The shoulder is the body's most mobile joint, which also makes it one of the most vulnerable to injury and overuse. Shoulder pain can come from the rotator cuff, the labrum, the joint capsule, surrounding tendons and bursae, or even referred pain from the neck. At Mountain View Pain Center, we diagnose the source of shoulder pain and treat it with a coordinated, non-surgical plan across Pain Management, Physical Therapy, Chiropractic care, and Acupuncture.
Rotator cuff strains and tears develop from repetitive overhead motion or acute injury. Shoulder impingement occurs when tendons are pinched during arm movement. Frozen shoulder (adhesive capsulitis) causes progressive stiffness and pain, often without a clear injury. Osteoarthritis wears down joint cartilage over time. Bursitis inflames the fluid-filled sacs that cushion the joint. Labral injuries, including SLAP tears, affect the cartilage rim that stabilizes the joint. Referred pain from cervical radiculopathy can also present as shoulder pain — one reason accurate diagnosis matters. Learn more about neck pain.
Pain when reaching overhead or behind the back, night pain that interrupts sleep (common with rotator cuff problems), weakness when lifting, clicking or catching sensations, and progressive stiffness with loss of range of motion.
Your visit starts with a history and physical exam, including range-of-motion and strength testing to isolate which structures are involved. When needed, we use imaging to confirm the diagnosis. Because neck problems can masquerade as shoulder pain, our providers examine the cervical spine as well.
Request Your Appointment — clinics across Colorado and Arizona, or call (720) 749-5599.
Less often than you would think. Degenerative rotator cuff tears — the kind that show up on imaging in patients over 50 without any single injury behind them — respond as well to structured rehabilitation as they do to surgical repair in a large share of cases. The tear on the scan is not, by itself, the decision.
Frozen shoulder (adhesive capsulitis) is its own case. It follows a long arc through freezing, frozen and thawing phases, and it is markedly more common in people with diabetes or thyroid conditions. Skilled treatment does not skip the arc, but it shortens it and makes it far more bearable — and a well-timed intra-articular injection combined with a specific stretching program is usually the difference.
Our evaluation covers rotator cuff tendinopathy and tears, frozen shoulder, impingement-type pain with overhead activity, instability and post-dislocation problems, AC joint pain at the top of the shoulder, and cervical referral — because a painful shoulder is sometimes a neck.
The shoulder is a shallow ball sitting in a socket that is barely a socket, held together almost entirely by soft tissue. That design buys an enormous range of movement and pays for it in vulnerability, and it is why where the pain sits tells you a great deal about what is irritated.
Pain on the outside of the upper arm, roughly where a shirt sleeve badge would sit, is the classic rotator cuff and bursa location — and notably, that is where cuff problems are felt even though the structure itself sits higher up. Pain right on top of the shoulder, at the point where the collarbone meets the shoulder blade, usually belongs to the AC joint, and people can often put one finger on it. Pain deep in the front of the shoulder, felt in the joint rather than on it, points toward the biceps tendon or the joint itself.
Pain between the shoulder blade and the spine is a different story and frequently is not a shoulder problem at all — it is often referred from the neck. If your shoulder pain travels below the elbow, or comes with tingling in the hand, the neck is the first place we look. See neck pain.
A cuff problem usually announces itself as a painful arc: the shoulder is comfortable at rest, hurts through the middle of the range as you lift the arm out to the side, and then eases again near the top. Reaching behind you — for a seatbelt, into a back pocket, to fasten something — is often the first ordinary movement that becomes difficult.
Night pain is the symptom people find hardest to live with, and it is characteristic. Lying on the affected side becomes impossible, and many people end up sleeping in a chair before they book an appointment. That is worth reporting plainly, because disrupted sleep changes how pain is experienced during the day and it changes what we prioritize.
Weakness matters more than pain for sorting out what is going on. An arm that hurts to lift but can be lifted is a different problem from an arm that cannot be held out to the side at all once someone else has placed it there.
There is a particular pattern worth naming because it changes the plan completely. If the shoulder has become genuinely stiff — if someone else moving your relaxed arm cannot get it through the range either — that is a frozen shoulder picture rather than a painful one, and it is managed differently from a cuff problem.
It typically moves through stages: a painful phase where the shoulder hurts constantly and gradually loses range, a stiff phase where the pain settles but the movement does not come back, and a long thawing phase. The whole arc is measured in many months. We are not going to give you a number, because the published ranges are wide and the individual variation is wider, and an invented timeline is worse than no timeline.
What we can say is that pushing hard into a stiff, irritable shoulder tends to set it back, and that the treatment sequence for this pattern deliberately looks gentler and slower than people expect.
Shoulder pain accompanied by chest pressure, breathlessness, sweating, nausea, or pain spreading into the jaw or down the left arm needs emergency services, not a clinic appointment. Referred cardiac pain can present in the shoulder, and it is not something to sit on and see about.
Get urgent assessment for a shoulder that looks visibly deformed after a fall, an arm you cannot lift at all following an injury, or a shoulder that is hot, red, swollen and painful alongside a fever. Seek prompt evaluation for progressive weakness or numbness in the arm or hand, and for shoulder pain with unexplained weight loss or night sweats.
These are the exceptions. Everything else is worked up in the normal way.
No referral is needed for Chiropractic, Physical Therapy, Acupuncture or Pain Management, and our goal is to get you in within the same week.
The examination is the centerpiece for shoulders. We look at how you move the arm yourself and how it moves when it is relaxed and someone else moves it, because the gap between those two is what separates a stiff shoulder from a painful one. We test the cuff muscles individually, look at the shoulder blade's control on the ribcage, and screen the neck, since a meaningful share of shoulder complaints originate there. Imaging is ordered when it would change what we do.
Bring a photo ID and your insurance card, any previous imaging, and a note of which everyday movements have become difficult — dressing, reaching overhead, sleeping on that side. If a joint injection is the right next step, it is performed in office at every clinic. If another interventional step is the right next step, it is performed in office at Northglenn, north Colorado Springs, Mesa and Glendale, and the other clinics coordinate it to one of those.
Keep the shoulder moving within the range that does not flare it. Total rest is the single most common self-inflicted setback with shoulders, because stiffness arrives quickly and is much harder to undo than soreness. Gentle pendulum swings and supported range-of-motion work, done often and briefly, beat one determined session.
For sleep, lie on the unaffected side with a pillow hugged in front of you to support the sore arm, or sleep propped up. Both take pressure off the joint and both are worth trying before you give up and move to a chair.
Set up your desk so the working arm is not held away from the body, and move the things you reach for most often below shoulder height for a few weeks. Small changes to how often you go overhead do more than any stretch.
Every Mountain View Pain Center clinic has Pain Management, Physical Therapy, Chiropractic care and Acupuncture in the same building — so if shoulder pain needs more than one kind of care, you do not get handed off to another practice.
Colorado: Denver, Aurora, Colorado Springs, Lakewood, Littleton, Highlands Ranch, Lone Tree, Northglenn, Lafayette, Greeley, Fort Collins.
Arizona: Phoenix, Mesa, Chandler, Glendale, Peoria.
No referral is needed in either state. Find your nearest clinic on the full clinic map, or call Colorado (720) 749-5599 or Arizona (602) 325-2024.
Last updated: July 23, 2026.
If shoulder pain lasts more than a few weeks, wakes you at night, follows an injury, or comes with weakness or loss of motion, get it evaluated. Early treatment of rotator cuff and frozen shoulder problems typically shortens recovery.
Yes. Irritated nerves in the cervical spine can refer pain to the shoulder and upper arm. Our exam distinguishes neck-driven pain from true shoulder problems so treatment targets the right structure.
Usually not at first. Most shoulder pain is diagnosed with a history and physical exam. Imaging is added when symptoms don't improve with conservative care or when a significant tear is suspected.
Many partial tears and degenerative tears improve with structured Physical Therapy and Pain Management. Surgical referral is considered for large acute tears or when conservative care doesn't restore function.
Most patients can schedule directly without a referral. Some insurance plans require one for coverage — we verify your benefits before your first visit, so call (720) 749-5599 and we'll handle the details.
Lying down changes how the shoulder is loaded and removes the muscular support it has during the day, so an irritated tendon or bursa is felt more. Night pain is one of the findings the examination pays attention to.
Yes. You can book directly, and appointments are usually available within the same week.
Physical Therapy aimed at the rotator cuff and the shoulder blade, Chiropractic care where the neck and upper back are contributing, and a joint injection where the examination points to the joint or the bursa.
Shoulder Pain is treated at every Mountain View Pain Center clinic in Colorado and Arizona — see the full clinic map, Colorado or Arizona.
