Shoulder/Rotator Cuff Pain

Training Injuries
41

[quote]rasturai wrote:
SERIOSULY dannyrat presents good info, I know he spoke of my name in this thread and his post helped me a lot before!

Do the LYTP helped me A LOT, but do them exactly as outlined in the article. As well I do them on the swiss ball and I really feel that thorasic endurance he talks about it, and you really maintain that good posture and your back will feel it!

BIKE face pulls.

I also do with tennisball/golf ball soft tissue work on my post. delt and I’ve got a lot of tightness in there…and I’ve been doing posterior delt stretches.

On a side note I went to my ART therapist as well for my shoulder cause he’s real good at it, he said all the stuff I’m doing is great and to keep up with it and he did his magic.

Continaully though I still have SOME pain in certain areas with my shoulder…but overall it efels way better. I didn’t do ANY upeprbody work for 4 months…tahts a real long time…for the first while I thought it would just go away by itself…it felt a bit better…but obviosuly not well enough.

Other things is I’ve been doing TONS of back work, rowing etc etc. I think that is helping me as well.

I prssed the other day…it’s been 4 months since pressing and I got 75x10, 100x10, 115x10 on the db bench…I used to db’s to see the strength difference in arms…right was a bit stronger but overall I am happy with that result after so long of no pressing.

I’m gonig to start incorporating external work and internal work…ART therapist said the external work would probably bug my shoulder more but he has given me the green light for it now…and well it feels so much better and I have much more ROM now…but still both shoulders are tight…(left shoulder is the one that got injured BTW)[/quote]

OK I can do all of that except for the ART.

How do you do the tennis ball pos. delt work? Also, do you do anything before workouts or is all of this after the workout?

What happened to you’re shoulder by the way?

[quote]Shadowzz4 wrote:
You have to see how your body works with YTWL or LYTP, many people that have shoulder problems end up trying to muscle their way through the movement, especially at the top because their lower trap and serratus are not functioning correctly. See how those exercises feel for you. [/quote]

OK thanks for the help, I’ll run through all the mentioned exercises after my workouts and hopefully that will help.

Too bad there’s no way for me to really know if it’s the “rehab” that’s effective or just my body healing on it’s own.

42

[quote]pumped340 wrote:
OK so after each workout you would do external rotations and lower trap work (T&Y) along with icing it and stretching (any particular stretch?)? I’ll make sure to do it at the end of my workout then.

What is PMSH?

Oh and is there anything in particular you do before workouts to warm up the joint or anything?
[/quote]

Yes to the 1st line.

Stretch was turn head to one side, opposite arm behind back with hand over opposite scap. No idea what’s it called!

PMSH = Poor Man’s Shoulder Horn

Mobility work and static stretching…

Mobility:
Arm circles
Elbow circles
Band pull-aparts behind head
Band pull-aparts to chest (like old fashioned chest expanders).
Arm swings
Band shoulder dislocates
Upside down tin cans
Reach, roll and lift
Scap push-ups (feet elevated)
Push-ups

43

as far as rolling tennsis ball for your pos delt, its easy. Get a really fucked up, squishy old tennis ball. Stand upright approx 1 inch from the wall. Drop the tennis ball down between your traps and the wall. lean into it, and work all over the trap/back/pos delt area. I feel popping and stuff when I do this, but it did me no harm. Work up to harder and harer balls, whihc increases intensity of the foam rolling.

44

So posterior delt can be a good place to work… but usually infraspinatus, which is in a similar area is going to have more issues.

45

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Here is a suggestion that everyone missed! Do a google search for an ART (Active Release Technique) provider in your area. Usually this person is a chiropractor. I have had many rotator cuff injuries completely rehabed via ART! The chiropractor will be able to determine within minutes the severity of the injury.

Good luck!

46

What worked for my rotator cuff is firstly resting for five days to a week so the inflammation was decreased.

Then a week of rotator cuff and only back work (facepulls worked great).

Next week introduce some shoulder work such as overhead dumbell press.

Then finally onto chest work again the next week but easy going and only cable crossovers to begin with.

In my opinion when trying to recover you should do a typical 3x fullbody workout.
Also that the rotator cuff should be trained light. Not just like any other muscle like some other trainers suggest.
This is because when I tried doing heavy rotator cuff work (and not particuarly “heavy”) such as 3x10 with my 12-14 rep max it would cause too much inflammation. I actually started making progress with light high rep work.
One way to ensure your using good form and a suitable weight is to put a folded towel between your elbow and side of body when doing external or internal rotation with a cable.

Hope that helped and I know it sucks not doing chest work! I don’t think this is going overboard either because my rotator cuff injury for example wasn’t excruciating and didn’t stop me from sleeping or anything like that but you simply cant do an effective workout with it.

47

I forgot to also mention stretching! It’s very underrated when it comes to rotator cuff recovery.

48

[quote]kgcage14 wrote:
I forgot to also mention stretching! It’s very underrated when it comes to rotator cuff recovery.[/quote]

Any type in particular?

It’s been 2 weeks as of today and it’s still just about as uncomfortable. My brother went to the chiropractor the other day when we were both home and he didn’t mention it to me…would have been good to go :\ . I’ve been doing external & internal rotations, face pulls and occasionally LYPT but so far haven’t noticed much of an improvement.

49

Hi pumped340,
I have been following this injury thread for a while but was unable to share my experiences with you because of certain work reasons recently that kept me a bit busy.
I have suffered some very bad shoulder/upper back injury and i got injured when i was the strongest in my sport. From experience i can say some of the worst injuries happen when you get really strong with a certain movement over a period of time with multitudes of repetition. This generally is the result of imbalances.
However coming to your specific case am certain you could be back to 100% and more with far greater strength and better technique if you take this opportunity to fix and address the imbalances.
To start off how does your upper trap area and neck region feels ?
Are you doing any lateral/front raises right now in this specific condition you are in; If you are continuing with those how are they feeling ?
What sort of work are you doing for your upper traps /traps in general? Are you continuing with shrugs since your shoulder condition?
Also do you breathe strong and full? like a belly full of air that makes you tight throughout ? Do you pay attention to breathing patterns while you lift ?
Plus you didn’t mention whether the discomfort/pain/irritation is in right/left/both side(s) of the shoulder.
This can be fixed totally.

50

hey pumped340 sorry I didn’t reply, yeah my shoulder injury was just pretty mcuh my shoulder (left) being protracted and muscle imbalance and a shitload of tension/knots in my supraspinatus.
I’m still not 100% but very close, I slacked the exercises for a week cause it was feeling 100% pretty much and it started to act up again…that and because I went to my reg. boxing and yeah that prob. didn’t help.

Anyways though I’ve been taking some ibuprofen now as well and continuing to do bike face pulls, post. delt with the tennis ball…I actually use a golf ball to get the sweet spots.

Look up joe defranco upper body warmup and there’s a vid of it in there of how I do it.

As well thorasic extensions + thorasic rolling, like dannyrat said I get tons of popping and I’ll use a tennis ball to get more specific in my back and what not.

Not sure what xydharth is talkin about but I definaetly have tension in my left neck/left side of upper back…maybe that is bugging you as well? I’ve been doign trap stretches and the foam roll on the back helps but it gets tight again later.

51

As well what does that mean most problems in the infrapinatus? I thought the tension and problems would be in supraspinatus for impingement…I mean that’s where my problem is stemming from I am a little confused here…but I guess it’s pretty much more or less the same treatment for most type of shoulder injuries.

LASTLY - sorry to kinda hijack here for one second pumped340 but I have a question about external rotations…

I don’t understand how to do them at all…I have vids of them they seem easy, but it seems that it’s very easy to cheat with your arms free and what not…shoulder horn is pretty $$ and I’m not sure how good it can be…my external rotators are VERY weak lol…and so far it seems they are not getting stronger…I am probably cheating somehow…should i just pitch in the money for the hsoulder horn, is it worth it or any alternative…
I hope this info can help pumped340 and anyone else with the same concern!

All we want is healthy shoulders!!

52

Have you tried Cuban Presses? They are quite difficult to cheat on.

53

Well I had the same problem, and when done standing free, both arms at once, ext. rotations felt a bit like they were sawing my shoulder off.

I do them very slow now, and only the middle 80% of ROM (with 100% being: forearm parallel to floor> forearm pointing stright up). NO JERKING OF THE WEIGHT. I kneel to the side of my weights bench, and put my upper arm flat on the bench, so the arm is parallel to the floor. Then just do my external rotations from that position.

I keep my forearm at right angle to the upper arm. This is useful because, DB in hand, the DB hits the bench before my fist does, thus limiting the end of ROM, which is useless IMO as it just deloads the external rotators. Hope this helps

54

[quote]rasturai wrote:
As well what does that mean most problems in the infrapinatus? I thought the tension and problems would be in supraspinatus for impingement…I mean that’s where my problem is stemming from I am a little confused here…but I guess it’s pretty much more or less the same treatment for most type of shoulder injuries.

LASTLY - sorry to kinda hijack here for one second pumped340 but I have a question about external rotations…

I don’t understand how to do them at all…I have vids of them they seem easy, but it seems that it’s very easy to cheat with your arms free and what not…shoulder horn is pretty $$ and I’m not sure how good it can be…my external rotators are VERY weak lol…and so far it seems they are not getting stronger…I am probably cheating somehow…should i just pitch in the money for the hsoulder horn, is it worth it or any alternative…
I hope this info can help pumped340 and anyone else with the same concern!

All we want is healthy shoulders!![/quote]

For cable pulley external rotations put a towel between your elbow and your body. If the towel drops your using to much weight or bad form and letting your elbow come out to far from your body. Hope that helped

55

The key on external rotations goes back to what you are trying to work. The muscle your trying to work is the infraspinatus: http://www.orthop.washington.edu/_Rainbow/Album/10357m882357d1-3886-4315-a52a-df7d1f31ddd7.jpg

I recommend doing the side lying dumbell external rotation with a towel between your upper arm and torso so that your upper arms is in a comfortable position, this is important: http://www.pamf.org/sports/king/images/shoulder_3.jpg

I would recommend starting with a 3lb weight. The first thing is to retract your shoulder blade as far as you can especially using your lower trap and hold the shoulder there. You have to try and squeeze your infraspinatus slowly on the way up. Try to only come up until your arm is about parallel to the floor, no higher. If you start to feel the sensation wrap around the side of your shoulder and no longer at your shoulder blade, your either not squeezing the muscle hard enough, you have fatigued, or the weight your using is too heavy.

The most important thing in all of this is that you MUST control the movement with the infraspinatus. You cannot just go through the motion, even with what seems to be a controlled tempo, because it will do nothing at all. Its usually a light goes on moment when you can actually feel your infraspinatus doing the work. Humble yourself and back off down to 3lbs, dont do any more than 15 reps but stop when you feel the sensation wrapping around the side or front of the shoulder. Start with your weaker side and replicate those reps on your stronger side.

[quote]kgcage14 wrote:

[quote]rasturai wrote:
As well what does that mean most problems in the infrapinatus? I thought the tension and problems would be in supraspinatus for impingement…I mean that’s where my problem is stemming from I am a little confused here…but I guess it’s pretty much more or less the same treatment for most type of shoulder injuries.

LASTLY - sorry to kinda hijack here for one second pumped340 but I have a question about external rotations…

I don’t understand how to do them at all…I have vids of them they seem easy, but it seems that it’s very easy to cheat with your arms free and what not…shoulder horn is pretty $$ and I’m not sure how good it can be…my external rotators are VERY weak lol…and so far it seems they are not getting stronger…I am probably cheating somehow…should i just pitch in the money for the hsoulder horn, is it worth it or any alternative…
I hope this info can help pumped340 and anyone else with the same concern!

All we want is healthy shoulders!![/quote]

For cable pulley external rotations put a towel between your elbow and your body. If the towel drops your using to much weight or bad form and letting your elbow come out to far from your body. Hope that helped
[/quote]

56

What shadowzz said , is the key to do external rotation accurately , squeezing and feeling the infraspinatus, not just going through the motion , letting that squeeze force to control the weight, that way you will do it clean, but watch for all the signs he mentioned and back off or just get better at squeezing it.
So on those lines, just try it without the weights first just like in one of the posing routines

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This is an immediate way to make you feel the squeeze , while you do this feel the squeeze and force from the armpit (this will recruit the other scapular stabilisers including the serratus), now play around with this, bring your arms closer to the body away from the body and you will see its much more smoother, the scapular retraction gets much more powerful. Once you are getting better at this you will feel all your rotator cuff muscles playing a more active coordinated role in all the lifts.

Now check for as to how in all the external rotations a basic shrug, squeeze and retract movement is followed by the actual external rotation part, the initial squeeze is vital in preventing all the sawing off , impinging feeling and helps in doing a clean rotation. Check out the following video examples for that , hope this helps for a free hanging external rotation drill–

After having worked on the motion part there are still tightness issues in the posterior capsule which might need to worked upon simultaneously , so check out the following stretches and tests:

Also an article addressing pectoral stretching

Also find a good upper trap/neck stretch, levator scapulae stretch and Rear Delt Fly here :

If you are fine with the first test, there are mostly stability issues (discussed earlier with feeling the infraspinatus thing) that need to worked upon more than stretches and flexibility (yet you need them, just to make sure, plus they are easy , so do then amyway); all of this goes hand in hand.

Recruitment and squeezing of the infraspinatus will act as a trigger to awaken all the other rotator cuff muscles along with the scapular stabilisers , traps and levator scapulae which also again comes with an emphasis on thoracic mobility (am sure you also have been doing the foam rolling as mentioned here already on this thread):

Now all this said and done most of the results achieved by doing these specific drills , stretches and mobility, foam roll work can be directly addressed by working on faulty breathing patterns. A proper inhalation , exhalation cycle of breathing will directly string all these disparate results into a single , better full proof technique. So working on breathing + mobilty/stability issues as discussed throughout the thread will generally set out a road for a more balanced and stronger shoulder and help in technique on direct shoulder work and lifts.
We can discuss on the breathing aspect in some detail here too and get a better perspective from all who have been sharing/visiting this thread.

Also please try heavy overhead shrugs, along with the face pulls as mentioned in the following article by Mike Robertson that discusses impingement and shoulder stability issues:

For sub- active lower traps:

Hope all of this helps rather than confuse! We can drill further and discuss in that case anyway .

57

wow thank you everyone rationalgaze, dannyrat, kgcage14 i will try that i def. cheat, shadowzz4, and lastly thank you xydharth for that i really appreciate that you took the time to do that. I will definately be saving this thread to my favourites on the computer.

I actually think its not only my supraspintus, i did some research myself and looks like my infraspinatus is messed up too from the description…ive been lookin at the anatomy chart as well to kinda pin point it better. Either way I will definaetly be using the squeeze and feelin the infraspinatus working right instead of going through the motion…which I did all the time, and juding from vids and explanations i haven’t done them right! lol

I’m also glad there is a way to actually do these properly instead of pitchin in that fifty for a shoulder horn, not knockin it…its just a little pricey.

again this helps a lot, and I’m going to go over the exercises try them and see what’s workin and if somethin feels wrong. definaetly will add some stuff too, overhead shrugs, I do the BIKE face pulls, thorasic extension, etc.

58

by the way I will checkout the INside out dvd…I bought that a long time ago…and just found it lol…never needed it before cause I had no problems, but it should come in some handy now…

59

[quote]rasturai wrote:
… Either way I will definaetly be using the squeeze and feelin the infraspinatus working right instead of going through the motion…which I did all the time, and juding from vids and explanations i haven’t done them right! lol
[/quote]
If you would set the mind-muscle connection to do it the right way and feel the infraspinatus active and squeezing be sure it would also mean that the whole rotator cuff would slowly get reprogrammed into all your lifts and will make a world of a difference which means all your scapular stabilisers are also getting recruited. How do you make sure ? Just feel squeezing and force generated from the armpit when you bring your arms closer to your body (adduction; armpit closed, clench your fists to emphasize the squeeze) throughout the deltoid ,pec, rib region uniformly to form a tight capsule and the opposite while bringing your arms overhead (clench the fists together overhead to emphasise the squeeze) ,squeezing the supraspinatus and force generated from the squeeze travelling down to get a squeeze response from the lower traps ,lats too.When the abduction to adduction to abduction motion gets a natural squeeze from either the armpit of the supraspinatus and traps then you are getting closer to and better at recruiting the rotator cuff muscles and also the driver among them the infraspinatus better. This is a very bad and raw articulation , there will be better descriptions to this , but if you are getting what I mean just focus on doing that in spite of all this description. Get a clean motion squeeze at the top as well at the bottom, you will see this happen more often if you are truly activating your infraspinatus.

apart from the free hanging external rotation drills also do and learn the lying , keeping the towel under external rotation that shadowzz mentioned in his earlier post, just to make sure.

keep doing that and also keep experimenting with your breathing (is it shallow, is it deep, is it heavy , smooth , strong)and use it as a powerful tool in all your lifts. Powerful breathing is a stress manager as well as great ‘on the run’ muscle recruiter ,activator , integrator , posture,form and technique corrector and most importantly muscular imbalance preventor.If you have not been doing this start doing it and work upon it progressively like any other. Good breathing will bullet-proof thoracic mobility which i think is the most crucial factor in shoulder stability and also hip alignment.
We will discuss this further.

60

[quote]xydharth wrote:
Hi pumped340,
I have been following this injury thread for a while but was unable to share my experiences with you because of certain work reasons recently that kept me a bit busy.
I have suffered some very bad shoulder/upper back injury and i got injured when i was the strongest in my sport. From experience i can say some of the worst injuries happen when you get really strong with a certain movement over a period of time with multitudes of repetition. This generally is the result of imbalances.
However coming to your specific case am certain you could be back to 100% and more with far greater strength and better technique if you take this opportunity to fix and address the imbalances.
To start off how does your upper trap area and neck region feels ?
Are you doing any lateral/front raises right now in this specific condition you are in; If you are continuing with those how are they feeling ?
What sort of work are you doing for your upper traps /traps in general? Are you continuing with shrugs since your shoulder condition?
Also do you breathe strong and full? like a belly full of air that makes you tight throughout ? Do you pay attention to breathing patterns while you lift ?
Plus you didn’t mention whether the discomfort/pain/irritation is in right/left/both side(s) of the shoulder.
This can be fixed totally.[/quote]

Hey thanks for the reply. The pain is in the right shoulder.

-My upper trap/neck area feels normal
-I don’t do a ton of work for my traps but they get hit somewhat with yates rows that I do, other than that nothing really
-I’m actually doing very little shoulder work right now, I should probably add some in. The reason is because the routine I was doing (Dave Tates bench program) didn’t include any and now after the “injury” I’m basically doing the same routine but switching the BB work to DB. The only laterals I do are bent over laterals which hurt right after the injury but when I did them on wednesday I didn’t feel much pain.

The shoulder does seem to be beginning to get better, but there’s still some discomfort. I’ve been able to do DB benching withing too much pain/discomfort.

[quote]rasturai wrote:
hey pumped340 sorry I didn’t reply, yeah my shoulder injury was just pretty mcuh my shoulder (left) being protracted and muscle imbalance and a shitload of tension/knots in my supraspinatus.
I’m still not 100% but very close, I slacked the exercises for a week cause it was feeling 100% pretty much and it started to act up again…that and because I went to my reg. boxing and yeah that prob. didn’t help.

Anyways though I’ve been taking some ibuprofen now as well and continuing to do bike face pulls, post. delt with the tennis ball…I actually use a golf ball to get the sweet spots.

Look up joe defranco upper body warmup and there’s a vid of it in there of how I do it.

As well thorasic extensions + thorasic rolling, like dannyrat said I get tons of popping and I’ll use a tennis ball to get more specific in my back and what not.

Not sure what xydharth is talkin about but I definaetly have tension in my left neck/left side of upper back…maybe that is bugging you as well? I’ve been doign trap stretches and the foam roll on the back helps but it gets tight again later.[/quote]

I don’t really have any pain in my neck area, but maybe I should start trying the tennis ball on the posterior delt.

Also something I noticed is that the pain is in the top movement of benching. I tried DB floor presses and there was just as much discomfort if not more compared to flat benching and as I mentioned before even skull crushers hurt and that was mainly at the top of the movement.

As for external rotations, don’t you start towards the floor and only come up parallel? That’s what I saw in a video anyway and it seems much more comfortable than trying to bring it all the way up. I should probably lower the weight though and focus more on feeling the infraspinatus