I have some tendonitis of my shoulder rotator cuff causing a lot of pain with some movements. I think it’s quite a common condition to develop, so wanted to ask if anyone has experience rehabilitating this sort of thing?
I’ve seen a physio and being doing the stretchy band exercises - they are fine in general, although not very effective in making things better up to now [had a cortisone injection last week to see if this might help]. What is not fine is some of the stretches (e.g. front pec stretch with Indian how sign, broom handle behind the bicep stretch)- really painful and impossible to achieve the correct form. I’ve heard some anecdotal reports that you just need to persevere with these and push through the pain to an extent - like maybe tolerate 5/10 on the pain scale.
Pushing through the pain of a stretch is something you’d never do just with general exercise, so would be good to hear other people’s experiences.
Both my pre and post-op shoulder surgery (not rotator cuff) physical therapy were pretty awful. One thing I mentioned to my post-op therapist is that sometimes when I’m driving or watching TV or sleeping I’ll put my arm into one of the spots that hurts (not a lot, but it’s definitely very tight) and leave it there as long as I can. She always seemed to think it was a good idea. Even now, 2 years out, I’ll still do that, thought at this point I’m not sure it does any good, it doesn’t seem to be doing any harm, but why put myself in pain?
OTOH, have you had an actual diagnosis? Do you have anything other than tendonitis? When I first went to PT, before surgery, I told my first therapist, “yeah, it hurts when I move my arm in this area, so throughout the day, I find myself purposely moving it through this range to keep it stretched”, according to him, I was just making it worse. One of the things I was diagnosed with was Impingement, and running my arm through that range was pushing the muscle up against a bone which made the muscle inflamed. With the muscle inflamed, it rubbed up against the bone even more and it turned into a cycle.
It’s like when you bite your tongue and now you can’t keep it out of the way of your teeth because it’s swollen.
Anyways, PT actually took care of the Impingement, so that was good.
So, have you received an actual diagnosis?
Have you had any imagining done?
Have you only seen a therapist once? Are you going back?
These really are questions for a therapist/doctor. It might be good, it might not be. They’re the ones that really have a feel for it.
Thks Joey P - I have an impingement as you describe in your second paragraph. Simple strengthening PT hasn’t taken care of it, so the steroid injection was the next step to see if it can calm the inflamation and maybe help the PT regime. If that doesn’t work I’ll need to see a shoulder specialist.
Like all weightlifters, I often have shoulder pain.
I’ve found that hanging, with different arms position (straight, wide, full hang or slightly flexed) helps a lot. When my shoulder (it’s always my right) starts to hurt, I lift lighter with more reps.
If found that, in general, the more I work my shoulders, the less they hurt. I’ve been doing very-wide-grip pullups, which used to be agonizing to my shoulders, but as I’ve gotten stronger, the pain has gone away, and even my chronic, low-level shoulder pain is reduced.
Impingement, as I recall, can be fixed with surgery but IIRC, PT is usually the first line of treatment since, it done well and followed through on, it works better. It’s been a while, but I recall hearing that surgery can open the AC gap only so much but PT can open it something like double. PT will not only strengthen and heal, but teach you better posture and how to use your arm better so that it can deal with the narrow AC space.
Also, if you get any imaging done, they may be able to see if you have any spurs or lesions in there.
Regarding a specialist, remember, in general, a cutter’s going to want to cut. The first time I saw my shoulder guy he gave me a few ideas and then said, very casually “then in a few weeks if it doesn’t get better, we’ll just go in and fix it”.
Something you didn’t mention, was this due to an injury?