Written by Zita Sham, Fairuuz Saleh and Shiv Mohan Banka, Principal Physiotherapists at Phoenix Rehab.Clinically reviewed by Louise Yow, Principal Physiotherapist and Director, AHPC A1300363H.Last reviewed 28 September 2026.
You noticed it reaching for the seatbelt. Or putting on a jacket, or getting a plate down from the top shelf, and your arm just stopped at a point it never used to stop at.
Then it started waking you at night, on that side, and you found yourself sleeping propped up with a pillow under the arm.
If that is roughly where you are, here is the thing nobody tends to explain properly, and it changes what you should do next.
Frozen shoulder is not a stiff shoulder that needs stretching harder
A frozen shoulder, or adhesive capsulitis, is the capsule around the shoulder joint thickening and tightening down onto the joint. It isn’t a muscle that has gone tight, and it isn’t something you loosen off by forcing it.
It moves through three fairly predictable stages. Freezing, where it hurts most and is still moving. Frozen, where the pain settles but the movement is genuinely locked down. Thawing, where the range slowly comes back. Left completely alone it often does settle, but the whole thing can take one to three years.
That’s the part worth sitting with. One to three years of not being able to reach behind you properly.
And here’s the bit that catches people out: in the freezing stage, stretching hard into pain can make it worse and keep you there longer. So the person who grits their teeth and pushes through it every morning, because that’s what you do with a stiff joint, is often the person who stays stuck the longest.
Which stage you are in changes what helps
That’s why the same exercise can be right for one person and wrong for another with what looks like the same shoulder.
In the freezing stage, when it’s painful and still moving, the work is gentle and frequent. You’re keeping what range you have got, not chasing more. Short, often, and nowhere near your pain limit.
In the frozen stage, when the pain has quietened and the stiffness is the problem, you can start working at the end of range with more intent. This is where progress actually gets made, and where hands-on work at the joint earns its place.
In the thawing stage, the job changes again, to getting strength and control back through the range you have regained, so the shoulder holds up to real loads rather than just moving freely in the air.
Push a freezing shoulder like a frozen one and you set yourself back. That’s the single most useful thing on this page.
It is also why we work in stages rather than by the calendar. How the Phoenix Recovery Protocol works.
One thing to check before you start
Frozen shoulder is more common, and tends to run longer, in people with diabetes or a thyroid condition. If either applies to you and your shoulder is stiffening, that is worth mentioning to your GP rather than just working through it. It doesn’t change the exercises, but it does change how long to expect this to take and it is worth having on the record.
Worth a doctor rather than a therapist first if any of this is true: the shoulder stiffened after a fall or a direct injury, you can’t lift the arm at all, there is significant swelling or heat, or you have numbness or weakness going down the arm. Those aren’t frozen shoulder patterns.
The exercises
Stretch to the point where you feel tension. Not to the point where you feel pain. If you’re still feeling it an hour later, you went too far.
Pendulum swing
Rest your good hand on a table and let the sore arm hang straight down, completely relaxed. Let it swing in small circles, using your body to start the movement rather than the shoulder muscles. Both directions. The point is to let the joint move without the muscles gripping.
Start small. As it settles, widen the circle. Later on you can hold a light weight to let gravity do more of the work.
Finger walk up the wall
Stand an arm’s length from a wall. Touch the wall at waist height and walk your fingers up it, letting your fingers take the arm higher than the shoulder wants to lift it on its own. Go up to tension, hold, walk back down.
Useful because you can actually see progress. Mark where you got to.
Towel stretch behind the back
Hold a towel with your good hand over your shoulder, the other end down behind your back in your sore hand. Use the good arm to gently pull upward.
This one gets at the movement people miss most: reaching behind you. Doing up a bra, getting a wallet out of a back pocket, tucking in a shirt.
Cross-body reach
Bring the sore arm across your chest, and use your other hand at the upper arm, not the elbow, to draw it further across. Hold, release.
External rotation at the doorway
Elbow tucked into your side and bent to a right angle, forearm pointing forward. Keeping the elbow pinned to your ribs, turn the forearm outward.
External rotation is usually the first movement a frozen shoulder loses and the last to come back, which is why it gets its own exercise rather than being lumped in with the rest.
Shoulder blade squeeze
Sit or stand relaxed. Draw the shoulder blades back and together without shrugging up toward your ears. Hold, release.
Not a stretch for the joint. This one keeps the shoulder blade working properly, because when the joint stops moving the blade starts compensating and that causes its own problems later.
Doorway chest stretch
Forearm on the door frame, elbow at shoulder height, step gently forward through the doorway.
The chest tightens up when a shoulder has been guarded for months. Loosening it gives the joint more room to work in.
Little and often beats long and occasional. Five to ten minutes, a few times a day, is more use than half an hour once.
Where this usually goes
If it is settling on its own. Range is slowly coming back, the night pain is easing, you’re getting a bit further up the wall each week. Keep going. You don’t need anyone.
If nothing has changed in six to eight weeks. Same range, same night pain, same point on the wall. That is the one worth acting on. Not because something’s going wrong, but because a shoulder that isn’t moving on its own responds to hands-on work at the joint in a way it doesn’t respond to home stretching, and the longer the capsule stays tight the more work it takes. This is what the Stalled Recovery Review is for.
If you have had a shoulder operation and it has stiffened since. That is a different problem with a different clock on it, and it shouldn’t wait. See physiotherapy after surgery.
What we’d actually do
The first appointment is 45 minutes and it’s assessment and treatment in one. We work out which stage you’re actually in, which movements you have lost and by how much, and whether the stiffness is the joint capsule or something else wearing a similar face. Then we treat it in the same appointment rather than sending you away to come back another day.
You leave knowing what stage you are in, what is limiting you, and what has to be true before the next stage of work starts. Written down, in your hand.
What our patients say
Google reviews from our clinics in Singapore.
$230, nett, no GST, for the 45 minutes. Your therapist tells you at that appointment how many you’re likely to need and writes it down.
More on how we treat this condition: frozen shoulder physiotherapy in Singapore.
If your shoulder is stiff but you have not had it looked at, and especially if you have diabetes or a thyroid condition, see your GP as well. This article is general information, not a diagnosis of your shoulder.
Where are you with this right now?
1. It is settling on its own
Many shoulder problems settle over weeks to months. Night pain that slowly becomes less frequent, and reach that slowly returns, are the usual pattern. If you are reaching higher this month than last, and sleeping better, it is on the normal course. You do not need us for this, and we would rather say so.
2. It has stopped improving
You put your shirt on that arm first. The top shelf belongs to someone else now. You have stopped reaching behind you without thinking.
Reach comes back before strength does. A shoulder that goes overhead but cannot hold anything there is halfway, not finished. That is the gap worth measuring, and it is not measured by how you feel on the day.
The Stalled Recovery Review is three appointments over three weeks with the same therapist, because what a joint does under load cannot be read in one visit. The first finds what is limiting it. The next two measure how it responds. $690, nett, no GST, which is three appointments at $230.
3. You have had surgery, or you have a date
Recovery after an operation has a shape, and knowing which stage you are in tells you whether you are on it. See the Rotator Cuff Repair Recovery Program, or shoulder physiotherapy if you are not sure which applies to you.
All of it runs on the same four stages. The Phoenix Recovery Protocol explains what each stage works on and what you have to meet to move up. No referral needed to start.
Next step
Find out which stage you are in
Pain is the first thing to leave. Movement and strength are the last things trained back, and most people stop before that part is done. One Assessment and Treatment is a single 45-minute appointment at $230, nett, no GST. Your therapist finds what is actually limiting you, treats it in the same appointment, and you leave with your current stage and a written plan.
Prefer to phone? Each of our five clinics has its own number on the clinics page. No referral needed to book.
Related reading
- physiotherapy after surgery
- shoulder physiotherapy
- Pain Between Shoulder Blades: Causes and Care Options
- How to Sleep With a Frozen Shoulder: Practical Tips
- Neck and Shoulder Pain on Left Side: Causes and Care
- The Phoenix Recovery Protocol, and the four stages
- All recovery programs, hand and physio
- Sleeping Positions for Frozen Shoulder
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