Shoulder Injury, Keep Working Out?

Bigger Stronger Leaner Competitive Bodybuilding
1

About mid August of this year (4 months ago), I was pitching during a game and ended up throwing the ball much too hard. Something must have torn, or stretched to far. My arm was in a huge amount of pain for about 15 minutes or so until it subsided.

I attempted to work out on it thinking it would go away, but no luck. Working out caused my arm a huge amount of pain. The pain was in my tricep area as well as above my shoulder (right underneath the clavical), and some dull numbing pain in my right upper trap. So I took a week off and tried to go back one again, same thing, only it felt slightly better. After that, I ended up making an appointment with an Ortho Surg. He did an x-ray, and an MRI only to find nothing wrong with my shoulder. He mentioned it could have been a partial tear of the supraspinatus, or a slap lesion, and that it seemed my supraspinatus was “thinning”. He told me no working out at all. And sent me to PT. The pain during this time slowly subsided until there was no longer any tricep pain. After a good 9-9.5 weeks off and some physical therapy, I went back to the doctors.

I told him I was still having a small amount of pain underneath my clavical in a frequency of about once every 3 days or so. The pain ONLY seemed to be instigated by very light movements such as when I have my elbows resting on the table and my arm and shoulder muscles are just firing enough to keep my weight stabalized. He did multiple movements with my arm and some pressure tests to attempt to instigate some pain. He felt around for a while only to not beable to get any part of my arm to hurt (which I knew it wouldn’t). He said my shoudler was solid. I can rotate my arm completely around, I have worked out since and can lift pain free, and still be pain free after the workout.

Yet sometimes allowing my shoulder to droop, or leaning with my elbows on the table while on my computer, a small reminder of pain seems to return for short bursts.

I can’t stop thinknig about the fact that maybe I should have taken more time off, or that me working out is going to effect my arm in a negative way. My question is, how would others proceed with this, and is continuing to work out ok as I don’t want to take anymore time off. Could this be something that will resolve itself even while working out? It has been 4 months.

2

If it hurts to do a movement, don’t do it. If it doesn’t hurt, do it.

Otherwise you are probably fine and worrying too much.

3

double check your technique in all of your upper body lifts. Your young so it’s possible it will heal on it’s on but it’s also possible it will never heal. Simply resting won’t really do anything so you might as well lift. If you really want to help it, go back to a pt or develop your own pt programs.

Also a good month or so of extremely slow exercise for your shoulder can help to stabilize it. Try as often as you can to keep your shoulder in a correct position when not working out.

4

I think you’re gonna be okay, but will need to be vigilant with it.

If anything, this is a good thing as you should come out of this with really good technique.

5

Thanks guys. I do worry alot, but with good reason. I wouldn’t want to inflict some sort of chronic pain in my arm when im only 24. Some days it hurts and I have to argue with myself on whether or not im going to continue lifting. But everytime I do lift, as I did today, it is not affected at all.

There is NO pain during any of my lifts, during an isolated muscle working, or even a compound excercise. Most of the time it’s when my shoulder feels the best. But rest assured my shoulder doesn’t feel like it used too. That was my main concern. It seems just as stable, only with pain in random areas.

My main arguement to myself is when performing a lift on an injured part of the body, assuming you feel no pain, does this mean the part isn’t being affected and will be allowed to heal?

6

[quote]MarK1983 wrote:

My main arguement to myself is when performing a lift on an injured part of the body, assuming you feel no pain, does this mean the part isn’t being affected and will be allowed to heal?[/quote]

Short answer? Yes. If there’s no pain then there should be no damage being done. Pain is the indicator that something’s wrong.

I think you’re being very smart about this. Use it as a tool to get some life long intelligent lifting habits going (warming up, stretching, balance between pushing vs pulling, attending to tissue quality etc) and you will have a long, healthy and very productive exercise career.