Tight in left arm pit

[Jay Guindon]

When I do dips, pushups, muscle ups, it feels really tight in my left armpit and the movement feels very imbalanced due to this. I feel like I'm not getting full range of motion in my left shoulder, for instance when I do Bulgarian dips it feels like my left arm doesn't go as deep or out as far from the body as my right and in regualr dips the left ring sits in a different position than the right. Does anyone know what this might be and how to remedy it?

[Joshua Naterman]

Something is too tight. There are a couple things that could be going on, so you're best off treating them all.

1) Adhesions.

Use a baseball or softball and look for trigger points in the lats, shoulders, and chest. Work them out! You work them out by finding the hard spots in the muscle and slowly applying more and more pressure until you sink all the way through the hard spot. It hurts, but it is worth it.

2) Tight lats or chest, or both.

Chest: Lie down on the floor on your right side, with your right arm behind your body, palm down. Retract the right shoulderblade and start rolling slowly to try and put your back on the ground. You will quickly reach a point where you feel an intense stretch. Stay there, and try to keep actively retracting the shoulder blade and trying to pull the arm behind you and flat against your back. That obviously will not happen, but by doing this you are firing the antagonistic muscles (Triceps, scap retractors, rear delts, etc) and that causes the agonist muscles (in this case, the front delts, bicep, pecs, etc) to relax, which makes the stretch more effective. You should hold these for a few minutes. There are three angles you should use: Arm at 45 degrees below shoulder (low); arm at 90 degrees (right angle with body)(mid); arm at 45 degrees above shoulder (high). Work low, mid, and high on each side of the body every day. This should be a part of your warm up.

You want to concentrate on pressing your arm pit into the ground the whole time in all three positions. That means you have to pull your shoulder out of the way! This is tough, but the stretch is less effective when you allow space between the arm pit and the floor. It is tough for me to just tough my arm pit in the high position, much less roll back!

Keep your head in line with your spine, which means you look in the exact same direction as your sternum is pointing. If your chest is pointing at the ground three feet in front of you, that's where your eyes go. If you twist the head you'll end up getting a sore neck AND doing the stretch wrong. When you twist your neck, the scalenes(some muscles n the side fo the neck) get stretched and they will cause your body to pull the shoulder a little bit forward reflexively! That is not what we want.

For warming up purposes, 10-15 seconds is plenty. For rehab like this, you need to go for 60s at least. It takes a long time for muscles to release. Do not try to PNF this. Try to use the antagonistic contractions to make it more effective.

Lats: Hanging chin up stretch. This is one of the "iso-extremes" that I am using and it is helping me a LOT. At first this may be painful, but as long as you don't resist it you'll be fine. Get a chin up grip with your pinkie fingers 6-8 inches apart from each other. Go to a dead hang. DO NOT TRY TO SUPPORT OR RETRACT THE SHOULDER BLADES! Use your chest to pull your shoulders forward and try to push your body away from the bar straight into the ground. This causes an intense stretch in the upper part of the lats and the rear delts! You really need to get to where you can hold this for a minute or two, but at first 20-30s may be all your grip's got. Don't worry, a few weeks of daily practice and it will come. The primary purpose of this stretch, and it IS a stretch NOT an isometric hold, is to teach your body that it is ok to let the lat and delts stretch out and hold weight. You want your arms to be as much overhead as you can, so open those shoulders! Outside of this, any other lat stretching that you know of will probably help also.

3) Strength imbalances

Balanced flexibility is no good without balanced strength, balanced strength is no good without balanced flexibility, and if both are unbalanced you're REALLY screwed! If your chest is tight and your lats and rear delts are flexible, the chest will overpower the scapular retractors and pull your shoulders out of alignment. So, you need to strengthen and re-educate the muscles to do their proper job!

You should probably use isometric holds with scapular retraction for the top of the bulgarian row, chin up, pull up, and standing dumbbell shrug to help strengthen and re-awaken your pulling muscles. That will work well with the stretches to re-balance your shoulder. I'd suggest basic shrugging, but until you get your shoulder balanced you're better off focusing on muscle re-education. I'd go for 15-30s holds for each of those that I mentioned. Pretty short, but it will do the job quickly. A month of that 5-6 days a week along with the stretching should have you more than ready to start moving correctly and then you can throw in actual shrugging work for pre-hab. The great thing about the isometrics is that they don't require hardly any recovery, so you aren't going to have to worry about overtraining if you choose to try that protocol. If the rest of your work isn't bothering you, you probably don't need to stop training. Just stop doing what aggravates the shoulder for a few weeks!

A word of caution: keep doing this for at least twice as long as it takes you to feel perfect! If it takes 8 weeks to feel perfect again, do this for at least 16 weeks total! Ideally it should just become a part of your routine a few times a week after that. Once your shoulder feels perfect, and not before, I'd throw in a retracted and depressed isometric in a dead hang also. At first, your shoulder may not move correctly when trying to do this. Don't do anything you can't do perfectly, because you will just reinforce an unhealthy motor pattern!

Once your shoulder is feeling better, start doing push up shrugs. ISometric holds at the top for 15-30s may be a very good idea. Eventually you should use weight vests, elastic bands, or some other form of resistance. They strengthen the serratus anterior, which is an important muscle in all pressing movements. It helps hold the scapula close to the rib cage and keeps it from "winging," or separating from the rib cage.

[Jay Guindon]

wow, thanks for the detailed and thorough answer, it is much appreciated!

[Joshua Naterman]

You're welcome! If, by chance, a month goes by and you still have no improvement, go get it checked out and let us know what the verdict is.

In the meantime, using fish oil and turmeric orally to reduce inflammation is a really good idea!