Quick background: I’ve been following BBM for quite a while and been to their Toronto seminar so I’m familiar with the basics of Pain Science. My question relates to shoulder pain during sports, specifically when playing volleyball as a hitter. It’s fairly common for me to get dull to mildly sharp pain on the anterior aspect of my swinging shoulder, a little below my acromium. It tends to flair up at the beginning and end of seasons and is bugging me now, as this season just started. I am still barbell training and training doesn’t make it worse, but there is some discomfort on the shoulder mainly during bench and rows.
My initial thought is that it’s just those tissues adjusting to the new stress/ non ideal form due to a lack of practice. Before BBM I would have said that I have the dreaded “impingement” due to insufficient scapular movement. I’m starting to understand that that is not true but I’m not sure how to deal with the issue moving forward, as it doesn’t seem to just be a one time thing. Is it worth doing a little bit of specific mobility work to get my tissues used to the extra external rotation they aren’t used to? I only play volleyball twice a week and feel that I could use some extra time doing those movements outside of playing.
Thanks for any input or advice, I really appreciate all the material you guys are putting out.
Sorry to hear about the shoulder issue. Glad that you’ve not jumped down the impingement rabbit hole too much. This certainly can be an initial onset from overload to the area that you are not used to when going from off-season to on-season (especially if you didn’t have a ramp up period). You likely don’t need to do anything too specific here other than modulate loading accordingly (amount of volleyball playing time and barbell training).