Shoulder pain for months keeping me out of the gym.. Please help

[shoulderpainman]

Hi everyone, I am 16yo and have been lifting for a couple years now and for the second time in my lifting career, I got a shoulder injury. It all started about 3 months ago when I had gone to the gym after a heavy shoulder day. I was warming up with the bar to do bench presses and felt a weird pressure in the spot between my shoulder and my chest (right under the AC joint). I decided to take a 2 week break off of it because I knew something felt off.

After 2 weeks of icing, taking advil, and doing rotator cuff excercises, I felt a bit better. I started off light, only doing back and biceps (no pull ups, pull downs, etc) and it was OK for a few days.

About a week after this, I started having an aggravating pain in my shoulder again so I decided to set up an appointment with an ortho. I went to the ortho and he did nothing except prescribe me Naproxen and refer me to a PT.

I took the Naproxen for ~10 days (didn't help at all) and went to physical therapy. All the PT did was have me go through a few different upper body excercises to see if I could do any of them pain-free. Just about all of them started to aggravate my shoulder so I could barely do anything.

I came to the conclusion that any excercise my PT showed me I could just do at home (without paying $50 each visit..)

3 months later, today, I felt OK with no pain. I went to the gym and as soon as I started lifting, the pain came back. I am currently at the gym right now and even the slightest light arm work with cables gives me an ache in the outer side of my shoulder, which gets increasingly worse as I lift more.

Does anyone have any ideas? I've tried PT excercises, icing, medicine, etc. This has also gotten in the way of my work as I cannot type on my keyboard without feeling a sharp pain in my shoulder. The pain shifts between the front and the side of my shoulder. At this point I feel hopeless and I really hope there's a solution. I am unable to afford an MRI due to insurance costs but I believe I have bursitis and bicep tendonitis (which I was diagnosed with back in March before it fully healed). I feel super depressed and I have lost 20 pounds as well as all of my strength since the injury. Please help

Thank you

[Szyszak]

Hi everyone, I am 16yo and have been lifting for a couple years now and for the second time in my lifting career, I got a shoulder injury. It all started about 3 months ago when I had gone to the gym after a heavy shoulder day. I was warming up with the bar to do bench presses and felt a weird pressure in the spot between my shoulder and my chest (right under the AC joint). I decided to take a 2 week break off of it because I knew something felt off.

After 2 weeks of icing, taking advil, and doing rotator cuff excercises, I felt a bit better. I started off light, only doing back and biceps (no pull ups, pull downs, etc) and it was OK for a few days.

About a week after this, I started having an aggravating pain in my shoulder again so I decided to set up an appointment with an ortho. I went to the ortho and he did nothing except prescribe me Naproxen and refer me to a PT.

I took the Naproxen for ~10 days (didn't help at all) and went to physical therapy. All the PT did was have me go through a few different upper body excercises to see if I could do any of them pain-free. Just about all of them started to aggravate my shoulder so I could barely do anything.

I came to the conclusion that any excercise my PT showed me I could just do at home (without paying $50 each visit..)

3 months later, today, I felt OK with no pain. I went to the gym and as soon as I started lifting, the pain came back. I am currently at the gym right now and even the slightest light arm work with cables gives me an ache in the outer side of my shoulder, which gets increasingly worse as I lift more.

Does anyone have any ideas? I've tried PT excercises, icing, medicine, etc. This has also gotten in the way of my work as I cannot type on my keyboard without feeling a sharp pain in my shoulder. The pain shifts between the front and the side of my shoulder. At this point I feel hopeless and I really hope there's a solution. I am unable to afford an MRI due to insurance costs but I believe I have bursitis and bicep tendonitis (which I was diagnosed with back in March before it fully healed). I feel super depressed and I have lost 20 pounds as well as all of my strength since the injury. Please help

Thank you

Did that "PT" even checked your shoulder mobility before giving you the exercises? If you dont have enough shoulder mobility especially internal rotation and want to performing exercise like bench press, you are risking to develop posterior capsule tightness. Your subscapularis become stiff, weak and unable to provide the movement of the humerus in relation to the shoulder blade. In this case your shoulder gonna goes forward a lot if you want to put your hand behind you.
Try to stretch your posterior cuff and posterior capsule by "sleeper stretch" and see if it helps.

[sowilson]

do you even do rows or back exercises? Sounds like your unbalanced, but what concerns me is that the ortho just dismissed you out of hand. Go find a good orthopedic surgeon, one who works with athletes, and get an opinion.