Last Updated – April 2026
As a mobile sports and therapeutic massage therapist in York, I treat a very high number of clients suffering with tight, painful necks and shoulders, especially desk workers, drivers, and weight trainers.
After living with chronic neck and shoulder pain myself for over 30 years following a car accident, I learned that standard “rub where it hurts” massages usually only provide short-term relief. The pain almost always comes back because the real underlying causes aren’t properly addressed.
In this guide, I explain the most common issues I see in my York clients and how my personalised, non-generic approach — combining targeted remedial massage with movement pattern correction from my personal training background — delivers much longer-lasting results.
Whether your neck and shoulder pain comes from poor posture, long hours at a desk, stress, heavy training, or old injuries, I focus on finding and fixing the root mechanical problems rather than just treating the symptoms.
Table Of Contents
What Is A Neck And Shoulder Sports Massage
Although everybody is different, a neck and shoulder massage usually involves treating the same muscles. These are the trapezius in your upper back, the deltoid muscles of your shoulders and the muscles in your neck. You might also require some massage work to the rhomboid muscles between your shoulders blades and your rotator cuff muscles. Or even the erector spinae which run along each side of your spine. Each massage is unique to you, however.
Why Have A Sports Massage
Whether we are sitting or standing, at home or at work, we are frequently looking down at a screen. This could be your laptop, your phone, your ipad or your TV. This puts an unnatural strain on the muscles of your neck and shoulders which can lead to stiffness and poor posture. Combining this with stress and heavy lifting or exercise can leave you in constant pain that goes on to cause other problems. These can include headaches, jaw pain or insomnia, or it could progress into lower back problems too.
Other common causes of pain or discomfort include poor posture, which often comes from sitting incorrectly or for long periods. Also stress or anxiety, which can cause prolonged shrugging of shoulders and jaw clenching. As well as this, untreated injuries, whether recent or long-term, can result in tightness and inflammation.
A massage can help these issues by loosening your muscles to relax tension and correct imbalances (1).
Fix Headaches With A Sports Massage For Neck And Shoulders
While there are many things that can trigger a headache, one of the most common is tension in the muscles of your upper back, shoulders and neck. In turn this causes tension across your scalp and forehead. The usual culprits for this are poor posture and stress. A neck and shoulder massage can relax tight muscles in your neck allowing the head to be held in the correct position. This has also been shown to help reduce the severity and intensity of tension headaches and migraines, or even prevent them altogether.
Sports Massage For Stress And Anxiety
Different people hold stress and anxiety in different parts of their body. However, muscles in the jaw, shoulders and neck are among the most affected. This is because it is a natural response when under pressure, such as in a stressful or anxious situation, to shrug your shoulders. If this happens a lot it results in tight, shortened muscles which never properly relax and can cause chronic pain. It also increases the risk of injury. A neck and shoulder massage can help by softening the muscles and removing stored tension, which gives an overall feeling of calmness and relaxation.
Neck And Shoulder Massage For Jaw Pain
Another response to stress, besides shrugging your shoulders, is to clench your jaw or even grind your teeth. You might not even be aware that you are doing it. But whether it’s caused by teeth grinding from stress, tightness in the neck or an imbalance in the muscles of the jaw, jaw pain is most often felt in the joint just in front of the ears. A neck and shoulder massage can help by reducing stress in the body and relaxing tension in your muscles. This can reduce the damage done by clenching your teeth and can even prevent you from doing it at all.
A Sports Massage For Neck And Shoulders Can Improve Your Posture
Poor posture in the upper body is usually the result of too much computer or phone use, prolonged sitting or standing, or pain resulting from injury. But whatever the original cause, an untreated poor posture can very often get worse and even cause issues elsewhere. If you are looking down at a phone or ipad a lot you are weakening the muscles at the back of your neck and shoulders. If you work with a desktop computer you are more likely to be shortening those muscles and causing tension. Either way, the result will be a change from the natural curvature of your neck and upper back. This can cause pain, such as in the neck, shoulders or jaw, headaches, or even issues with the lower back. A neck and shoulder massage can relax tight muscles and correct imbalances to improve posture, all while reducing stress and tension.
Yes, and for many of my clients, it’s the main reason they book. Most tension headaches aren’t actually “in your head” they are referred pain from muscles in your neck and shoulders. Once they get tight they can cause issues further along the chain.
The main culprit is the trapezius muscle. This is the large, diamond-shaped muscle that runs from the base of your skull, out to your shoulders, and down your back. When you’re stressed or hunched over a desk, your shoulders naturally creep up towards your ears. This puts your upper traps under constant strain. Because this muscle attaches directly to your skull, that tension travels upwards, often resulting in a dull, aching pressure or a pulling sensation at the back of the head.
I also focus on the small suboccipital muscles, which are a group of four tiny muscles tucked right under the rim of your skull. When the trapezius is tight, these muscles have to work twice as hard to keep your head level. They can eventually pinch the nerves that run over the top of your head, causing that familiar tight band feeling around your forehead or pain behind the eyes.
By carefully releasing the trigger points in your traps and relaxing those tiny muscles at the base of your skull I can reduce the severity of headaches or even prevent them altogether.
Some people are surprised that I’m an Advanced Personal Trainer as well as a massage therapist, but the two work very well together. Massage is great for fixing the symptom (the tight muscle), but my PT background helps me find the cause (the bad movement habit). During our session, I’m looking at how you naturally hold yourself. Is one shoulder higher than the other? Are your shoulder blades “winging” out? I don’t just want to rub the muscle, I want to give you simple, practical tips on how to sit or move differently so that your body doesn’t tighten up again.
I get asked this a lot, usually by people who feel they’ve tried everything. But I can tell you from personal experience that it’s never too late. I had with chronic lower back pain for over 30 years following a car accident in 1989. The body is incredibly good at healing if you show it that it’s safe to do so and give it the assistance it needs. Whether you’ve had your own big event or if your issue has been decades in the making, we can work together to “un-learn” those old patterns of tension. Because I spent decades figuring out how to fix my own back, I use that same approach to find out why your neck and shoulders are stuck and get them moving properly again.
Book A Mobile Massage
If you would like to book a sports massage for neck and shoulders in York please contact me on 07713 250352 or email david@massageinyork.co.uk. Includes sports massage, deep tissue massage and Swedish massage. For more information on booking click here
