The full shoulder story

The saga of my shoulder problems continue.  Get ready for a long story.

To sum up the whole experience up to this point, a while back (probably something like 6-8 months ago), I injured my shoulder somehow.  I don't remember a specific event causing the injury, but I do remember one day I was doing seated overhead press, and when I went to rack the weight above and behind my head, I felt sharp pain in my right shoulder.  It wasn't the pain of an injury happening, it was just pain as if I was aggravating something in there.  The next week, I tried overhead shoulder press again, and again had the same problems racking and unracking the weight.

So, I switched to different shoulder exercises.  It didn't hurt to press, so I continued to press, but not seated military.  I would use dumbbells, or a machine, and even a standing press in the squat rack.  Eventually, I noticed that I wasn't able to go up in weight.  Literally, months of me barely pressing 125 lbs.  No improvement.  So I come up with this hypothesis that it's my shoulder, and I should let it rest.  So I do.

I stopped doing any kind of shoulder specific lifts for about 2 months.  But I still felt the pain in there whenever I did anything weird with my shoulder, like a throwing motion.  Or stretching the my shoulder with my right arm above and behind my head.

Eventually, softball season comes around.  At our first practice, if you could even call it that.  My 1st throw of a softball was terrible extreme pain.  I try to shake it off and "warm up."  10 throws in, and my arm is KILLING me.  The rest of the practice I was underhand lobbing the balls in from the outfield.

The thought of not playing ball terrified me.  I love baseball.  Played it as a kid, played it as a young adult in highschool.  And from 18 onward, I've played softball with my friends every year.  And now I can't fucking throw a ball.  So I began icing it every night.  Then I tried trigger point therapy on myself.  Then I tried stretching every day.  I tried icing, stretching, and trigger point therapy all at the same time.  No dice.

So, next I went the route of the doctors.  2 orthopedic surgeons, an MRI and an x-ray.  Both orthopedists don't know what's wrong.  Evidently my MRI and x-ray both look good.

Fast forward to now, about halfway through the softball season.  I'm able to throw, but I have to do it like a girl.  I throw with my elbow, not my shoulder.  Anyone who played little league baseball might recognize the term "short-arming" it.  It's able to bypass most of the pain.

According to the doctor, the next step is to put me through physical therapy for a month and see if my condition improves.  If not, the next step is to inject me with dye to try and get a more accurate MRI done.

And if they STILL don't see a problem, they can begin to inject me with cortisone shots to see if it improves the pain, and helps them locate where it's coming from.

I'm reluctant to go to physical therapy.  First, the Doctor wasn't sure it would even help.  Second, I have to pay a $40 copay for each session.  He wants me to do 8 sessions minimum, which adds up to 320 bucks.  That's a lot of money to shell out for something I don't even know will work.

I've got another idea.  Before I commit to that kind of a monetary investment, I'm going to give 2 weeks towards working out the "non-pressing" part of my shoulder and see if strengthening the muscles around where I'm feeling pain will help anything.  Why?  I don't know.  Call it a last shot at something other than paying hundreds of dollars towards a possible fix.  Plus, a while back my uncle (who's been lifting for over 20 years) gave me some sound advice about giving this a try.  I didn't follow it then, but I'm going to follow it now.

At this point, who knows if it will help.  But I'm willing to wait 2-3 more weeks before throwing $320 at the problem.

So, Monday started my weird shoulder workouts.  I did rows first, nothing to do with shoulders, but I wanted to squeeze em in.  As for the actual shoulder stuff, I used the universal machine, and brought one of the cables with a handle down to about chest height.  From there, I either internally or externally pulled the cable away from the universal, either towards or away from my body.

For the internals, picture grabbing a cable to your right with your right arm and pulling the cable left across your chest, keeping your elbow at your side.

For the externals, picture grabbing a cable to your left with your right arm and pulling the cable right across your chest, keeping your elbow at your side.

Finally, I did 3 sets where I moved the cable to the floor, and pulled it up and away from my body.  I'll call them shoulder pulls.

For the shoulder pulls, picture grabbing a cable from your left foot with your right arm and pulling it up and above your head.

Here are all of the sets from the day.

6/25/12 - Monday
Machine Cable Rows - 3 sets
90x8 (warmup)
120x8 (warmup)
165x8
180x7
165x8

External Rotator Cuff - 3 sets each arm
30x8
30x8
20x8

Internal Rotator Cuff - 3 sets each arm
30x8
30x8
20x8

Shoulder Pulls - 3 sets each arm
30x8
30x8
30x8

It's Wednesday, and while my shoulders both feel a little sore, my right one feels more sore than the left.  I'm going to try throwing a ball on either Friday or Saturday, depending on how it feels.  I'll throw VERY LIGHTLY, and again - see how I feel.  I'll work out my shoulders this away again next Monday, and maybe one more time during next week before my next softball game.  I want to see if doing this 2-4 times has any improvement on my level of pain and ability to throw.  If not, I'll go the physical therapy route.  If it helps, then great!

I'll keep you posted.