Doctor Failed to Identify Problem (According to Me)

Ever since I started lifting (a year or so ago), I have been feeling a strange pain/disconfort in my left shoulder/top arm (will be described more in depth later on) when I am doing fly movements, sometimes when doing bench press and when doing shoulder exercices (side raises are the worsts).

So, I never did fly movements and side raises, and I was benching when I was feeling nothing was wrong in my shoulders. The pain does not go and come away, but sometimes when doing the movement I wont feel it, and other times I will. When I am not doing anything, I don’t feel any pain in my shoulder/top arm.

Few days ago I decided to get it checked out by a professionnal.

Even though I can feel this pain in only one of my shoulder, he said that problem was due to BOTH of my shoulders beeing too flexible.

I told him many times that I was feeling the pain only in the very top part of my LEFT arm, somewhat under my shoulder and just left of my arm pit.

He did not change his diagnostic and prescribed me to do 2 “muscular control” exercice, consisting of putting an exercice ball on a wall and do one-arm pushups by first facing the ball, and then with the side of my body facing the wall. He thinks its just a small small injury and that in a month or 2 that problem will have disapeared.

I am doing those, but I feel like it won’t solve my problem, as I really believe he did not quite find what the problem was!

Other info :

-I used for has long as I can remember to sleep with my left arm under my pillow and with my head putting pressure on it.

!!!******!!! - When I was young I was able to put my hand on a table and make it rotate almost 360 degree. I cannot do that anymore and I don’t want to even try to rotate it as much as I can since I’ll probably will a hard pain.

  • I can raise (not flex) my lef trap (my shoulder rolls forward and my trapeze is pushed up and to the front. I CANNOT do that with my other shoulder (the one that I have no pain in).

Any help you guys are able to provide me with? What could I do?

Second opinion, perhaps?

I live in canada, in a quite small city, I would have to go to the emergency center to get it checked out … I would basicly have to wait 24-48 hours (minimum) to see someone, that would probably not take me seriously and tell me to “wait till it go away” like I have been told several times.

Hmmm, read anything Eric Cressey has to say on shoulders on this site.

What’s your workout look like?

Do you do enough pulling exercises? Any external rotation?

Read Eric Cressey’s articles and get yourself to an ortho for an MRI. Also check out the Diesel Crew on youtube.

Long story short, I fucked up my shoulder and had surgery. I wish I found Cressey’s stuff first, rehabbing it took a solid year and any pressing movements still hurt.