My Methods
My Methods
1. Hanging
I know that the idea of hanging seems ludicrous when you can barely lift your arm, but it is possible! I could not lift my arm to a 90 degree angle in front of me, let alone get it up and over my head. The trick is that you have to get your arm up to a bar and then lower into a hanging position, holding most of your body weight in your legs somehow.
A Swedish ladder is ideal because you can climb up to the hanging bar and hook your hand on the frozen side on to the bar, but you can use a chair or stepladder to do the same thing with any hanging bar. You will need a chair or ladder beneath you to hold much of your weight initially anyway. It took me a couple of weeks before I was able to take my feet off one of the lower bars on the Swedish ladder. My first unsupported hang probably didn’t even last for one full second, but once I could it, it only took me a couple of weeks to get to a point where I could hang for 30 seconds at a time.
I tried to hang 4-7 times/day with a 1-minute rest between hangs. At most, that added up to an investment of 8.5 minutes a day. On really busy days, I only did 2 hangs, which took a total of 2 minutes (2 x 30-second hangs, with a 1-minute rest between.)
I still do two 30-second hangs most days of the week because I’d rather spend two minutes a day looking after my shoulders than ever have to deal with a frozen shoulder again.
N.B.: If you’ve ever dislocated your shoulder, you should probably talk to a healthcare provider about whether or not hanging is safe for you.
2. Arm/shoulder strengthening
Prior to my shoulder freezing, I had already been in the habit of doing regular barre workouts using the Peloton app. I continued doing these classes after I started hanging. The arms sections of these classes took no more than 5 minutes and I didn’t use weights. Initially, I was barely able to do anything with my left arm, but I did what I could and I noticed that the more I hung, the more I could do.
In addition to barre classes, I also did yoga classes using the Peloton app. Again, there was a lot that I couldn’t do initially, but I did what I could and it was only a matter of weeks before I could do nearly everything in the classes.