Shoulder Pain

[vam44]

Hi Fahim,

You still need to find someone who can correctly diagnose your shoulder problem! An ultrasound will be helpful to evaluate the rotator cuff muscle You could have a tear or you could have some extra fluid above the joint, you could have an impingement syndrome THere are very specific tests that a physio or shoulder specialist should be able to do.

The correct exercises will depend on the exact nature of the problem.

Have you stopped doing any aggravating exercises? That is an important part of getting better even if you are not diagnosed yet.

[Petero]

I find those contour pillows made from memory foam can help shoulder pain. I tried one and found it to be helpful. You can get different ones in various different designs likes contoured or made from memory foam.
I would recommend them.

[pt8am]

Farim

i understand your probably very frustrated as you sound very much into your training and personal development and this is having a major impact on your recreational activities. It doesnt sound like anybody you have seen has found anything to help you so far. You need a structured and in depth physical examination by an experienced and dynamic physio. I think the one you saw origionally who did the heat lamp thing did not have a clue (im basing this on your ecollection of the assessment and treatment - basic movements...followed by some heat and red light bulb)

I agree with gcoe on it sounding like a neural issue but this far down the line i think you may have several overlapping problems.

You say you felt the pain after you incline bench press. Did you work to failure with the exercise and how did you offload the dumbells/barbell? A lot of traumatic shoulder injuries occur during the movement of offloading the dumbells nt necessarily during the exercise. The mechanism of injury is an important clue although with the time thats passed this maybe less so.

A proper examination should be able to pick up any medium to major tears in your shoulder muscles and also assess you scupulohumeral rythym repetitively and under loading to dig for information. I would also expect them to look at you performing your painfull exercises. You definaley need an assessment of you neurodynamics and thoracic and cerivcal spines. The structure of the examination needs to be very carefully planned so as not to get what we call false positives(ie its hard to totally isolate any single tissue or structure with any certain test. A test that strongly stresses the injured tissue will aggrevate it and a test that targets a different tissue but also, albeit to a lesser degree, the inured tissue will also be positive becuse its been irritated before hand!!). I would suggest testing one area at a time with a couple of days in between to see what the reaction is before moving on. An MRI or ultrasound may be helpfull but dont be surprised if they dont show anything or maybe even just incidental findings that me or your neighbour or his dog might have (also a false positive). If this is the case and corrective surgery is used then the origional problem will still be the same (This is not a rare thing) and you will have gained nothing.

I think your management very much needs to be based on a diagnosis (preferably with the luxury of imaging to confirm) formed by carefull and tailored examination.

Keep us posted as this is an intersting one.