Hay Liam.

Did your physiotherapist talk to you about exercises and your gym work etc.? or did he just treat the inflamed supraspinatus? Generally following even simple shoulder injuries to the shoulder a lot of complex things can happen!

The SS is part of a large stabilization system in your shoulder, when it loses its activation patterns you can lose the position of your humerus in its socket slightly. This prevents it from clearing a lip of bone when you roll your shoulder around as you mentioned, and can give pain / pinching / catches etc. Generally, in someone who trains regularly in the gym (and martial arts) increased muscle tone in your chest (pecs etc) will pull your glenohumeral head forward when you lose the aforementioned stability.

So, in all likelyhood the solution to your dramas will be in repositioning your humeral head to clear the acromion (small lip of bone @ the top of your shoulder). Below are some tips:

STRETCH your pecs every gym session. Put your arm against a door way @ 60/90/120 degrees and turn away from it (search pec stretches on google you should find some)

Focus on some back / posterior shoulder exercises i.e. bent over rows / seated row / etc. TECHNIQUE is VERY important with these, try and pull the head of your arm INTO the socket when you do them. Also try and keep your shoulder BACK (but don't exaggerate this). i.e. don't let your shoulder move forward when the weight is at its lowest point on bent over rows.

Simply practicing sucking the top of your arm into the socket and moving your shoulderblade down and in to the middle of your back about 100 times a day can also help, even without weights etc.


I have just thrown this together, there are a LOT of things you can do to improve your shoulder stability and strengthen it PROPERLY to ensure good results in the gym, painfree with decreased chance of reinjury. If you need any more tips just give me a hollar.

Take care , Musculoman!