Treatment Table Podcast

Mini Consult | My Shoulder Keeps Clicking, Should I Stop Exercising?

• Mathew Ah Chow • Season 1 • Episode 28

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0:00 | 11:10

My Shoulder Keeps Clicking — Should I Stop Exercising?


That clicking, popping or cracking in your shoulder can be seriously off-putting — especially when it suddenly appears during exercise.

But does a noisy shoulder actually mean something is damaged? And should you stop training until it goes away?

In this final Mini Consult before we gear up for Season 2 of The Treatment Table, Mat answers Emma’s question:

“My shoulder keeps clicking. Should I stop using it when I exercise?”

We break down:

  • Why shoulders and other joints click, crack and pop
  • The difference between joint pressure and a tendon “flicking”
  • Why clicking without pain is often less concerning than you think
  • The warning signs that should prompt you to get your shoulder assessed
  • Why weakness, swelling and loss of movement matter more than noise alone
  • How muscle tightness, shoulder positioning and the rotator cuff can contribute
  • Why completely stopping exercise may actually make things worse
  • How to modify your training and gradually build your load back up

The big takeaway: If your shoulder is clicking but you have no pain, no significant weakness and normal movement, you generally don’t need to stop using it. Keep moving, modify your load if needed and build back up gradually.

If the clicking is accompanied by pain, weakness, instability, swelling or a noticeable loss of movement, that’s when it’s worth getting assessed by your physio.

This is our final Mini Consult before we take a short break as we prepare for Season 2 of The Treatment Table — with a new co-host, a new format and video coming to the podcast.

Make sure you follow or subscribe so you don’t miss our upcoming guest interviews and the launch of Season 2!


🎧 Episode Resources & Links

See you next week on the Treatment Table!

SPEAKER_01

Welcome to the treatment table podcast. This is your final mini consult before we take a break and start recording season two. We have a really exciting season two planned and this is kind of gonna take a lot of our energy, a lot of our time because we are pouring everything into doing it a hundred times better.

SPEAKER_00

Plus, we're mixing it up a lot. We're changing it right up. It's not gonna be the same sound that you're used to hearing. We're doing something very different.

SPEAKER_01

We are the new host, so you won't just be hearing my voice and we're gonna be mixing up. We are also, Renel's been on my back about how difficult this is. We are also gonna dive into video. Yes, yes, yes, yeah. And so it's gonna be exciting. You'll be able to see the interactions, gonna be a lot more engaging, and we really want to take it to another level. So this will be your final mini consult. We've got a really good question. This is a question that I get a lot. So we're gonna break down this question, give you one easy takeaway, but also make sure you follow and subscribe because we will have some interviews coming up in the next few weeks. So make sure you follow, subscribe so you get that notification, and make sure that pops up because we do have some guests coming on before we dive and launch season two. All right, Ronelle, do you want to read our question for this week?

SPEAKER_00

This one is from Emma, and it's something I kind of relate to as well. So she says, My shoulder keeps clicking. Should I stop using it when I exercise? And I have the same kind of issue with my knee clicking. It's just so off-putting.

SPEAKER_01

Thank you, Emma, for the question. It is a bit off-putting, and I do get this a lot sometimes because that noise can feel like something is damaged or something is broken. And so clients will come in and they'll sit on the treatment table and they'll try and reproduce that clicking noise for me. So they'll be waving their arms all around, and you know, you know how it always is like you it'll click in and annoy you all week, and then you'll sit on the table and in front of the doctor and it won't do it again. Um, and people are like, no, it's definitely it was clicking, it was clicking. I swear, I swear it was. Um and look, we'll dive into when to be concerned today and what I go through to reduce that clicking. So I will take you through kind of what I would do in a consult, how to reduce that clicking, and then also to identify if it's something that you should be concerned about. I was thinking a good analogy. Well, it's not really an analogy. What's the opposite of an analogy, Renel?

SPEAKER_00

I don't really know what you're gonna say.

SPEAKER_01

Well, okay. If if your car makes a click-in noise and the engine starts popping, you should be concerned.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So the opposite our body is not an engine.

SPEAKER_00

I have no idea what you would call that.

SPEAKER_01

Well, that didn't work, did it? Um scrap that non-analogy. Let's just keep going with the client stuff. Um so yeah, the client will come in, they're trying to reproduce this clicking noise, and then yes, sometimes I can feel it. Sometimes I have to have my hand over that area and I can feel the clicking noise. Um, sometimes it is audible. We can hear the clicking, sometimes it's a pop, particularly with the shoulder, where that popping clicking comes from, um, sometimes the front of the shoulder, sometimes the back, more around our scapula or you know, the back shoulder blade area. Now, there's a few things what could be causing that pop-in. Sometimes it's within the joint, and if our joints are sometimes getting a bit stiff or you haven't used it for a little while, there's a buildup of pressure of gas in there. And one of the most common ones, if you, you know, crack your knuckles or if you had someone crack your back from like a chiral physio, that popping, cracking noise is actually just a release of gas pressure in the joint. So that's coming that sometimes that noise is from that. Generally, once that pressure is released, it won't crack or pop again. So that's how you know that's it's coming from the joint. If it's with certain movements, then sometimes it's the tendon. So the tendons attached to the muscle, which attached to the bone, and that can flick over another tendon or a bony part, and that can cause repetitive clicking and kind of vibration feels.

SPEAKER_00

So the gas builder, can that like if it doesn't get released, is that an issue or no, no. So um it's it's not, I guess it's one of those ticking bomb where it's like if it builds up a certain amount of pressure in there, it's gonna explode.

SPEAKER_01

No, definitely not. But I guess it's why we, you know, like to crack our knuckles or we like to uh some people, some people find it very disturbing. Um, but some people like cracking their joints because it releases that pressure, it feels good, and so there is that part of it, but no, it's not something that builds and builds and builds, and you have to have it cracked or released. No, definitely not.

SPEAKER_00

And with the tendon one, is that does that mean that there's something wrong? Or is it just the way your body's built?

SPEAKER_01

That's correct, yeah. So I like to think of the flicking tendon, particularly because sometimes they'll come in and say, I never had this before. And now all of a sudden I've got this click. Why is it calm? Why is it there? Every time I do this movement with my shoulder, I roll my shoulder, lift my arm up, I can feel the click. Um, you know, it's it's not painful, it's uncomfortable, it's annoying me. How do I get rid of it? And so I guess the answer of saying it's it's normal, it's always, you know, it's part of your body, doesn't really match up because it hasn't been there all the time. What I like to think around the tendons is if you think of tendons as pulleys and they're pulling on your joints, if a tendon is particularly tight, the muscle that's pulling on that tendon, or if it's too loose, the pulley system of what we call the length-tension relationship gets offset. And so you've got some extra movement or extra tightness that's probably not great for that tendon long term, but it's kind of like a sign, it's just your body saying, hey, something's not 100% right. It doesn't necessarily mean that tendon flicking over there is going to cause damage or cause it to snap. Definitely not. And so what we want to make sure is that the key question with any kind of noise that's coming from your joints is the noise associated with pain? So when you rotate, lift the arm, or like you said, with your knee, if the clicking or the popping isn't painful, we're not concerned that it is a significant issue. Where we get more concern if there's pain, that could be coming in with some other structural changes within the joint. But if there's significant weakness, so if all of a sudden you find you can't open the door, you can't lift the jar, you can't pick up the kettle, that's more of a concern than the actual popping, clicking. If you're struggling to reach overhead, hang the washing, get something up for the top shelf, that's something you need to worry about. If there's visible swelling or you can feel the swelling, that's something we need to be concerned about. So those are the things that you need to kind of go, okay, the clicking, popping, but can I move my arm? And we go through all of this in our consult. We check your strength of what we call the rotator cuff muscles that support your joint. We check the range of motion and we do all these checks just to make sure that there isn't anything underline that has, you know, something that needs to be addressed. If you can do all those things, great. No issues, keep training. The worst thing you can do is actually stop training because of that click in. You're gonna lose muscle, your joints are gonna get stiffer, that clicking is probably gonna get worse. That length tension relationship of those muscles and those pulleys on the shoulder joint are gonna get more kind of out of whack, out of balance. So, reintroducing back into those gym exercises really, really important. So, what we would do in our consult is we would figure out which of those muscles are particularly tight. So, generally, if you sit in in front of the computer a lot, your chest is kind of rounded, your shoulders are rounded, all the chest muscles at the front are really tight. They're pulling, and that pulls the ball forward in that shoulder joint. And the muscles behind the back, particularly the rotator cuff muscles, you might have heard of your external rotators, they try and pull the ball back into the socket. Now, the muscles in the front of the chest are quite tight, the ones at the back are smaller and weaker, but that's generally what's going to be causing those tendons to flick. When we do some release work around to restore that balance, that generally has a significant difference. It might not completely take away the click, but it's not going to happen as often. And then we make sure we restore the balance by going through some rotator cuff exercises, and that's generally with some bands or some cable machines, and then we integrate those movements back into more of your gym-based movements that you're already doing. So thank you, Emma, for your question. Now, Emma, as long as you can move that shoulder without pain, that clicking is okay. So as long as you've got no pain, you've still got the strength and the movement, keep training. Try maybe reduce some of those weights of the gym, build back into it, and then slowly load back in. But the best thing you can do is keep moving, keep training. If you feel like you're getting some pain or you're getting some weakness, some instability, go see your physio. So that's a wrap for our final mini consult for this week. As we said at the start, please make sure you follow and subscribe. We've got some additional interviews coming out with some more guests, and then we're gonna dive into season two. Really exciting, new format video, and we've got a new host as well who has previously been on the podcast. So keep an ear out, keep an eye out, and we'll see you soon on the treatment table.