ADM Ottawa Physiotherapy | Bells Corners (613) 820-8765 | Montreal Road (613) 749-7461

Tag: shoulder pain

ADM Ottawa PhysiotherapyBlogshoulder pain
A grandfather and granddaughter raking autumn leaves together in a yard
By ADM Ottawa Physiotherapy Exercises, Physio , , , , , , , , ,

Rake It Easy: Why Fall Yard Work Leaves Your Back, Shoulders, and Knees Aching

The leaves are down, the garden has finished for the year, and there’s one more list of outdoor jobs standing between you and winter: raking, bagging, clearing the beds, cutting back perennials, and hauling the pots and patio furniture into storage. With the weather still mild, it’s tempting to knock it all out in a single weekend.

Then Monday arrives with a stiff low back, a sore shoulder, or knees that complain on the stairs. It’s one of the most common stories we hear at the clinic every October, and it’s rarely because of one dramatic moment. More often it’s a few hours of ordinary-looking work that the body wasn’t ready for.

Here’s why fall yard work is harder on your body than it looks, and what actually helps.

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Person feeling neck and shoulder strain at a home office desk
By ADM Ottawa Physiotherapy Physio, Work Injury , , , , , , , , ,

Back to Routine: Why Your Desk Job Might Be Behind Your Fall Aches and Pains

September has a way of resetting everyone’s schedule at once. Kids are back in school, calendars fill back up with meetings, and for a lot of us, the summer’s looser routine — walking to the dock, working in the yard, biking somewhere instead of driving — gets swapped for long stretches back at a desk. It doesn’t take long for the body to notice.

Every fall, we see the same pattern at the clinic: neck stiffness that sets in by mid-afternoon, a dull ache between the shoulder blades that wasn’t there over the summer, a low back that feels locked up by the time the workday ends. The instinct is to blame stress, or just being busier — but the real cause is usually simpler, and a lot more fixable, than that.

If this is a desk you’ve been sitting at for years without a problem, it’s easy to assume you just need more breaks — and sometimes that’s exactly it. But when an area that never used to bother you suddenly does, that can also be a sign that something underlying — a stiff joint, a weak muscle group, a habit that’s crept in — has been building for a while and is only now showing up.

Here’s what’s actually going on when a desk job starts showing up in your neck, shoulders, and back — and what genuinely helps.

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