4 Tests to Differentiate Shoulder Impingement and AC Joint Dysfunction

[Music] yo what's up guys Eric Wong here from Precision movement. coach and today in this video I'm going to take you through four tests to help you differentiate between shoulder impingement and AC joint dysfunction so a lot of times you'll have pain in the front of the shoulder here and you might do some searching you might find hey might be impingement but the thing is it could be shoulder impingement which includes things like btis subacromial btis or rotator cuff tontis or it could be AC joint dysfunction and the treatment and the exercise that you do to rehab differs so it's important to figure out which exactly you have okay so we're going to run through four tests right now so if you have some shoulder pain and you want to kind of figure this out do it along with me all right so the first one is kind of a modification of something called the Hawkins test and it's just one and all these tests are test that you can do on yourself okay so you don't need a a physiotherapist or a trainer or a buddy to to walk you through these but if you are unsure I always suggest getting a a good physio to check you out just to make sure to give you that pece of mind that you're going down the path the right path all right so first test Hawkins test your right hand you want to place it on your opposite shoulder okay and from here very simple you're just going to lift keep the hand on the shoulder and lift your elbow up high okay as high as it goes keep the hand on the shoulder the whole time okay so that might produce pain if that produces pain then we're kind of leaning towards impingement on this one okay but there's a few more tests we'll see uh exactly as you go through these four tests which of the problems that you have okay so number one is the Hawkins test modified Hawkins test hand on the shoulder lift it up and if that produces pain in the shoulder you're thinking impingement number two painful Arc test so you might have heard of of the painful Arc test before it's lifting your arm up in the scapular pain plane and that it's 30° forward so it's not straight out to the side but 30° forward for this test the painful AR test to differentiate between impingement and AC joint you want to lift it straight out to the side so straight shoulder abduction all right so what you want to do is very slowly lift it straight up to the side as high as you can now if you've got pain anywhere from about 45° up to about 100 10 120 degrees in that range right here then you're thinking impingement and could be Rotator coefficient okay if your pain if your shoulder's fine and then you get to about 135 Dees and then you start to feel some pain in this in these ranges of motion okay right up high then you're thinking more AC joint dysfunction okay so all you're going to do is lift your arm straight out to the side and if you have pain from here to about here you're thinking impingement and if you have pain from about here all the way up towards your ear then you're thinking AC joint dysfunction okay you might have pain in both if that's the case that's why we do the rest of these tests okay next test very simple horizontal adduction test all you're doing is bring your shoulder out from the side and you're just going to if you have to passively move it totally cool you're just going to lift it across your body and then pull it into just kind of that classic shoulder stretch that you did gym in gym class okay so you're pulling it across and if this reproduces pain then you're thinking okay maybe it's more AC joint dysfunction all right so if you've kind of flagged AC joint dysfunction where you didn't have too much pain with the Hawkins test but you start to have some pain in the painful Arc up here and pain across when you're pulling your shoulder across like that then the last test this is going to tell you if you've got AC joint dysfunction or not and this is called the distraction test test also known as the bad cop test so with this one what you want to do is I'm testing my right shoulder going to put my right hand behind my back here just like you're being escorted somewhere by the police and all you're going to do is reach your other hand behind you okay and then pull your arm down okay if you have to you can pull it down this way but it's easier if you pull it down from your with your other arm behind you okay so you're just going to distract so you're going to pull the arm down and if this reproduces pain it's very very likely that you've got AC joint dysfunction okay because you shouldn't have any pain with impingement in this in the bad cop test because that's actually relieving the symptoms of impingement through distraction okay so there you have four tests to differentiate between rotator cuff tendonitis subacromial btis which kind of fall under the shoulder impingement umbrella and AC joint dysfunction okay so if you tested positive on any of those tests or you figured out kind of what you have then check out the blog posts on the Precision movement. coach blog that'll be linked at the end of this video or in the description and we'll share some exercises some techniques to help you out okay hope you enjoyed that one talk to you next time

Channel: Precision Movement

Views: 1,944,220

Keywords: sprained ac joint, ac joint sprain, separated ac joint, shoulders, shoulder pain, ac joint, pain, injury, AC Joint Dysfunction, sprained acromioclavicular joint, pmcoach, AC joint injury, acromioclavicular joint, shoulder impingement test, shoulder impingement exercises, ac joint pain, shoulder pain tests, rehab, exercises, pain relief, shoulder pain exercises, ac joint injury, ac joint dysfunction, shoulder impingement, shoulder pain relief exercises, shoulder joint pain

Id: am0-6R-ceEs

Length: 5min 25sec (325 seconds)

Published: Mon May 08 2017