11/3/2023
Squat: 20 reps at 185lbs. Lifetime PR perhaps. Benchmark PR for sure.
For 6 consecutive workouts, I’ve done 20-rep squats, and added 10lbs each time.
The actual log for today:
15 minutes shoulder rehab. 3 rounds of:
{30 second hangs, with 3 scap shrugs per hang, 20 each of side, front, and rear raises with 10lb DBs, internal and external rotations with the 10lb, only on my right arm. (Internal rotations are easy, 20 reps, externals are a struggle, 8 ish reps. I wonder if that’s diagnostic or if that’s normal?) Then 20 reps of arnold pressing the 10s.}
Then knee sleeves on and warm up the squats, including an overwarmup at 205 before the 20-rep set at 185. Definitely felt the panic attack after rep 10 but pushed through it.
Then put the belt on and squatted up to a single at 275, and in that moment decided what’s next:
For the next few sessions, I’ll do low rep heavy squats and see how it goes.
Then 3x5 per leg BSS holding a 26lb KB on my chest. These were done consecutively without lowering the bell or stopping between sets - just switch feet and keep going.
Then I took my knee sleeves off and felt like I nearly dislocated my right shoulder doing so.
Will put that in a separate post because I have to resolve this!
11/3 Shoulder issues continued.
This has been going on for months, even back in the summer when I was O-lifting, after heavy jerks I’d feel a deep ache in my right shoulder. But after moving it’s been way worse. I posted a few weeks ago about feeling like I dislocated it when ripping carpet out of my house.
I’ve been dedicating the first portion of every gym sesh to shoulder rehab.
Today when pulling off knee sleeves at the end of the workout, I felt like I dislocated it.
Forensically, let’s step backward:
-Pulling knee sleeves off. Extending the shoulder “forward”.
-Immediately prior: a long set of BSS holding a KB on my chest. That hold puts an interesting force angle on the shoulder. Could be the prior. How to know?
Before that: Squats. The shrug and support of the bar on shoulders could be pushing/pulling on something in my shoulder that aggravates it?
After that, showering and brushing teeth sucked. My right shoulder would hurt in weird angles in weird ways and have crazy weakness, yet I bet if I tried to bench press or do pullups it would be fine.
Oh and during my shoulder rehab, I used 10lb DBs to do 20 rep sets of arnold press. If I change the position at the bottom to look like a barbell press, it hurts. If I turn the hands in at the bottom (which I think the Arnold press is), it doesn’t hurt. ??
Torn labrum and torn rotator cuff have been mentioned.
Unfortunately there’s really no substitute for working with a PT when it comes to diagnosis. Like there’s a bunch of stuff you can learn and get better at guessing, but they know all the tests for these things. Once in awhile you’ll see some good stuff in a youtube video from some PT group, but even then it’s hard to know if it’s really what you have going on. Some of the online content has gotten a lot better, and there might be some good stuff now for self-diagnosing… but that’s always still fraught with problems even in the best of cases.
Maybe someone at your gym can hook you up? Once you have a diagnosis, you can probably get pretty far actually fixing the problems – once you know what they are – without having to actually set up and pay for weekly sessions or whatever.
11/6/2023 Monday
15 minutes of shoulder rehab.
Then squats. Worked my way up to a single attempt at 285, failed it - couldn’t get out of the hole, dumped it at the bottom onto the safeties.
Re-loaded at 275 and got rep but wasn’t super happy with it.
Out of time so that was it for the day.
–
My gym has a resident PT apparently, so I’m going to call him and see if he can help with my shoulder sometime this week or next. (“Resident PT” is probably not accurate at all. but something is better than nothing.)
My first thought about your shoulder is that it sounds similar to my problem six years ago. I don’t have time for details at the moment, but a PT said my upper traps were much stronger than the middle and lower traps because of too much overhead work. The fix was a cortisone shot, no pushing for a couple months, cessation of overhead work - pulling included - for a few months, and wide-grip band or cable rows to strengthen the lower traps and pull my shoulders down and back into to their natural alignment. It worked.
No freakin way!
To be honest ive done sooo much overhead work… to the exclusion of so much else. I basically have no pecs lol. Thought pullups would balance it out but…
Yep! I was doing lots of overhead lifting and lots of towel pullups, so i was surprised at the diagnosis. The PT said the act of raising or holding one’s hands overhead engages the upper traps but not the lower traps. Pullups were exacerbating the problem, which was overly strong upper traps pulling my shoulders upwards and forwards. Wide grip rows with the hands placed several inches wider than the shoulders, with a neutral/hammer grip using cables or, even better, strong bands, were shockingly effective at strengthening my lower traps.
And you know i was literally doing towel chinups and high rep power cleans for a few weeks before this got worse.
Granted, its veen a problem much longer than that, but i was cleaning, pressing, and snatching most of this year so it seems to still be consistent with your experience.
11/8 Wednesday
15 minutes shoulder rehab
Squat, including several singles at 275
Hip thrusts
Several seated cable rows, a new feeling in the low traps, following @TriednTrue suggestion for the shoulder.
I hope the rows help! After a couple weeks, I added a few sets of easy band pull aparts. It took a couple months, so hang in there for a bit. How wide of a grip and what angle did you use? According to the PT and my experience, that was key. I’m now working on knee issues, so we’re both undergoing a bit of self-informed PT.
11/10/2023 Friday
15 minutes of shoulder rehab - the usual.
Squats: up to 275lb, which I did for a sloppy double and several singles. Knees cave still as I come up from depth.
Cable rows, various ways. @TriednTrue seated rows, as wide a grip as available, some with a bent bar and some with a bar with neutral-grip handles. Angle? Seated, the cable in front of me. Don’t know how else to describe the angle.
Also did a couple sets of triceps pushdowns LOL.
Meeting with a “PT” today. Not sure he’s a real PT but it doesn’t really matter… will update.
11/13/2023 Monday
We interrupt your regularly scheduled program to bring you this:
185lb squats, 50 rounds EMOM of 2 reps. That’s 100 reps.
It’s a different kind of suck and I thought changing it up today would be interesting.
Visited a sort-of PT last Friday. He has a little office at my gym. As far as I can tell he’s non-medical, also not a chiropractor, he has some kind of cert in “fascia stretch” or something. But to be honest I don’t think it matters - as long as you’re not looking for and MRI, cortisone shot, or surgery, I think they’re about all the same.
He immediately told me almost exactly what @TriednTrue said. Just from watching me move my shoulders - in a shirt - he said he could see my right shoulder move rather than stay back and packed; when he watched me do a pushup he said my shoulder blade was winging up and out; he said the small muscles near the spine aren’t engaging to lock me in as they should, and that my body has learned a compensated movement pattern that “works” but causes issues.
To solve this, he said I need to focus on learning to feel those small muscles - “pinch your shoulder blades together” but way LOWER than what I normally do (which is more of a shrug I guess).
Then he poked me at two places on each side of my spine. One was like nothing, the other was like touching a nerve, I jumped, and he indicated some of the assymetrical pattern could be coming from other things, like ankles or hips, causing my spinal erectors to do weird stuff, causing etc etc…
This all sounds like stuff Dan John has said, and/or that a chiro would say, and/or that a medically trained physio would say (just without the mri and cortisone injection lol). And it’s affordable with no commitments. So I’m going to give this a try for a while. Will update.
Then I proceeded to get through the entire weekend without trying any thoracic bracing or bird-dogs as he had suggested. And a gym session focused entirely on squatting with no real time for shoulder rehab. So it’s going great LOL.
DOMS update: extreme.
As expected, 100 squats at 185lb has destroyed my legs and today, getting in or out of a chair or going up the stairs is crazy hard.
11/15/2023 Wednesday
Yesterday was a miserable day of work, zoom meetings for 5 or 6 hours and barely a chance to pee, and legs so sore… lol.
Anyway today’s plan was to focus on the muscles of the upper back near the spine, like the physio said. I realize that I don’t know jack about bodybuilding or feeling a muscle.
But I did innumerable sets of typically 15-20 (sometimes 30) reps of various angles that seemed to target the area in question. Generally going slow and holding the contraction, trying to learn to feel it.
Seated cable row, wide neutral grip attachment; rope attachment; and with both of those, just a little forward or backward lean changes what part of the back engages.
Cable crossover machine, various angles, don’t know what to call it or how to describe.
Scap pullups (3x10 or so)
Actual pullups (just one set)
“high row” machine
(Which is different from the lat pulldown machine in some slight way…)
Rando cable stuff mostly.
Plate-loaded machine chest press, incline and decline. I found that the incline still hurt my shoulder, but the decline didn’t; and on the incline, it was much worse with a bench press grip. A neutral grip felt way better.
Yeah, those are tough days. Hardly any time to think or do any other “real” work.
Glad to see you’re getting somewhere with getting things fixed. Might be a long road, but sounds like you’ve got a solid start.
Also, I’m not 100% certain, but I’m pretty sure overhead squats will help with “the small muscles”, mainly the rhomboids and lower traps that he’s probably talking about. If you wanted to add those back in I mean. Not as a one-tool-fits-all, but as a something to help build up strength and stability with the shoulder blade control.
