Is (minor) strenght training good or bad post surgery.

In My Humble Opinion
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About a year ago I had shoulder surgery. My Physical Therapist said my shoulder was one of the worst (tightest) shoulders she’s ever worked on in her 30+ year career. Based on internet research pre-surgery, I understood that it’s supposed to take about a year from your surgery to be back to how you were pre-injury.
I’m at a little over a year and I’m still tight. My arm, while it doesn’t ache, has certain areas that it doesn’t go to and certain areas where I still have to push it into.
I constantly stretch it towards those areas to try to keep it loose. I can say for sure that it’s not making any progress. Hopefully it’s at least keeping it status quo as opposed to being pointless. Not that it matters, it’s not a waste of time, I usually just do it while I’m walking around at work.

Anyways. Moreso because I have the time than anything else, but also because, hey, why not, I wouldn’t mind being a bit stronger (and I’m a skinny guy, bigger shoulders/arms wouldn’t look so bad), I started doing some shoulder workouts.

Nothing overboard, just a basic every other day routine with some 15 pound dumbells (that I’ll ramp up to 20 when the workout gets too easy). So it’s not that I’m doing 4 reps with 40 pounds in each hand.

I’m not overly pushing myself. In fact, by 12 reps, on some of these exercises, I could probably go a few more, but I know my bad shoulder is moving in a funky way. Also, having never seen a real trainer (and not planing to), it’s entirely possible I’m doing them slightly wrong and making them easier.

So the question is, is it possible, I could be hurting myself?

FTR, about a month post surgery my therapist said ‘just so you know, everything is settled, you’re not going to hurt anything or pull an anchor out, don’t worry’, but this was working with 2ish pound weights, a band or just my own arm.

Come to think of it, I still bump in to some of the PTs from that group on a semi-regular basis, I should ask one of them.

I’m assuming it’s fine. When I researched how long it took to heal from this surgery and found that it’s about a year, nearly all my answers came from body building forums. That’s how long they said it was before they were back to lifting the same about of weight. But many of them seem to be a different breed of people.

Any PT’s on board, or people that lift and have had muscle/cartilage repair surgery? My thought was that building up the muscle around the site would help, but thinking about it later, my issue is flexibility, my pre-surgery strength has, more or less, returned. Stamina, maybe not so much, but I think my shoulder is as strong as it used to be.

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What was the original injury and surgery?

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Short technical answer: posterior Bankart Tear.
Short Laymen’s answer: There’s cartilage between the ball and socket of your shoulder joint and a tore it. In the pictures (I have pictures!) it doesn’t look that bad, but I asked the doc why it was taking so long to loosen up and he said it was a pretty significant tear.

Here’s the thread I, more or less, kept updated about it.
And as I read it, just to be totally technical, I tore my labrum. There’s also a similar one in your hip, this was the one in my shoulder.

The surgery is pretty straightforward. The cartilage tears away from the bone. They set anchors in the bone and suture the cartilage to the anchors to put it back where it belongs. The anchors and sutures stay forever, they don’t dissolve, they become part of the bone, but I’ve always been curious of the cartilage reattaches to the bone. I know it doesn’t have a blood supply which is why it doesn’t heal on it’s own, but it’s still a question I’ve had.

If you scroll down a bit there’s a link to my photobucket page (not the first link, the second one) with all the pictures from the inside of my body.

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I’m surprised PT didn’t give you a workout schedule as well as progress follow-ups.

The only guess I have is maybe scar tissue or excessive tissue growth is impeding the joint but that’s something for your doc to check.

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They did give me workout stuff to follow, but it was mostly flexibility stuff and I’m pretty sure I’ve hit a wall with that.
The doc suggested some scar tissue but was very happy with where I was at the final visit. He did give me a cortisone shot as a parting gift with the plan that when it wears off in about 3 months I should be in good shape. He sheepishly said ‘we could go back in and break it up’ but didn’t want to do that since the recovery might put me right back where I was at that point, since it was a pretty similar surgery.

Also, this is/was all Worker’s Comp, so I get worried about going back and messing with my disability payments

Don’t get me wrong, I’m ok. It’s not that I can’t move my arm. But if you imagine throwing a baseball or dart, my arm doesn’t go (if this makes sense) behind the my head. Or, said another way, if my arm is straight out, bent 90 degrees up at the elbow (again like I was throwing something), it doesn’t go back any further than that.

It should be noted that every doctor I saw, each PT I saw and the person that took the final measurements ALL said I was extremely flexible and that means it’ll take longer to heal. That is, if a ‘normal’ person can only get their hand a few degrees past that, it might only take them 3 months to get back to that. The fact that my good arms bends about 45 degrees backwards (in that position), means it’ll take much longer to get back to that…if that makes sense.
When I had my measurements done at the end (for worker’s comp). He measured my bad arm first and said ‘wow, that’s pretty tight’ and then when he measured the good arm he said, and I quote, ‘that’s like major league baseball pitcher flexible’.

I guess it makes sense. Back a few years ago when I (kinda) did P90X, part of that is a day that you just spend on flexibility. After about two weeks, I could do all the stretches with no problem at all. I went from being about 6 inches from touching toes to being able to put my palms on the ground, with my shoes on, without really trying, in about a month. That was years ago, but maybe I guess I’m more flexible than I give myself credit for.

In fact, sometimes I wonder if I should just do the P90X stretches or some yoga…but I kinda like this.