Shoulder trouble

[jrgenjo]

Hello Doctors

I am a 30 year old male
6’6’’ 230lbs
Been doing resistance training for the last 10 years, 4 of which have been more focused towards S,B,D and OHP.

2 weeks ago I was warming up for my deadlift session, my gym is pretty cold so I usually do some dynamic warm up stuff to get the blood flowing properly and get my whole body properly warmed up.
Just warming up with the deadlift straight away leaves me somewhat cold in certain parts of the body.
So anyway I was doing some half snatches, from a lockout deadlift position to shoulder, and went heavier on the weight than my shoulder was prepared for.
Felt it tug a bit on the way down, but the pain wasn’t really bad at all.

So I went on with my session, deadlifts felt normal, OHP afterwards felt good.
Next day when I woke up my should was super stiff and painful, even picking small stuff out of a shelf would hurt.
2-3 days later it had gotten better, it only hurt when I rotated my arm, sort of like this:
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2-3 more days and the shoulder felt 90%, so I thought I would try some light pressing in the gym, for the previous days I had pretty much only done pulling and leg work, since that didn’t cause any pain.
Warm up with the bar felt great, put on a little bit of weight, think I was lifting 66 lbs total which is very light for me, and I felt it a bit so I stopped there.
Day after I was back to like day 2 or so after it happened, pretty bad again.
Now it has been a week since that day and it’s not that much better.
Still pretty stiff and painful when I need to get something overhead, and I get a little reminder sometimes with a small sting when I get something from the fridge etc.

I can: Deadlift normal weight no problem, Squat is fine with a wider grip, Fluffwork for the arms cause no pain, Bench @ 60-70%, Rows or pull ups.
I can’t: Do much of any direct shoulder work like lateral raises or OHP.

I haven’t seen a doctor yet as it’s usually a pretty tedious process with little knowledge of managing stuff like this in my country.
I have been able to rehab similar small injuries before with the help from this site and painscience.com, so I thought I would give this a go first.

Do you have any tips on how to manage this, and maybe make my rehab faster?

[Michael_Ray]

@jrgenjo

Hello Doctors

I am a 30 year old male
6’6’’ 230lbs
Been doing resistance training for the last 10 years, 4 of which have been more focused towards S,B,D and OHP.

2 weeks ago I was warming up for my deadlift session, my gym is pretty cold so I usually do some dynamic warm up stuff to get the blood flowing properly and get my whole body properly warmed up.
Just warming up with the deadlift straight away leaves me somewhat cold in certain parts of the body.
So anyway I was doing some half snatches, from a lockout deadlift position to shoulder, and went heavier on the weight than my shoulder was prepared for.
Felt it tug a bit on the way down, but the pain wasn’t really bad at all.

So I went on with my session, deadlifts felt normal, OHP afterwards felt good.
Next day when I woke up my should was super stiff and painful, even picking small stuff out of a shelf would hurt.
2-3 days later it had gotten better, it only hurt when I rotated my arm, sort of like this:

2-3 more days and the shoulder felt 90%, so I thought I would try some light pressing in the gym, for the previous days I had pretty much only done pulling and leg work, since that didn’t cause any pain.
Warm up with the bar felt great, put on a little bit of weight, think I was lifting 66 lbs total which is very light for me, and I felt it a bit so I stopped there.
Day after I was back to like day 2 or so after it happened, pretty bad again.
Now it has been a week since that day and it’s not that much better.
Still pretty stiff and painful when I need to get something overhead, and I get a little reminder sometimes with a small sting when I get something from the fridge etc.

I can: Deadlift normal weight no problem, Squat is fine with a wider grip, Fluffwork for the arms cause no pain, Bench @ 60-70%, Rows or pull ups.
I can’t: Do much of any direct shoulder work like lateral raises or OHP.

I was thinking it was just a small tear at first, but reading on here it might sound like bursitis maybe? I hadn’t heard of it before, but symptoms seem familiar.

I haven’t seen a doctor yet as it’s usually a pretty tedious process with little knowledge of managing stuff like this in my country.
I have been able to rehab similar small injuries before with the help from this site and painscience.com, so I thought I would give this a go first.

Do you have any tips on how to manage this, and maybe make my rehab faster?

@jrgenjo - sorry to hear about the recent shoulder issues.

What exercises are you wanting to be able to perform that you feel like you can’t perform right now?

Typically once we find tolerable loading with provocative movements - symptoms will improve over time and you will be back in action. The activities of daily living movement based symptoms you are reporting don’t surprise me.

We’ve written extensively on the shoulder if you are interested:
Part 1 - Scapular Dyskinesis - https://www.barbellmedicine.com/scapulardyskinesis/

Part 2 - Shoulder External Impingement - https://www.barbellmedicine.com/shoulderimpingement/

Part 3 - Shoulder Internal Impingement -https://www.barbellmedicine.com/the-shoulder-part-iii-inte…/

Part 4 - Rotator Cuff - https://www.barbellmedicine.com/shoulder-part-iv-the-rotat…/

[jrgenjo]

@Michael Ray

@Michael_Ray

@jrgenjo - sorry to hear about the recent shoulder issues.

What exercises are you wanting to be able to perform that you feel like you can’t perform right now?

Mainly what’s bothering me the most is the OHP, I want to be able to perform it with high loads again.

@Michael_Ray

Typically once we find tolerable loading with provocative movements - symptoms will improve over time and you will be back in action. The activities of daily living movement based symptoms you are reporting don’t surprise me.

Ok, so now I can do some really light weights, I’ll just keep at it then as long as it doesn’t make it more painful, and see if I can slightly increase it over time.

I’ll read up on all those links you posted for me, it’s very motivating to get some feedback like this, injuries can be very discouraging.
Much appreciate the work you do here!

[Michael_Ray]

@jrgenjo

@Michael Ray

Mainly what’s bothering me the most is the OHP, I want to be able to perform it with high loads again.

Ok, so now I can do some really light weights, I’ll just keep at it then as long as it doesn’t make it more painful, and see if I can slightly increase it over time.

I’ll read up on all those links you posted for me, it’s very motivating to get some feedback like this, injuries can be very discouraging.
Much appreciate the work you do here!

Happy to help. Sounds like you’ve got a good gameplan to build from. Keep us posted.

[jrgenjo]

So I just came off a long weekend (Thursday - Sunday) and my shoulder was feeling great, had done a session of lifting on Thursday and one on Saturday, one squat and one deadlift oriented, for both I did some light shoulder work, but kept the overall upper body volume low.
No pain during any exercises, nor the day after.

Today I went back to work at my desk job, and I noticed after lunch my shoulder started to hurt a bit again, and when it was time to go home the pressure was pretty damn intense…
Wonder if maybe my current work “posture” or however you call it is screwing with my recovery, could it be possible? Or is it likely just random things adding up?

I’m gonna see if I can do some changes to put less pressure on my mouse arm during the day, but I scheduled an appointment with a doctor for next Friday in case it gets worse.
If I need time off work to fix my shoulder that’s just how it is I guess.

Just thought I’d share my current status in case anyone is in the same boat.

[Michael_Ray]

@jrgenjo

So I just came off a long weekend (Thursday - Sunday) and my shoulder was feeling great, had done a session of lifting on Thursday and one on Saturday, one squat and one deadlift oriented, for both I did some light shoulder work, but kept the overall upper body volume low.
No pain during any exercises, nor the day after.

Today I went back to work at my desk job, and I noticed after lunch my shoulder started to hurt a bit again, and when it was time to go home the pressure was pretty damn intense…
Wonder if maybe my current work “posture” or however you call it is screwing with my recovery, could it be possible? Or is it likely just random things adding up?

I’m gonna see if I can do some changes to put less pressure on my mouse arm during the day, but I scheduled an appointment with a doctor for next Friday in case it gets worse.
If I need time off work to fix my shoulder that’s just how it is I guess.

Just thought I’d share my current status in case anyone is in the same boat.

Sounds like things were going really well for a bit but then you had a flare-up in symptoms. Is there reason to believe that this won’t improve again? What are you hoping for at the doctor visit?

It would be easy to try and reduce this down to a posture issue at work but typically we just get sensitized (symptomatic) to positions and it’s nothing to get overly concerned with and simply means we change positions throughout the day. We should also consider such things like work related stress and/or life stress which can magnify symptoms.

[jrgenjo]

Yeah I had some flare up, but I figured I would just switch hands for a while at work, and this has worked pretty well. I haven’t had a heavy flare up since then.

The doctor’s visit was more in case I wasn’t able to do anything about the pain from working.

I guess posture was a poor choice of words and not really right in hindsight, switching hands seemed to work out very well though.
Stress is also a valid concern, my sleep has been a bit lacking lately which isn’t ideal either.

I will update if anything more happens.

For anyone who have trouble with their arms in anyway with using a mouse switching hands was a pretty good short term solution for me atleast, within 2 days I was able to use my left arm pretty accurately even with CAD programs