everything you need to know about pillows (including recommendations for each sleeping position): Pillows in comparison .

Pain from the wrong mattress

The rest of the bed is just as important as the right pillow:

  • Severe shoulder pain after sleeping is often caused by the wrong mattress.
  • The shoulder is the most flexible joint in humans and is therefore also very sensitive. Hardness alone does not make a good mattress.

The older you get, the more important it is to sleep on the right mattress.

Aching shoulders and the mattress

The shoulder joint is anatomically very open. The joint socket only encloses one third of the ball of the bone in the upper arm.

The rest is done by muscles and ligaments.

  • While sleeping, the muscles and ligaments need to recover from the irritation of the day. So you need a mattress that supports and protects you.
  • Especially if the muscles in your shoulders are not that pronounced, the shoulder needs support at night.

The shoulder should rest without pressure. The ligaments and muscles should be tensed in a different position than during the day.

Then the shoulder can regenerate overnight and does not hurt the next morning.

Note: The following tips mainly relate to sleeping on your side (as already described above, it is worth getting used to sleeping on your back if you have shoulder pain).

This is how you support your shoulder while sleeping

When you sleep, it is important that you protect and support your shoulder joint as much as possible.

There are several measures you can try to do this.

If you sleep on your side, your body should sink in a little with your hips and shoulders. The hollow that forms acts like a natural protection for the shoulder.

The area should be a little higher at the level of your stomach. For example, place a thin neck pillow between your knees or sit on a special pillow for sleepers on the side that stabilizes the body.

Adjust the slatted frame

If you can adjust the slatted frame on your bed, you should make a total of three settings.

Set the area at the level of your stomach hard. Adjust the area above your pelvis and shoulders to be soft.

Your shoulders and hips can now sink in. Your body is naturally stretched and your shoulders protected.

 

Alternatively, I recommend taking a look at the plate slatted frames – there you can adapt the individual sections to your body.

The trick with the towel

Can’t adjust your slatted frame? No problem, all you need is a towel:

  • Fold the towel so that it is 2 to 6 inches high and 6 inches wide
  • Place the towel between your mattress and the slatted frame at stomach level

The stomach is already higher. This brings back the natural stretch and a protective hollow for the shoulders.

Relieve additional pillows

 

You can also place a pillow between your legs to relax your spine (feel free to try it). You may also need to use a neck roll .

A special variant for such purposes (e.g. a memory foam pillow ) can also be helpful.

Buy the right mattress

When buying a new mattress , make sure that the area around the stomach is harder and the area above the shoulders and hips sinks lower. Throw out the old mattress and replace it with a new one.

  • Soft visco mattresses or gel mattresses are recommended . Their material is synthetically (artificially) produced and offers consistent quality with a great price-performance ratio.
  • The natural latex mattresses offer similar advantages – because the quality control of this natural raw material is more complex, these mattresses usually cost more.

Somewhat cheaper is a visco-elastic mattress pad that you can use to spice up your existing mattress. Such a gel topper provides additional comfort & weakens pressure points that can lead to tension.

Reading tip: The best mattress toppers in the test .

Pain from untrained arms

It may sound unlikely, but arms that are too light can also cause shoulder pain after sleep.

OK, admittedly, arms that are too light (untrained) may be an exaggeration.

However, the arms are hardly used today. We don’t lift anything heavy and everything else that surrounds us is just easy work.

Shoulder pain, caused by too light arms or simply by too little strain on the arms, can be combated with a few simple measures.

Lift more weight

If too little weight is the problem then just add weight.

  1. For example, carry a watering can for gardening.
  2. Carry your purchase in your hand or just take something else that is scare enough.
  3. Just let your arm hang down with the weight or swing it a little.

You don’t need to do a full workout. Just hold the load up for a few minutes.

For mild shoulder pain, 1 kg is enough. However, if you have severe shoulder pain, you may need 5 or even 10 kg to achieve success.

Important: Start small, however, and work your way up to the larger weight. If the pain doesn’t go away, be sure to consult a doctor!

Exercise pull

Sit on your hand on the side where the shoulder hurts. Sit firmly on it.

Then lean the body to the other side. This pulls the arm and stretches it. You can easily do this stretching exercise in the office.

But it also works at night when you wake up from the pain. The exercise itself does not need to be very long. A minute or two is fine.

Cool the shoulder

Another way for you to relieve the pain is with some cooling. The shoulders are caused by irritation and the cooling reduces it.

 

Take a gel-pak . Put this in the freezer and then run it around the affected areas of your sore shoulder. It’s even easier with a cool shirt .

Repeat this treatment 5 to 8 times every day. You should feel relief soon.

It can also be helpful to massage the area gently (!). Ideally with a massage stick or, if necessary, with an electric toothbrush , which both do a lot of work for you.

How do shoulder pain arise from untrained arms?

The pain arises in the joint socket. If your arms are heavier or if you are lifting something heavy, your arms will be pulled down.

This creates a small gap between the socket and the ball of your humerus.

  • If the load is absent, then your muscles pull your upper arm bones more and more upwards.
  • The ball exerts ever greater pressure on the soft tissues in the joint. This pressure brings the pain.

It gets worse when still nothing is done. Then the ball can be pulled up until it hits the pan directly. This increases the irritation and pain.

The pain then continues until the day’s stress slowly pulls the arm back down.

However, if that is not enough, the pressure will persist for longer, which can lead to general irritation and even inflammation.

Pain from surgery

Anyone who has had surgery on a shoulder is not to be envied. It is natural that pain occurs during or after sleep.

Unfortunately, you can hardly tackle the problem after an operation yourself. The causes go much deeper.

A professional therapy & personal commitment is crucial

Therefore, if you have had shoulder surgery, you will need to go to physical therapy.

  • In physiotherapy, trained trainers help you regain mobility in your shoulder.
  • This brings the ligaments back to their normal elasticity and the muscles to their normal stretch.

The process is a bit more involved. You have to go to physio several times a week. Then you also have to repeat the exercises at home.

But if you do everything right, there is a very good chance that the pain will go away after a few weeks.

Causes of the pain after shoulder surgery

The shoulder surgery problem has two deep-seated causes. The first is the simple fact of building the joint and the second is natural healing.

The shoulder joint is only one-third a ball in a socket. The rest are ligaments and muscles.

During the operation, the doctors have to touch the joint. They push the muscles and ligaments aside. These are often injured directly and just as often overstretched.

Ligaments take longer to heal naturally than they do after a broken bone.

Therefore, the visible consequences, the surgical scar and the threads, can long be healed. However, the ligaments are not in their normal condition.

Recommendation: Do you snore frequently and need help? Here is an overview of the best snoring apps for smartphones.

The sore shoulder after sleep and you

As you can now see, there is more than one cause of a sore shoulder during or after sleep:

As a reminder: These are the trained pains, the pain due to the wrong mattress, the pain due to the lack of stress on the arms or the consequences of an operation.

When it comes to the aftermath of surgery, you are in a position that is both enviable and unenviable.

She is enviable because you know the cause. It is not enviable because it takes time and is a laborious process.

However, if you always have back pain in addition to shoulder pain, then the probability is very high that the cause is to be found in a wrong sleeping position or insufficient support from the mattress.

In any case, I recommend that you take a closer look at your sleeping habits. If your night’s sleep is disturbed, other disorders such as lack of sleep can threaten besides shoulder pain .

An effective tip are special sleep aids such as blue light filter glasses at night and light alarm clocks in the morning to help you wake up. These ensure a steady sleep rhythm and promote recovery.

Closing word

I hope this article on the topic of shoulder pain after sleep has been helpful to you.

 

You are also welcome to browse the other sections and find out which measures you can take to improve your sleep:

  1. The bedroom category provides helpful tips on how to best furnish your bedroom .
  2. In the next section you will find more information on common sleep problems and sleep disorders .
  3. We explain current studies (understandable for everyone) in the category of sleep research .
  4. General tips & strategies for a healthy night’s sleep can be found here: Sleep better .

Please recommend this page to others in order to help other people with this knowledge.

I created Sleep Knowledge to share my interests and experiences on healthy sleeping with others. On this page I am therefore dealing with interesting questions about the optimal night’s sleep & everything else that goes with it.

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