A month ago while unracking the bar to bench press, I had a severe pain in my upper back. After reracking the weight, looking side to side was tight and painful. A couple of days later my neck locked up so I went to see my chiropractor and get adjusted. Upper back / neck tightness and “locking up” has been a recurring theme over the years for me. After about 2 weeks, the pain had subsided and I felt pretty good. I proceeded to go back to benching around my normal weights. A day later, I started getting pain through my shoulder that radiated down through my tricep / bicep. I did overhead presses later that week, and could not handle my normal working weight. The pain in my Tricep / Bicep proceeded to get worse and I continued to see my chiropractor. At some point the pain left my tricep / bicep and moved into my forearm. The pain was originally just a persistent dull ache. Once it moved to my forearm, I would get throbbing pain as well at times, bad enough to wake me at night. I have also since lost significant strength in my grip, as well as bicep and tricep. The chiropractor I am seeing believes it is a pinched nerve and has cautiously been adjusting me a couple of times a week. He does run me through some ranges of motion to test my strength and he believes the strength is returning to my left arm but has cautioned I should avoid pressing movements as to not re-aggravate the injury.
I guess I have a couple of questions
the pain is lessening, but the strength is minimal. would you agree with that there was / is a pinched nerve
would you recommend getting scans if the symptoms continue
how long would you avoid doing pressing movements
are there any exercises that you would recommend to help strengthen the upper back and protect it from future injuries
I appreciate what you guys do and look forward to hearing from you.
Sorry to hear about the recent symptoms. Out of curiosity, what has the chiropractor said the adjustments are doing to help with your situation?
In regards to your questions - ultimately you likely need a consult with us so we can provide specific information to your situation:
Difficult to state without a consultation with you but if you are noticing symptoms radiating into an upper extremity and having loss of grip strength then I tend to lean more towards potential neurological involvement - with that said, this doesn’t then mean my recommendations are drastically altered unless I become aware of progressive neurological symptoms post-intervening. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F…ilUWA/viewform
How was grip strength measured? Was a hand dynamometer utilized?
2. This will be dependent on point 1 above and we’d need a consultation to gain more details on whether imaging is warranted or not for your scenario.
3. I’m not sure I agree with avoiding particular movements based on the information you’ve supplied here.
4. We can’t necessarily “protect” from injury as these things sometimes just happen but we’ve talked extensively about ways to reduce risk. I’d check out our other material on the pain experience and training - https://www.barbellmedicine.com/blog…ining-what-do/
So my chiropractor runs me through a few ranges of motion to test my strength while having me hold a position while he pushes. He does the test before and after he does adjustments to gauge if it is helping. He is trying to get my upper back to release and relax. After the injury flared back up, my left shoulder was noticeably higher than the right. He is able to locate pain points in upper back / neck area and uses his activator on them. He he does a manual adjustment with his hands on the area between my shoulder blades. I believe the adjustments made in this area are being done to reduce what he believes is the cause for the pinched nerve.
As far as grip strength testing, it has been me gripping a soft pill bottle. With my right hand I am able to squeeze it and cause it crush easily. With my left hand, I grip it and am hardly able to make it dent in, and when it does, it is only with my pointer and middle finger.
I will take a look and the links provided. If I were to sign up for a consult, would you be willing to visit with the chiropractor I have been using to get some additional information?