A week ago I had Rotator Cuff surgery. I tore it while bench pressing heavy singles. My shoulder had been hurting but not bad enough that it effected my lifting I was on my last set of 1@8 at 275lbs and as I started up from the pause I heard what sounded like two cinder blocks rubbing together. I somehow managed to push the weight up but after I sat up it felt like my arm was going to fall off. I had an MRI and they said I about an inch size hole in my Rotator Cuff and that PT would not fix it and given my activity level I should have it repaired. The surgery was suppose to be 1 1/2 hours went more like 2 1/2 due to considerably more damage then they thought. It was almost a complete tear. I know I am going to have a long road to recovery and this post is completely premature but I wanted to ask anyway.
I picked the surgeon I had specifically because he dealt with athletes because I didn’t feel like listening to the same nonsense you get sometimes about lifting heavy. I have not had a discussion with him yet but I have talked to his PA and he did talked to my wife after the surgery and suggested I do no more heavy lifting. I confirmed this with his PA and clarified they were only talking about Bench or OHP and that squatting and deadlifts however I wanted to do them was fine.
I don’t compete and if I did someday it would just be for fun but wanted to ask here your thoughts on the matter since you guys actually powerlift and have a more open mind to things. I had a bit of a discussion with the PA and my wife about define heavy. A 400lb bench is heavy to some where as a 225lb bench is heavy to others. My wife suggested I shouldn’t do over 200lbs which i gave her the look and said that was nearly my last warm up set before the injury.
I’m not looking to be a super hero I’m 48 I’ve had issues with this shoulder before I had bone spurs and some arthritis in it which have been taken care of from the surgery. I’m also not looking to go through this again which I know there are no guarantees but right now I’m being told it is 50/50 chance to do it again and it may not be repairable next time. That sounds a little hard to believe since they told me I should make a full recovery.
All absolute weight thresholds for this sort of thing are completely plucked out of thin air and not based in any evidence. Furthermore, it is implausible that there would exist such a generalizable threshold across the population.
We have rehabilitated many individuals in this situation back to essentially normal function, including barbell training with the upper body lifts.
That seemed like a much more elegant way to say define heavy. I also figured that would be the answer I would get. Listen I’d like to be able bench lime I did before I still have a 300lb bench to achieve. I have another 5 weeks in this sling and a lot of PT for range of motion so I’m not sure when I’ll get the green light to go back to the gym and bench or OHP. At what point would you suggest reaching out to your folks for a consultation on the road back? I want to be a little careful about this and not have two doctors telling me how I should rehab this but I assume there is a good point for that to happen. The consolation I think would be good as well cause I’d like to get a better idea of what to watch for so this doesn’t happen again. I suspect it was already tore and the best thing may have been not to lift that way that day.
I was also curious just in general how long would you say it would take to get back to benching and OHP like before. This is not to say how long to get back to doing 275lb at 1@8 but more about how long before I can really start working at that.
Once you’re out of the sling would be a reasonable time, or when you’re finished with your local/in-person PT, if you’d like.
And unfortunately I can’t predict any sort of timeline like that.
Additionally, while I understand your desire to reduce the risk of something like this happening again, there is no way to entirely prevent it from happening altogether. There are risks to all things – and here we are balancing the risk of training compared to not training.
That seems reasonable. I might wait until the give me the green light to lift again but at the very least until I am done with PT here. They said I can start doing cardio stuff now but I have a Doctors appointment next week and I want to ask about using weights for lower body like leg press machine or stuff like that to keep my lower body doing something right now since I am unable to do anything at this point.
I understand on the timeline i was just wondering if there was some generic time frame but realize that it is based on many factors.
I agree on the risk as well. Like I said he told my wife I have a 50/50 chance of tearing again lifting heavy. I am not sure I buy that if you take precautions and get a solid rehab effort going back into it. I would also assume a little knowledge helps like maybe when your shoulder hurts like that is not the day to heavy singles and go with a lighter effort. Like I said I don’t compete so I can be a little more risk adverse to injuring it again like this.
Thanks for the help. I always appreciate the way you guys answer questions on here about stuff like this. There seem to be a lot of people in the medical field that have old ways of thinking about lifting heavy.