experience getting over a rotator cuff injury?

jon1981

hi,

Just wondering if anyone had any experience getting over this type of injury.
I first noticed a well defined pain on the outside of my right shoulder back in september. foolish me continue to train on it for about 3 weeks and it kinda got worse. I did abit of thai boxing at the time and it was so painful i couldnt raise my arm above my head.

So i got some physio and he confirmed it was rotator cuff inflamation. It took about 5-6 months to get it right. I hadn't realised how badly I hurt it, my physio who is also on the olympic panel said it was a bad one he seen. Anyway eventually he got me right....but NOW my other bloody are is giving me the early complaints i had in my right arm. I have resisted going back to him because i have decided to do the exercises he showed me and see if i can prevent it that way.

Has anyone had a full recovery from this type of injury and got back to full training? just interested to know.

Ouijaboard

My brother suffered from this on and off for years, eventually he just avoid every exercise that he found inflammed it. Some of the exercises in this article
http://www.t-nation.com/readArticle.do?id=459577
helped strenghten the area and he eventually got to the stage where it didnt bother him too much, he still avoids stuff like upright rows which he believes caused the issue in the first place. Worth a look.

jon1981

cougar1 wrote: »

My brother suffered from this on and off for years, eventually he just avoid every exercise that he found inflammed it. Some of the exercises in this article
http://www.t-nation.com/readArticle.do?id=459577
helped strenghten the area and he eventually got to the stage where it didnt bother him too much, he still avoids stuff like upright rows which he believes caused the issue in the first place. Worth a look.

cheers,

I used to think i was the military press that caused it for me. But since it has started on my other shoulder and i havent been exercising that hard, i think its from the way i sleep. I use to sleep on my right arm above my head, since the injury i sleep on my left arm...and now i have the same complaint! :mad:

Ouijaboard

yeah military press seems to be another culprit. It could be related to the way you sleep, some good shoulder stretching before bed could help with that.

Alot of the time the rotator cuff seems to suffer because the front delts are hit alot more in your average upper body compound work than the rear or laterals. A bit more concentration on the rear delts and size delts to keep them balanced in both size and strength to the fronts seems to go a long way in sorting out the issue for many people.

Also to note that exercise where you lie on your side and with elbow tucked next to your free side extend your free arm with a very light dumbbell and lower it again. I think its called dumbbell external rotation. This seems to work very well and my bro always did this before any shoulder work to warm up the rotator cuff. The thing is for rotator cuff work you will be hardly using any weight and in some cases no weight at all on the dumbbell but they do work well. Hope you get it sorted.

jon1981

cheers ive been doing that exercise but killing myself with 5kg, i might half the weight for now.

J.S. Pill

My rotator cuff injury held me back seriously for the best part of 9 months. What I was advised to do by the physio was to cut out all direct shoulder work, cut out the incline bench press, and adopt a wide-ish grip on the bench press and use a limited range of motion on this. I had to do the usual rotator cuff exercises as well of course.

I noticed a decent improvement after a while but after a few months the discomfort was still there. I asked my physio if I could start re-introducing shoulder work but she said not to do anything till I was 100%. After a few months I was becoming very frustrated and my trainer suggested I start introducing the forbidden exercises gradually. He said that the physio was probably more concerned about the 40 quid per visit she got than the state of my shoulder. So I started off on very light weights and brought up the poundages each week; I kept the increases small aswell and never pushed myself beyond what i felt was safe. So after 3 months of doing this I'm happy to say that my shoulder is in much better shape and the pain is virtually gone. There's still a slight strength imbalance between my right (injured) shoulder and my left but that's improving nicely.

My choice of back exercises were important too, face pulls (done very carefully) and standing lat press-downs helped quite a bit.

Disclaimer: I pretty much went directly against the advice of my physio on this occasion. I'm NOT trying to recommend this as a general approach, I'm just giving this as an example of the dangers of being too conservative. It worked for me but everyone's problems are going to be different.

#Smokey#

I had the injury about 2 months ago it has taken nearly 1 1/2 months to recover and even now i am not currently back to my prevoius lifts.

jon1981

im nearly getting depressed about it. it took so long to get my right shoulder back and even still it isnt 100% and now my left is at me... its soul destroying.