How can you best look after your shoulders?
What's Up Docs?
BBC
4.4 • 659 Ratings
🗓️ 3 March 2026
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Welcome to What’s Up Docs?, the podcast where doctors and identical twins Chris and Xand van Tulleken cut through the confusion around every aspect of our health and wellbeing.
In this episode, Chris and Xand dive into shoulder health. How do your shoulders work? What can go wrong? What to do if you experience problems with your shoulders? They also examine how best to maintain shoulder health through exercises like weightlifting and paying attention to your posture, highlight some important lessons about shoulder health that we can all utilise in our daily lives, and get an insight into what it's like to work with both horses and humans as a physiotherapist.
Joining them to discuss this is Kate Haynes, Chartered Human Physiotherapist and Veterinary Physiotherapist, primarily working with horses and their riders, including for the GB Para Dressage Team.
If you want to get in touch, you can email us at whatsupdocs@bbc.co.uk or WhatsApp us on 08000 665 123.
Presenters: Drs Chris and Xand van Tulleken Guest: Kate Haynes Producer: Faye Lyons-White Executive Producer: Rami Tzabar Editor: Jo Rowntree Assistant Producer: Maia Miller-Lewis Researcher: Mili Ostojic Tech Lead: Reuben Huxtable Visual Producer: Leon Gower Digital Lead: Richard Berry Composer: Phoebe McFarlane Sound Design: Melvin Rickarby
At the BBC: Assistant Commissioner: Greg Smith Commissioning Editor: Rhian Roberts
A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 4
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts. |
| 0:05.6 | Hello, I've just nipped in before your BBC podcast starts to tell you all about |
| 0:09.4 | You're Dead to Me. We're the comedy podcast that takes history seriously. Also from the BBC |
| 0:13.9 | and presented by me, Greg Jenner. I should have told you that at the beginning. Sorry. |
| 0:17.9 | Anyway, like many other BBC podcasts, such as Desert Island Discs, Evil Genius, or In Our Time, your dead to me is available first on BBC Sounds, |
| 0:26.3 | a whole month earlier than anywhere else, in fact. So if you can't wait another day to hear |
| 0:31.2 | the very latest in history and loads of other good stuff, then listen first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:38.6 | Hello and welcome to What's Up Docs. I'm Dr Zand. |
| 0:42.3 | And I'm Dr. Chris. And this is the podcast where we passionately pursue the best ways. |
| 0:46.8 | We can take care of our health and our well-being. |
| 0:49.3 | And we've previously discussed different parts of the body, knees, backs, abs. |
| 0:55.3 | I thought it was time for another one. Right, the musculoskeletal system. I think it's a big deal for everyone. It causes |
| 1:02.0 | lots of problems. So today we're talking about shoulders. Shoulder pain's a common problem. |
| 1:08.9 | And I want to see if we can do for shoulders, what we did for knees. |
| 1:12.3 | I get the odd bit of shoulder pain. |
| 1:14.8 | I think loads of our listeners do, hunching over a desk, leaning over your phone, |
| 1:18.8 | the daily wear and tear of shopping children's suitcases, reaching for things. |
| 1:24.8 | What I'm hoping everyone will get from this episode is what I want, |
| 1:27.8 | which is a bit of reassurance and a bit more confidence in their shoulders. And what do we do |
| 1:33.4 | if something goes wrong? Before we get to our main topic for the day, there's the thing I want to |
| 1:39.0 | share with you. It's the thing you witnessed and I want your perspective on it. A bit of a debrief. |
| 1:42.9 | Okay. Yeah, a little bit of a debrief. You and I are both in a WhatsApp group with a few of our school friends and their partners. And you put a puzzle into the group. I'll describe it to the listeners. It's a picture of two cones filled with water with a tap at the bottom. And the cones have the same volume of water in them. |
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