You lift your arm overhead and hear a pop. You roll your shoulder back and there’s a click. Something in there crunches halfway through a class. It doesn’t really hurt, but it doesn’t sound right either, and by 11pm you’ve read three contradictory articles and gone to bed more worried than you started. Here’s what that noise usually is, and the short list of things that mean it’s worth getting looked at.
A few different things can make a shoulder click, pop or crack, and they are not the same as each other. Sorting out which one you have is most of the answer.
Gas bubbles, which is the most common and the least concerning. Your shoulder joint sits inside a capsule filled with synovial fluid that keeps everything lubricated and moving smoothly. When you move the joint, the pressure inside that fluid changes, and tiny gas bubbles form and collapse. That is the pop. It is the same mechanism as cracking your knuckles. It is painless, it doesn’t happen with every single movement, and the joint usually needs a while before it will do it again. Nothing is breaking and nothing is wearing away. It is just physics.
Tendons and ligaments sliding over bone. Your shoulder is the most mobile joint in your body, and it trades stability for that range of movement. A lot of soft tissue structures travel across each other in a fairly small space, so sometimes a tendon shifts position slightly during a movement and snaps back, which you hear as a click or feel as a dull thunk. Again, with no pain involved, this is usually normal.
If the clicking comes with pain, a catching or locking sensation, weakness, or a feeling that the shoulder might give way, something more is going on. Three things account for most of it.
A rotator cuff problem. The tendons that stabilise your shoulder can become irritated or partially torn, so they no longer glide smoothly under the bone above them. Noise, and often an ache down the outside of the arm, come with it.
A labral tear. The cartilage ring around the socket can be damaged, and a flap of tissue then catches in the joint as you move through certain positions.
Subacromial shoulder pain, often called impingement. The tendons that pass under the point of your shoulder become irritated and sensitive to load, and pain and noise then turn up at the same spot in your range every time. The old picture of something being physically pinched has not held up especially well. It is more useful to think of an irritated tendon that has been asked for more than it is currently up for, which is why loading it well is what settles it.
None of these three need an ambulance. Left alone they can settle, and they can also dig in and become the shoulder that keeps flaring up in the same spot, which is not something you can pick from the outside. They do respond well to being looked at early rather than waited out, which is the whole reason this article exists.
This one is a different mechanism, and it is the noise people describe most often as a crunch or a grind rather than a click. It usually comes from the shoulder blade itself rather than the ball and socket joint. Your scapula doesn’t sit in a socket at all. It glides across the back of your ribcage on a layer of muscle, and when that gliding surface is less smooth than it likes to be, you get a grinding or crackling sound as you roll your shoulders back. The clinical name is scapulothoracic crepitus.
Muscle tension and posture explain most of it. Long stretches at a desk or a wheel leave the muscles that sit between the shoulder blade and the ribs tight and a bit irritable, the blade sits differently against the ribcage, and the movement becomes noisy. It tends to be worse at the end of a long day, better after you move around, and it often changes from week to week, which is a good sign in itself. Bony causes exist and are rare.
When it is painless, this kind of crunching is almost always harmless, however loud it is, and loud is common. It is worth an assessment when it comes with pain, when one side is clearly worse than the other, or when your arm tires quickly overhead, because that usually points at how the shoulder blade is being controlled rather than at damage. That is a strength and movement problem, and it responds to strength and movement work, usually shoulder blade control built up in Clinical Pilates before it is loaded up in the gym.
Some people describe something different again: not just a noise, but a sense that the shoulder slips, shifts or moves in a way they didn’t ask it to, often in one particular position such as reaching behind or throwing. When a click arrives with that feeling, it can point to instability, where the ball moves further on the socket than it should, or to a subluxation, where it partly slips out and goes back in by itself.
It shows up more in younger people and in people who are hypermobile, and it can follow a dislocation or a decent knock. It is worth taking seriously rather than testing repeatedly to see whether it will do it again, because each episode tends to make the next one easier.
The reassuring part is that this responds well to strength-based rehabilitation. Building control through the rotator cuff and the muscles that steady the shoulder blade gives the joint back the stability it is missing, and for most people that work is the main treatment rather than a warm-up to something else. Our Strength classes are a good place for that work to live once your physiotherapist has told you which positions to build into and which to leave alone for now.
You don’t need a scan to work out whether your click is worth paying attention to. Here is what our physiotherapists ask.
Does it hurt? A painless click is almost always benign. A painful one, particularly if the pain is sharp or arrives at a specific point in your range, is worth investigating.
Is there a catch or a lock? If the shoulder feels like it gets stuck for a moment during a movement, that suggests something mechanical is happening inside the joint.
Is it getting worse? A click that has been there for years without changing is a very different thing from one that started recently, is happening more often, or has brought new symptoms with it.
Is there weakness, or has your movement dropped off? Struggling with weights you used to handle easily, an arm that feels unreliable in certain positions, or a range you can no longer reach all say something has changed.
Does the shoulder feel loose or unstable? A sense that it might give way, slip or shift belongs on this list even when the noise itself is painless.
Did it start after a fall or a dislocation? New clicking after an injury deserves an assessment rather than a wait and see.
Is it waking you at night? Shoulder pain that disturbs your sleep or that you can’t lie on is one of the more useful signals we have, and it is worth mentioning early.
Any one of these on its own doesn’t necessarily mean something serious. If you are ticking more than one box, get it looked at properly rather than guessing.
Almost nothing on this page is urgent. These are the exceptions, and they are worth knowing even though they are uncommon. Call 000 if shoulder pain arrives with chest tightness, breathlessness, sweating, nausea, or pain spreading into your jaw or your other arm, because the heart refers pain to the shoulder and that combination is not one to sit on.
Go to an emergency department the same day if your shoulder looks out of shape or you cannot lift the arm at all after a fall, or if the joint is hot, swollen and very painful and you feel unwell or feverish. See your GP rather than waiting if shoulder pain is waking you every night and getting worse, or if it comes with weight loss you can’t explain. Everything else on this page is a booking, not an emergency.
The noise is rarely the problem.
A physiotherapy assessment for a clicking shoulder is not really about the click. We look at how your shoulder blade moves, how the rotator cuff is working, what your thoracic spine is doing, and whether the muscles around the joint are all doing their job or whether some have checked out and left the others to compensate.
Often the click is the symptom rather than the problem. The real issue might be a shoulder blade that isn’t sitting well, which changes the mechanics of the joint and creates impingement, or rotator cuff muscles that have weakened and left the joint less steady than it should be. Address the underlying cause and the noise commonly settles on its own.
This is where physiotherapy earns its place. Not a magic technique that switches the sound off, but working out why it is happening and giving you a plan for it: specific strengthening, adjusting how much load you are asking for and how quickly, retraining a movement pattern, or sometimes just a straight answer that what you are hearing is normal and you can get on with it. Where a scan genuinely adds something, we will say so and organise it, and most clicking shoulders never need one.
If your shoulder clicks but it doesn’t hurt, doesn’t catch, isn’t getting worse, isn’t affecting your strength and doesn’t feel loose, you are almost certainly fine. Keep moving, keep training, and stop Googling it at 11pm.
If any of those things are there, don’t wait for it to become a bigger problem. Come in and let one of our physiotherapists take a look. An assessment can save you months of guessing, and you will usually leave with a clear answer and a plan the same day.
Usually not. A click with no pain, no catching and no loss of strength is one of the most common and least concerning things a shoulder does, and it is often just gas bubbles in the joint fluid or a tendon sliding over bone. It is worth an assessment when the click comes with pain, catching or locking, weakness, a feeling that the shoulder is loose, night pain, or when it started after a fall or a dislocation.
Painless clicking is normally one of two harmless things. Pressure changes inside the joint capsule make tiny gas bubbles form and collapse, which is the same mechanism as cracking your knuckles, or a tendon shifts slightly during a movement and snaps back over bone. Neither damages anything, and neither is a reason to stop training or to avoid the movement.
Most clicking shoulders never need one. A physiotherapy assessment can usually tell from your history and how the shoulder moves and loads whether imaging would change anything, and scans of shoulders that feel fine often show changes that are not causing symptoms. Imaging becomes useful when there is real weakness, a catching or locking shoulder, a significant injury, or symptoms that are not settling as expected, and your physiotherapist or GP can arrange it then.
That crunching usually comes from the shoulder blade gliding over the ribcage rather than from the ball and socket joint, and it is known as scapulothoracic crepitus. Muscle tension and posture explain most of it, particularly after long stretches at a desk, rather than joint damage. When it is painless it is almost always harmless, however loud it sounds.
A click that comes with a sense of the shoulder shifting, slipping or being about to give way can point to instability or a subluxation, where the joint moves further than it should and settles back by itself. It is more common in younger people and in people who are hypermobile, and it can follow a dislocation. It responds well to strength-based rehabilitation, so it is worth getting assessed rather than repeatedly testing whether it will happen again.
Sometimes, though that is not really the goal. When the noise comes from how the shoulder blade and rotator cuff are working, treating that often settles the click as a side effect. Nobody can promise the sound will disappear, and when the click is harmless the more useful outcome is knowing that, so you can keep training without wondering.
Book a physiotherapy appointment at whichever studio suits, or call and describe what your shoulder is doing and when it started. If it turns out to be nothing, we will tell you that too.
All in - 05/08/2026
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