At a glance
What this guide can help you understand
Understand the painful, stiff, and recovery stages of frozen shoulder and how physiotherapy adjusts treatment over time.
What should you bring to a consultation?
Share your main concern, when it started, what affects it, current medicines, and any reports or precautions you have been given.
See our clinical assessment approachWhen should you pause and seek medical advice?
Pause routine exercise and seek medical advice for sudden severe change, new neurological symptoms, breathing difficulty, chest pain, major injury, or feeling acutely unwell.
This guide is educational and does not replace diagnosis or urgent care.
Frozen shoulder, or adhesive capsulitis, commonly causes gradually increasing pain followed by substantial loss of shoulder movement. Reaching overhead, dressing, fastening clothing, and sleeping on the affected side may become difficult.
Assessment
Your physiotherapist compares active and assisted movement, checks the neck and shoulder blade, measures functional limits, and asks about diabetes, thyroid disease, injury, or surgery. Similar symptoms can come from other shoulder conditions, so diagnosis should not be assumed from stiffness alone.
How Treatment Changes
When pain is highly irritable, treatment usually prioritises comfortable movement, sleep and activity advice, and avoiding repeated forceful stretching. As irritability settles, longer gentle stretches, assisted movement, and progressive strengthening can be introduced. Later treatment focuses on reaching, lifting, dressing, and work tasks.
Recovery can be gradual. Pushing aggressively into sharp pain can increase irritability, while doing too little may maintain fear and stiffness. A physiotherapist can coordinate care with a doctor if pain control or diagnosis needs review.
Textbook basis: Principles are synthesised from Kisner & Colby’s Therapeutic Exercise, Magee’s Orthopedic Physical Assessment, and O’Sullivan’s Physical Rehabilitation.
Clinical sources & further reading
These public resources provide general clinical guidance. They do not replace an assessment or an individual treatment plan.
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For this topic, see the pain-management physiotherapy for shoulder recovery.
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