Your Shoulder Clicks and Catches. Should You Be Worried?

You reach your arm overhead.

Click.

Bring it back down.

Click.

Do it again just to make sure you didn't imagine it.

Yep. Still there.

Maybe your shoulder has been doing this for years. Or maybe the clicking appeared recently and now you can't stop noticing it.

Either way, it's pretty easy for your brain to jump straight to:

Something in there must be rubbing.

Did I tear something?

Am I making it worse every time it clicks?

The reassuring answer is that shoulders can make noise without something necessarily being wrong.

But there's an important difference between a shoulder that simply clicks and carries on with its day, and one that painfully catches, feels unstable, becomes weak, or stops moving normally.

So instead of listening only to the noise, let's look at what else your shoulder is telling you.

First, shoulders are allowed to make noise

Shoulders move a lot.

Think about everything your arm can do.

Overhead.

Behind your back.

Across your body.

Out to the side.

Around in a circle.

And all of that movement involves your upper arm, shoulder blade, collarbone, muscles, tendons, and surrounding joints working together.

Sometimes movement comes with sound or sensation.

You might notice a click.

A pop.

A little clunk.

Maybe some grinding or crackling.

The medical word crepitus is sometimes used to describe these joint noises or sensations.

But the existence of a noise doesn't automatically tell us why it's happening or whether it's a problem.

That's the first thing we'd want you to know.

Does clicking mean you've torn your rotator cuff?

Not necessarily.

This is one of those assumptions that can make an otherwise harmless click suddenly feel terrifying.

A 2024 study looked specifically at mechanical shoulder symptoms like clicking and popping in people being evaluated for suspected rotator cuff problems.

The researchers found that these symptoms weren't associated with full-thickness rotator cuff tears, tear size, tear retraction, or several other structural findings.

In fact, clicking and popping performed poorly as a way of identifying a full-thickness rotator cuff tear.

So hearing a click doesn't give us enough information to say:

"There goes my rotator cuff."

Your shoulder needs more context than that.

What if your shoulder clicks but doesn't hurt?

This is where we'd usually be much less concerned.

Maybe your shoulder clicks during a push-up.

Maybe it pops the first time you reach overhead in the morning.

Maybe you've been able to make it clunk on command since you were a teenager.

But it doesn't hurt.

It isn't getting weaker.

You haven't lost movement.

It doesn't feel like it's going to come out of place.

And you can still do everything you normally do.

In that situation, the sound itself may not need fixing.

We don't need every joint in your body to move silently.

Research gives us another useful reminder here: imaging can reveal plenty of shoulder findings in people who have no shoulder symptoms at all.

A 2024 systematic review found glenohumeral joint imaging abnormalities in asymptomatic adults, although prevalence estimates varied considerably and the certainty of the evidence was limited.

A newer 2025 systematic review also found rotator cuff abnormalities on imaging in people with completely asymptomatic shoulders.

So neither a sound nor an imaging finding automatically equals a problem that needs treatment.

How your shoulder feels and functions matters too.

But what if it actually catches?

This is where I'd pay a little more attention.

People use the word "catching" to mean different things.

Sometimes they mean:

"I hear a click at the same point every time I lift my arm."

Other times they mean:

"My shoulder actually feels like it gets stuck for a second."

Those are different experiences.

Maybe there's a painful catch as you reach overhead.

Maybe you hesitate at one point because it feels like the shoulder doesn't want to move through it.

Maybe you have to change position before the arm continues.

That's useful information for a physiotherapist.

It still doesn't tell us exactly which structure is responsible, but a painful or function-limiting catch deserves more attention than a random painless click.

What if it clicks every single time you lift your arm?

Frequency alone doesn't necessarily make the click dangerous.

You could have a repeatable click that doesn't hurt and doesn't affect anything you do.

Or you could have a click that happens less often but comes with significant pain.

Guess which one we'd probably want to know more about?

The second one.

Instead of counting how many times your shoulder clicks, ask:

Does it hurt?

Has your movement changed?

Does the arm feel weaker?

Does it actually lock or get stuck?

Does the shoulder feel unstable?

Did it start after an injury?

Is it stopping you from doing something?

Those questions give us much more useful information than the sound alone.

What about clicking during workouts?

This one makes people nervous.

You do a shoulder press.

Click.

Try another rep.

Click.

And suddenly you're wondering whether finishing the set is slowly destroying your shoulder.

If the movement is comfortable, your shoulder feels strong, and the click has been there without causing problems, the sound alone doesn't necessarily mean you need to stop exercising.

But pay attention to the bigger picture.

If a previously painless click becomes painful, your shoulder starts feeling weaker, the movement feels unstable, or something genuinely catches, that's different.

You may need to temporarily modify the exercise and figure out what's going on.

That doesn't necessarily mean:

"Never shoulder press again."

It may simply mean your shoulder deserves a closer look before you keep loading it the same way.

Could it be your shoulder blade?

Sometimes people notice clicking or grinding around the shoulder blade rather than deep inside the shoulder.

And this is where you might come across the term scapular dyskinesis online.

Be careful before deciding your shoulder blade is moving "wrong."

A 2023 systematic review looked at scapular dyskinesis in people both with and without shoulder symptoms. Across the included studies, it was found in about 48% of asymptomatic participants.

Nearly half.

The authors specifically raised concerns about medicalizing a finding that may be present in plenty of people without pain.

So if someone watches your shoulder blade move and tells you it's "abnormal," that finding needs context too.

We don't need to make every slightly different shoulder-blade movement into a problem.

What if the shoulder feels like it's slipping or coming out?

That's a different conversation.

Some people aren't describing a harmless click when they say their shoulder "clunks."

They're describing a feeling of instability.

Maybe the shoulder feels loose.

Maybe certain positions make you nervous because it feels like the joint could slip.

Maybe you've had a previous dislocation.

Maybe you actually have episodes where the shoulder partially or fully comes out of place.

Shoulder instability can involve clicking or clunking, but the feeling of instability or apprehension is important context. Research on atraumatic shoulder instability also supports physiotherapy approaches involving education, movement retraining, strengthening, and functional rehabilitation, although there isn't one clearly superior program.

So if your "clicking" shoulder also feels like it can't be trusted in certain positions, tell your physiotherapist that.

That's much more informative than simply saying it makes noise.

When should you pay more attention to a clicking shoulder?

Here's the simple version.

A painless shoulder that's been clicking forever but still moves normally is very different from a shoulder that suddenly started painfully catching after an injury.

We'd be more interested if the clicking or catching comes with:

Pain that persists or is getting worse

New or noticeable weakness

Loss of shoulder movement

A genuine locking or stuck sensation

A feeling that the shoulder is slipping or unstable

Numbness or tingling

Swelling or visible changes after an injury

Difficulty using the arm normally

Those extra symptoms don't automatically mean something serious has happened.

They simply give us a better reason to assess what's going on.

What would a physiotherapist actually look at?

Probably more than the click.

A physiotherapist may ask when you first noticed it, which movements bring it on, whether there's pain, whether you've had an injury, and what you're currently having trouble doing.

Then they may look at things like shoulder movement, strength, how the shoulder responds to resistance or load, and whether another area such as the neck is contributing to your symptoms.

The important thing is that the assessment shouldn't become:

"Let's make your shoulder stop making that sound at all costs."

The goal is understanding whether the sound actually matters.

If your shoulder is painful or not functioning normally, physiotherapy may include exercise and movement-based rehabilitation depending on what's found. Exercise has good support as a first-line approach for several common forms of nontraumatic shoulder pain.

If your shoulder is completely comfortable and functional?

You may not need a rehabilitation program just because it occasionally clicks.

Do you need an MRI because your shoulder clicks?

Not automatically.

It's understandable to want a picture of what's going on when something inside your shoulder feels strange.

But imaging findings need to be interpreted carefully.

A 2024 systematic review found several glenohumeral abnormalities on imaging in shoulders that weren't causing symptoms.

And a 2025 review found rotator cuff abnormalities including tendinopathy and tears in asymptomatic shoulders too, although estimates varied substantially between studies and evidence certainty was low to very low.

So imagine this:

Your shoulder clicks but doesn't hurt.

You get an MRI.

The report mentions an abnormality.

Now suddenly you're afraid to use a shoulder that wasn't actually bothering you before.

That's exactly why imaging needs context.

A scan can show us what your shoulder looks like.

It doesn't automatically tell us why it clicked.

Should you keep making it click on purpose?

You know who you are.

You discover one exact movement that makes your shoulder pop.

So naturally you do it twelve more times.

If the movement is painless, an occasional click isn't necessarily concerning.

But you also don't need to repeatedly chase the sound or keep testing whether it's still there.

And if making it click is painful, irritating the area, or leaving the shoulder feeling worse afterward, that's a pretty reasonable reason to stop repeatedly provoking it.

You don't need to win an argument with your shoulder.

Your shoulder doesn't have to be silent to be healthy

This is probably the biggest takeaway.

Bodies make noise.

Knees crack.

Ankles pop.

Shoulders click.

And sometimes those sounds become so familiar that you barely notice them.

A shoulder that occasionally clicks but feels strong, comfortable, and completely functional may not need anything done to it.

But if the sound comes with pain, true catching, weakness, instability, loss of movement, or started after an injury, that's when we'd want to understand the bigger picture.

At Hidden Valley Health Centre in NW Calgary, physiotherapy can help assess shoulder movement, strength, symptoms, and function when clicking or catching is happening alongside discomfort or difficulty using the arm.

You don't need to walk in knowing what's making the noise.

You can literally start with:

"Every time I move my arm like this, it does this weird click."

Then show us.

Sometimes that click matters.

And sometimes your shoulder is simply a little noisy.