What Exercises Can I Do With a Broken Collarbone?

Most of your body can keep moving while a broken collarbone heals. Walking, stationary cycling, and lower-body exercises are generally safe from the earliest days, and gentle elbow, wrist, and hand movements help prevent stiffness in the arm on the injured side. Shoulder-specific exercises phase in more gradually, typically starting with small pendulum-style motions and progressing to resistance work over a period of weeks to months. The exact timeline depends on whether you had surgery, where the fracture sits along the bone, and how your healing is progressing on imaging. Getting it right matters, because too little movement risks stiffness and muscle wasting, while too much too soon can interfere with the bone knitting together.

Why Some Movement Is Important Even Early On

The instinct after a collarbone fracture is to keep everything perfectly still, and your doctor will put you in a sling for good reason. Fracture movement at the break site is a genuine risk factor for nonunion, the situation where the bone simply fails to heal. A systematic review found that detectable movement at the fracture site was independently associated with a sixfold increase in the odds of nonunion.¹ So protecting the fracture from stress and shearing forces is not optional.

But immobilizing your entire upper body for weeks creates its own problems. Joints stiffen, muscles lose bulk, and the shoulder can develop adhesive changes that take months of physiotherapy to undo. In rare cases, nerve compression from the fracture itself can cause lasting muscle wasting if the limb stays completely inactive for too long. One documented case involved an endurance athlete who developed persistent atrophy of the brachialis muscle after a displaced midshaft fracture.² That is an extreme example, but the principle holds for everyone: the goal is to protect the fracture site while keeping everything else as active as you safely can.

Safe Exercises During the First Few Weeks

For roughly the first two to three weeks after injury, the bone has not yet begun forming the callus that will bridge the fracture. Radiographic studies in healing bones show soft callus first appearing around day 12, with harder bridging callus developing from about day 19 onward.³ During this early window, the break is at its most vulnerable, and exercises involving the shoulder should be minimal. That still leaves plenty you can do.

Walking: This is the single most consistently recommended exercise from day one. It requires no arm involvement, keeps your cardiovascular system active, and has real pain-management benefits (more on that below).
Hand, wrist, and elbow movements: Making a fist, extending your fingers, rotating your wrist, and gently bending and straightening your elbow several times a day prevents stiffness in the joints below the fracture. These movements do not stress the collarbone.
Pendulum exercises: Leaning forward and letting the injured arm hang loose, then gently swinging it in small circles using your body’s momentum rather than shoulder muscle effort. This keeps the shoulder joint from freezing without loading the fracture. Your physiotherapist or surgeon will tell you when to start these, usually within the first week or two.
Lower-body work: Bodyweight squats, seated leg extensions, calf raises, and similar movements are fine as long as you are not gripping weights or using equipment that requires arm stabilization. A stationary bike with an upright posture is usually comfortable, though leaning forward onto handlebars is not.
Deep breathing exercises: These sound trivial, but the pain from a collarbone fracture encourages shallow breathing, which over time can reduce lung capacity and make you feel sluggish. Slow, deep breaths with a focus on expanding the ribcage help counter this.

One important note on the sling: wearing it constantly for weeks can cause neck and back pain from the asymmetric load. Most clinicians advise removing the sling briefly for hygiene and gentle elbow mobilization, then putting it back on.⁴ Follow your own surgeon’s guidance on timing.

Cardio Without Putting Your Collarbone at Risk

One of the more encouraging findings from the rehabilitation literature is that low-impact aerobic exercise can replace pain medication surprisingly early. In a documented case of a complex distal clavicle fracture treated surgically, the patient was walking 30 to 60 minutes daily by one month post-surgery and managing pain without any medication, reporting a pain score of just 1 out of 10. By two months, the same patient had progressed to running 30 to 45 minutes daily with a pain score of zero, still without medication.⁴

Walking and running work well because they do not jar the shoulder the way jumping or contact activities would, and the rhythmic nature of the movement promotes blood flow without requiring arm involvement. Stationary cycling is another good option, especially recumbent bikes where your back is supported and your arms rest at your sides. Outdoor cycling is riskier because a fall could worsen the fracture, and the forward-leaning position loads the shoulder girdle. The same goes for swimming: even if the arm motion felt tolerable, the overhead reach and rotational force involved in most swim strokes is exactly the kind of stress the healing bone cannot handle yet.

If you are a runner, the main thing to watch is the jarring effect on the collarbone. Most people find that jogging on a treadmill or flat surface is tolerable once acute pain settles (often around three to four weeks for nonoperative fractures, sometimes sooner after surgical fixation), but trail running on uneven ground is more problematic because of the unpredictable impacts and the reflex arm movements when you stumble.

Adding Shoulder Movement as Healing Progresses

Once imaging shows early callus formation and your surgeon or physiotherapist gives the green light, you can begin active-assisted shoulder exercises. This usually happens somewhere between three and six weeks, depending on the fracture pattern and whether you had surgery. The progression typically looks like this:

Active-assisted range of motion: Using your uninjured arm to help lift the injured arm in flexion (reaching forward) and abduction (reaching out to the side). The goal is to regain range gradually without forcing through sharp pain. That case report mentioned earlier documented flexion of about 90 degrees and abduction of 60 degrees at the one-month mark, with continued improvement from there.⁴
Scapular retraction: Gently squeezing your shoulder blades together while sitting upright. This activates the muscles around the shoulder blade without directly stressing the collarbone, and it counteracts the rounded-shoulder posture that weeks in a sling encourage.
Isometric shoulder exercises: Pressing your hand gently against a wall or doorframe in different directions (forward, sideways, into rotation) without actually moving the arm. Isometrics build muscle activation and neuromuscular control with minimal joint movement.

The key principle at this stage is that discomfort is acceptable but sharp pain is a stop signal. A mild ache during or after exercise that settles within a few hours is generally fine. Pain that intensifies during the movement, wakes you at night, or causes visible swelling over the fracture site means you have pushed too far.

Rebuilding Shoulder Strength

Resistance training for the shoulder usually begins after about six to eight weeks for surgically fixed fractures and somewhat later for those managed nonoperatively, once imaging confirms adequate healing. This phase is where most people feel the frustration of how much strength they have lost.

Starting points include resistance-band exercises for external and internal rotation of the shoulder, light dumbbell raises in the scapular plane (a roughly 30-degree angle forward from straight out to the side, which is mechanically friendlier to the shoulder than a pure side raise), and wall push-ups progressing to incline and eventually standard push-ups. Rows and lat pulldowns can follow once overhead motion is comfortable and pain-free.

Bench pressing and overhead pressing are among the last exercises to come back. Both place direct compressive or shearing load through the clavicle. Many physiotherapists suggest waiting until you have full, pain-free range of motion and have cleared a series of functional tests before loading the shoulder in these positions. If you had a plate and screws placed, your surgeon may have specific restrictions around heavy pressing that differ from nonoperative guidelines.

The timeline for getting back to pre-injury strength varies, but the research on athletes gives a useful benchmark. A systematic review and meta-analysis found that about 91% of athletes with clavicle fractures returned to play, with roughly 86% making it back to their pre-injury level. Operatively managed fractures returned in an average of about three months, while nonoperatively managed fractures took closer to four months.⁵ Another study focused on elite athletes found the gap was even more pronounced: an average of 65 days for the surgical group versus about 98 days for the nonsurgical group.⁶ These numbers reflect full return to competitive sport, not just the start of rehab exercises, so the exercise progression begins well before these endpoints.

How Surgical Versus Nonsurgical Treatment Changes the Exercise Plan

If your fracture was fixed with a plate and screws, the hardware stabilizes the bone internally, which often allows earlier and more aggressive rehabilitation. The fracture fragments are locked in place, so gentle shoulder movement can sometimes begin within the first week or two under physiotherapy guidance. The tradeoff is that you now have metal sitting under the skin, which can cause irritation during certain movements, and the plate may need to be removed later.

Nonoperative fractures, treated with a sling alone, rely entirely on the body’s own callus to bridge the gap. Early exercises need to be more conservative because there is nothing holding the fragments together except developing bone and the surrounding soft tissue. Pendulum exercises and elbow mobilization are still fine, but active shoulder movement usually starts a bit later, and loading progresses more cautiously. The longer average return-to-sport time for nonoperative patients, about a month more than surgical patients according to multiple studies, reflects this more conservative rehab trajectory.⁵ It does not mean the outcome is worse in the long run; the return-to-play rates are similar between the two approaches. Operatively managed patients simply tend to return to their pre-injury performance level at a slightly higher rate.

When Fear of Movement Becomes the Bigger Problem

Something that does not get discussed enough after a collarbone fracture is the psychological side. After weeks of guarding the arm and associating shoulder movement with pain, many people develop a reluctance to move that persists well after the bone has healed. This is not a character flaw; it is a well-documented phenomenon. Research on patients with chronic shoulder pain found that psychological factors, including fear of movement, catastrophic thinking about pain, and symptoms of anxiety or depression, were significantly associated with worse outcomes on both patient-reported and clinician-rated measures.⁷

A systematic review specifically examining fear-avoidant beliefs after upper-limb fractures in older adults found that early education and support, given right after the fracture rather than weeks later, was critical for challenging beliefs about the danger of movement and preventing long-term avoidance behaviors.⁸ While the review focused on older people, the underlying psychology applies broadly. If you find yourself inventing reasons to skip your exercises, feeling anxious when your physiotherapist asks you to raise the arm, or still wearing the sling for “safety” long after you were told to wean off it, that is worth raising with your care team. Addressing the fear directly, rather than simply pushing through it or avoiding exercise altogether, tends to produce better and faster functional recovery.

How Recovery Differs for Children and Teenagers

If you are reading this about a child’s broken collarbone, the exercise timeline is generally faster and more forgiving. Children have thicker periosteum around the bone, a more robust blood supply, and significantly greater healing and remodeling potential than adults.⁹ A fracture that might take an adult three months to rehabilitate fully can heal in half that time in a young child.

The exercise principles are the same: protect the fracture early, keep the hand and elbow moving, add shoulder motion as healing allows, then rebuild strength. But the timelines compress. Many children are back to normal activities, including playground sports, within four to six weeks. Adolescents whose growth plates are still open tend to remodel even significant displacement, which means their fractures often need less aggressive treatment and their rehab can proceed more quickly.

The main challenge with kids is not usually getting them to exercise but getting them to hold back. A child who feels good at three weeks may resist wearing the sling and want to go straight back to full activity. Parental supervision matters here, because the bone can feel fine and still be weeks away from full structural strength. Gradual return to contact sports and high-impact activities is still the safest approach, even in a child who seems completely recovered.

Exercises and Activities to Avoid Until You Are Cleared

Knowing what not to do is as important as knowing what to do. Until your surgeon or physiotherapist explicitly clears you, avoid:

Lifting anything heavy with the injured arm: “Heavy” in this context means anything that requires effort. Even carrying a grocery bag applies traction through the shoulder girdle.
Overhead pressing or reaching: This includes putting dishes away on high shelves, reaching for seatbelts across the body, and any gym exercise that goes above shoulder height.
Contact sports and activities with fall risk: Football, rugby, basketball, martial arts, mountain biking, skiing, and skateboarding all carry too high a risk of reinjury. A second impact to a healing collarbone can convert a simple fracture into a much more complicated one.
Push-ups, planks, and yoga poses that load the arms: Even if they feel okay, these create significant shear and compressive forces through the clavicle. They belong in the later phases of rehab.
Swimming: The overhead reach and rotational demand of front crawl and backstroke are among the most stressful movements for a healing collarbone. Breaststroke is slightly less demanding but still not safe in the early weeks.

The hardest part of collarbone fracture rehab for active people is patience. The bone heals on its own biological schedule, not yours, and pushing past pain to accelerate the timeline is one of the few things you can do to make the outcome worse. The good news is that the vast majority of people get back to full activity. Focusing your energy on the exercises you can do, rather than mourning the ones you temporarily cannot, tends to make the process feel shorter and less frustrating.

1
Journal of Orthopaedic Surgery and Research. Predictors requiring special attention to prevent clavicle fracture nonunion: a systematic review of literature
2
BioMed Central / Europe PMC. Atrophy of the brachialis muscle after a displaced clavicle fracture in an Ironman triathlete: case report
3
PubMed. A timetable for the radiologic features of fracture healing in young children
4
International Journal of Surgery Case Reports. Case report: Integrating aerobic activity in post-surgical management of plurifragmentary distal clavicle fractures – A holistic approach to pain modulation and recovery
5
JSES Reviews, Reports, and Techniques. Return to play following clavicular fracture – A systematic review and meta analysis
6
PubMed Central. Return to elite-level sport after clavicle fractures
7
PubMed Central. Clinician and Patient-reported Outcomes Are Associated With Psychological Factors in Patients With Chronic Shoulder Pain
8
PubMed. Fear-avoidant beliefs and behaviours after upper limb fracture in older people: a systematic review and meta-ethnography
9
Trauma. Complex clavicle fractures in children: Kids are not little adults