(Q): What new path can I take after knee and shoulder injuries?

[Awestin]

Age 20 Male, 6’3’ currently at like 230 (my athletic body was at 180)
Currently recovering from a shoulder surgery, and may need to have the other shoulder looked at shortly.

1. Injuries: (Reference information only in this section)

Knee:
The damage to my knee originated in 2007 when running hurdles (torn meniscus), the second meniscus tear was in 2009 in football, and in 2010 I tore my meniscus once again in a kickboxing bout.
From the year 2007 to 2010 I have had 6 knee surgeries including
• 4 scopes (three times a large free floating piece of the meniscus was extracted, each time the joint was smoothed out, pleading was often down to stimulate regrowth of meniscus, and last two also attempted to clear out arthritis)
• 1 reconstructive knee surgery (butterflied mcl, added groove to meniscus, smoothed surface, and cleaned up arthritis)
• 1 Scope/screw removal to take out three metal screws to hold my frontal tendon in place (since the screws caused intense irritation

Shoulder:
I have always been able to do a little party trick where I push my shoulder forward and shrug, and it makes a visible forward movement and a cracking sound; I have chronic subluxation of the shoulder. My first shoulder injury occurred in football/wrestling 2009, but wasn’t a true traumatic injury. My shoulder essentially ended up bruised and after taking a few weeks break I was fine and won out my wrestling season (this is in 8th grade, not a high school championship). Fast forward to 2011 and I ended up needing a shoulder surgery because of labrum tear (greater than 50% torn) and the space in my shoulder capsule being stretched out 3-4 times what it is supposed to be. I have not experienced a true traumatic injury, but have always been hindered in all shoulder and chest lifts (from military to bench press).

2. Rationale for my injuries and overall occurrences:
While my injuries may make me sound like a bit of a freak if you look at me I look perfectly normal other than a few small scars (in fact I probably have less than a large percentage of people out there). What makes me different lies mainly in the structure of my cartilage and the actual composition of my joint tissues. I know for a fact from my knee surgeries that the main initial cause for my knee condition was the lack of a groove in my knee, which leads to easy dislocation. Now my knee may or may not have a proper groove due to surgery, but the meniscus is made of softer less durable cartilage and I have arthritis in my knee that can cause pain in cold conditions and with too much exercise (either running or squats). From my knee injuries and the shoulder condition that I have (bilaterally) my specialists think that my connective tissue has more elastin than it should and thus is extra elastic and less durable than it should be. This tissue type is the pain cause to my shoulder problem which is compounded by the overall loose shoulder joint (which is more than likely caused by a fast growth spurt and the overly elastic nature of my joints).

3. My Aspirations:
In the past I really wanted to be an Ultimate fighter, and invested a great deal of my life training in different aspects of fighting, getting my conditioning up, and attempting to get stronger. I had a difficult time getting stronger after sophomore year in high school, and due to injuries I actually didn’t. I maxed out with a pathetic 300 pound max bench and about 450 squat. My shoulder almost always ended up hurting during workouts and my chest as a result barely hurt after workouts (I have always practiced good benching form, and it is actually the last 10% of extension that I think did the damage to my shoulder). From the end of 2008 to 2011 I really focused on mixed martial arts and attempting to get better at the sport. As my kickboxing evolved and became increasingly technical my shoulders started to get more and more sore from straight-line punching and I found it difficult to hold my hands in front of my head as is instructed. I was unable to squat for a large part of my high school life and beyond due to injury, and most of the time in-between I was forced to use light weight and essentially rehab my legs. At one point I was running 10 miles 4 days a week for fighting (this too hurt).

Goals from here out:
I no longer am interested in fighting professionally or doing some other type deal like that, but really just want to increase the fitness of my body and find a way to improve the quality of my life. I really ache for competitive nature involved in sports and would like to at least portray a respectable body (since the human body truly is a miraculous thing). Maybe more importantly I would like to fight back against the aching pain due to arthritis(which isn’t that bad most of the time, but has nasty spikes maybe 1 day in month), and have a body that I can still carry around my kids in 20 years with, and still be able to walk freely when I’m 50, 60, etc.

4. My Questions:
At this point I am a little bit at odds even how to approach this situation and would appreciate any direction, even if it just points me down a long road of information that eventually ends up aiding me in some way. ***I know my bodyweight is higher than it should be, so I realize dropping my weight down will help my knee. Here are some of the questions that I can think of.

-Since muscles serve as secondary support structure, would using a specific workout regime/nutritional plan aide my efforts to revamp my body?
-Would legal steroids or some other medical drug increase my chances of recovery by again strengthening the muscles that I have been unable to strengthen due to injury? And if so, would it be worth the medical risks implied?
-Are there any specific shoulder rehabilitation documents or webpages that have especially good information for me to look into?
-Does anyone have any personal, secondary, expert, or coaching advice on how to deal with either type of injury?
-I realize that there are numerous other questions I could ask from stretching to specific nutritional supplements, so I would also gladly accept any advice from those realms.

Thank you for reading and responses.
Note: The attachment is the exact same thing as the post, and it just posted for ease of reading.
Injury Description.docx