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It was recently my birthday. It wasn’t a “big” birthday — one of those round-numbered ones that feels like a milestone — but nevertheless, it got me thinking about aging.

When I was a kid, growing older felt like an achievement. Each year that passed marked one step closer to adulthood, which for me meant independence and freedom. I remember going to the city with my dad to see plays or go to the Met and seeing a group of women having lunch in a café. It seemed glamorous and exciting to be an adult. I couldn’t wait.

Likewise, I never quite understood the popular antipathy toward old age. At Spencer’s, a novelty store at the Galleria Mall in White Plains where my friends and I would find gag gifts, I was always perplexed by the section of “Over the Hill” merchandise. I mean, my grandparents didn’t listen to my music or play Nintendo with me, but they were cool in their own way — not crusty and out of touch like the caricatures suggested. The geezer jokes and “lying about your age” punchlines that adorned the mugs and t-shirts there seemed to come from another world, one that didn’t make sense to me.

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If you sit at a desk all day, stretching your arms up to the sky has likely become one of those mid-meeting tics that you don’t even realize you’re doing… until one day, you reach toward the ceiling, and your shoulder pings with pain. It’s one of the tell-tale signs that you’re dealing with inflammation and a cue that you should start treating your body to some shoulder impingement exercises before it gets any worse.

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“A shoulder impingement is an acute weakness and pain in the front and side of the shoulder, especially while the arm is in motion,” says Joey Cifelli, the assistant fitness manager at Crunch Union Square in New York City. It can happen for a number of reasons, including poor posture or simply going too hard on shoulder day. No matter how it started, though, trainers agree that you’ll want to nip it in the bud. Scroll on for everything you need to know about shoulder impingement, plus the exercises you can do at home to make those Zoom stretch sessions painless.

What is shoulder impingement?

Shoulder impingement happens when the tissues and tendons in your shoulders stop doing their jobs properly. Usually, these two elements act as a sort of protective cushion between your joints and muscles, absorbing the force of your movements so that you can raise and lower your arms without pain. “Usually, when we’re doing something like trying to lift our arms overhead, our muscles will transfer the force to a tendon, which helps transfer the movement from muscle to bone,” says athletic trainer Cristian Plascencia, CSCS. “But when people experience shoulder impingement, this ability to transfer and absorb force is compromised due to high amounts of inflammation in the shoulder joint.” The result: You’re not able to move through your full range of motion without feeling pain, which can lead to issues both on the mat and in your everyday life.

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Photo: Getty Images/Travel Couples

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