While I love taking care of shoulder problems in my office, I'm particularly careful of checking to see if anything has torn before I really get going. You can have tears in the muscles, ligaments, and tendons. The cartilage of the shoulder joint is also a possibility.

If you suspect that you may have a shoulder injury, getting checked out thoroughly will help keep you from getting worse and developing painful conditions like "frozen shoulder syndrome."

While most of these shoulder problems are the result of some kind of trauma, I have had experiences where the "trauma" involved was bad posture. The patient's bad posture actually lead to tears in the shoulder muscles.

However, if you're considering doing back exercises with shoulder pain, you may not really be talking about the shoulder at all. Many people point to their upper back area when they are referring to their "shoulders."

This area is not as likely to tear and is really the main place people experience pain with bad posture in addition to the pain between the shoulder blades.

It is expected that this area will receive the greatest amount of strain with forward head posture. As such, this area will improve quickly when posture-improving exercises are introduced and a regular, consistent program has been started.

If you spend a lot of time at the computer or driving, make sure you're neck and back are as straight and in line as possible. If this provides little to no relief, you'd really better get started on strengthening your weakened back muscles before things get out of control.

Dr. Natalie Cordova, a chiropractor and posture expert, wants to help you change your posture for good. Learn to improve posture at http://www.ImproveMyPosture.com