shoulder_fix

Shoulder pain

I've had significant experience with shoulder pain, and I've managed to figure out its root cause and fix it for the most part. I will detail my experience in this write-up. If you just want my advice without the journey, skip to "conclusion".

It is worthwhile to mention that throughout the literature and peoples' opinions, there exists the opinion that many shoulder problems are caused by the front portion of the deltoid becoming too strong proportional to the rest of the shoulder; this will be important later.

How bad was my case

At the peak, I could not, when sitting at the table, move one of my arms up to the table to work with the computer - I had to use assistance from my other arm.

Every single test I could perform for rotator-cuff tears was positive for them.

It is possible to argue that only medical imaging can conclusively detect a rotator cuff tear, but that doesn't matter, as you'll read next.

It is also possible that rotator cuff tears are bullshit, and what I really had (and many others) is biceps tendinopathy; I never explored this area further, but I heard some claims that the industry is starting to move away from rotator cuff tears as a concept, and that it is suspected that many cases are related to biceps tendinopathy.

Doesn't a rotator cuff tear mean you should get surgery?

That's the thing - surgery does not correlate with better outcomes than physical therapy.
But you can still get an infection and lose your shoulder altogether (even if not very likely).
You have to realize, surgery is very difficult. Cutting someone up and stiching them together correctly is very difficult. While I'm sure there are cases where it is the only option (a full total tear, meaning the muscle is no longer attached to tendons/bone), if you're not there, it's probably best to avoid someone cutting you up.

So what did you do?

A rotator cuff tear would not be rehabbed differently than a non-rotator-cuff tear, as far as I can tell. So I tried various rehab exercises - a couple rotator cuff exercises I found on the internet, and an exercise suggested to me by a physiotherapist.


Arm raises with band resistance (ARBR), the video does not display it perfectly but it's an ok approxinatiom. I used a towel instead of bands, loading it with only a small amount of external force.

Lateral raises with no dumbbells, thumbs facing body.

Dumbbell Upright Shoulder External Rotation (DUSER, link above) with no dumbbells and no support.

Dumbell lying shoulder external rotations (DLSER, link above) with no dumbbells.

To be clear, I did all exercises with no weights. I will now use this notation to write what I did:
reps of ARBR / reps of lateral raises / reps of DUSER / reps of DLSER x sets
so, for example
10/30/30/20 x 3

2023-04-29: 10/30/30/20 x 3
2023-04-30: 10/30/30/20 x 4 23m 28s
2023-05-01: 10/30/30/20 x 5 22m
--- break because of PAIN, maybe I overdid it ---
2023-05-06: 10/30//30/20 x 3
Here I decided to replace DUSER with lateral raises with bent elbows, top position like the DUSER top. I did this because I felt like I managed to use the front shoulder to perform DUSER, and, since everyone says an overly strong front delt can be a problem, this was my workaround. At this point, I thought my increased pain was because of cheating with my front delts. I also felt like I managed to somehow do lateral raises with my front delts, irrespective of thumb location; here I just tried to mind-over-matter use the right muscle.

2023-05-06: 10/30/0/20 x 1 (super strict form, stabbing knife pain)
2023-05-09: 10/30//20 x 3 spaced out
2023-05-11: 10/30/2/20 x 3 in a row; for the first time I felt like maybe there was some progress since a few days ago.
2023-05-13: 10/30/10/10 x 1
At this point, both my shoulders now hurt (!!!), and they hurt a lot. I had overall managed to degrade my condition significantly. This was near the worst my shoulders ever felt in my life, and it was both of them (I started out with one injured shoulder).

I began looking for alternative explanations. I have gout - maybe this is gout in my shoulders ( probably not )? And so on.

Methodology switch

I tried treating the unlikely gout, and my shoulders didn't get better.
Eventually I decided that maybe I just had some mild injury that I worsened by doing the super-unnatural rotator cuff exercises.
So I prayed to the gods of gainzzz which always tell you to do compound movements.
And I set to work.

I had a period (2-3 months) where I did only rows; Then lat pulldowns; then overhead press. With each of these exercises, my shoulders felt a ton better than before, especially rows. I started with the lightest possible pussy weight (barbell or 1 plate loaded on a machine), did 3 sets of 20, and went up by the smallest increment, slowly.

At times it seemed like I was cured - particularly, right after training, when my shoulders were warm.

However, they never felt like new when I was cold. I had managed to regain normal function, but something was always missing. And it seemed like sometimes they'd just get a little worse for no discernible reason. It felt like I had to do the exercises to maintain function, and, if I slacked, I'd start reverting to shit shoulders. So I just kept doing the compound movements, by this point at serious weights. I kept thinking that I just need to find the new angle, the next compound movement that I've left out to finalize balancing out my shoulders, as with each next movement there seemed to be a slight decrease in issues. But it was slight.

Change of point of view

My girlfriend kept telling me that it was because of the mold infestation we had in the apartment we were renting. One day, when we moved some stuff around and

Conclusion

0. Rotator cuff exercises made my shoulders worse.
1. "natural" compound movements helped my shoulders.
2. The root cause of my shoulder pain is systemic, and to manage it I have to avoid gluten, caffeine, nicotine, mold and potentially aspirin.