Shoulder pain, what do?

Good evening,

As the title suggests, im dealing with some shoulder pain. To start, I’ve read the shoulder pain article and generally familiar with BBM’s approach to pain management, although fortunately I’ve not had to use it very often, little experience implementing.

My issue, about 6 weeks ago I started experiencing some shoulder pain. I believe its lateral shoulder pain. Not sure what caused it, there was no acute event. Just one day, went to lift my son over my head and felt sharp pain. Day today life was mostly unaffected, overhead was uncomfortable but otherwise life was fine. I didnt panic, and again am fairly familiar with BBM pain management approach. I was just starting PB2 non comp when it happened. So I used week 1 to find my entry point. Bench felt fine, maybe some slight discomfort, but very much tolerable and performance was not affected, so did not make a modification.

Low bar squat felt fine during the actu movement, although getting out from under the par after the set was pretty uncomfortable. Overall I deemed it tolerable and no modification.

Incline dumbell bench was tolerable up to a certain load, so I made it a tempo movement which allowed me to hit RPE (or close to it) with my shoulder tolerating it. Overhead press, started with the bar. After about a week could tolerate tempo work. Low row, deadlift and pullups felt fine, no modification.

Felt like I was progressing, after a week or two, was playing pickpeball pain free and throwing a kickball pain free. However, getting out from under the bar in a squat was still uncomfortable, and overhead press was still only able to tolerate tempo work. Fast forward to about week 5, had a tooth pulled which stopped me lifting for a week. Returned to the gym and it tightened up, felt like I had lost all progress.

Pain is definitely not severe, my daily life is more or less fine (i notice it, but doesn’t really stop me from doing anything either), overhead work is still uncomfortable.

I guess my question, what do? Im assuming stay the course and 7 weeks really isn’t that long. The other part of me wonders if it should be better by now, and I need to make further training modifications and try to ramp up. I guess the positive, block 2 starts next week, which is a front squat (which i cant rack, so im using a ss bar front squat), so that should alleviate that part of the shoulder stress.

Any advice or guidance is appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Hey Matte,

Thanks for the post and sorry to hear about the discomfort. It seems like you’re familiar with our material and that you’ve been trying to DIY it with some success. From my perspective, I don’t think you’ve expanded the exercise variation enough to adequately manage the issue based on your trajectory. We discuss that in some detail here:

I think the next step here is a consultation with our pain and rehab team, as we need some more information and follow-up to really do a good job. If that’s not an option, I would recommend increasing exercise variety significantly for the time being and then, after stabilization for ~ 2 weeks, begin the progression.

-Jordan

Thanks Jordan, ill take a look at that article. I talked with my wife though, and think I’m going to do a consult. I’ll fill out the questionnaire today.

1 Like

An update, I filled out the questionnaire and was leaning towards the consultation. Then last minute decided to give it one more go based on your advice of greater excercise variance as well as making every upper body excercise 3-0-0 tempo and all back squats some sort of safety squat bar movement. Single leg deadlift for the 2nd DL movement (which im actually enjoying the challenge of trying to balance).

Have seen significant progress since with a lot less pain. So as usual Jordan, greatly appreciated!!!

1 Like