Shoulders and Ankles

Hi everyone,

I'm new here, I've been reading some posts as a guest for a couple of weeks now and have decided to join and to try and contribute to this fantastic online recourse. I have a couple of issues I was hoping that you guys could help me with but first I would like to say many thanks to Coach Sommer and the moderators on here for providing fantastic advice and support.

I have had a shoulder injury for several years now, my trapezius (I think, although it may be my levator scapulae) seizes up and becomes very painful at the top of my shoulder. I've visited several osteopaths and have been told that it was origionaly caused by a tear to my latissimus dorsi, just under my armpit and has been compounded by bad posture. It never hurts whilst exercising, but usually hurts when I am tired, and I suspect it now hurts due to a muscle imbalance.

I'm following the WODs and performing Ido's shoulder routines, I find that HSPUs and wall extensions seam to help the area.

On another topic I've recently (since about 4 weeks) started walking uphill for about 2 miles a day, my muscles have now adapted to the strain but my ankles are getting very sore, especially my Achilles tendon. Anyone knwo any good pre/rehab things I could do ?

Any advice on either of these two problems would be a greatly appreciated.

thanks! Spinelli

The single greatest thing for you would be to learn self myofascial release and self active release. Then use them a LOT!

Google should be able to teach you a lot for those two.

Outside of that, there's no way to say anything without seeing your posture, and videos are of limited use. You would need someone to analyze your walking gait and see if there are issues there, either in the actual gait or in your posture as a general position that is messing with your walk. You may be doing too much, but there's know way to know. If you back off to 1 mile a day and pain fades you know you were doing too much too soon.

Gotta go with slizzard on this one!

Plus, besides walking less overall, try walking on flat ground or even down hill. The area of your achilles tendon is stressed most in movements where the knee is bent, so walking uphill is most likely the cause. Unless you walk uphill with straight legs. That'd be pretty cool.

Thanks for the advice , will definitely look in myofasical release.

I'm hoping that the nature of many of the gymnastic moves, i.e having to tense the whole body, will help and that this with plenty of posture work will eventually make it better.

Unfortunately I can't really give my ankles the rest they need as I need to get to uni and can no longer afford the bus . I generally walk quite a lot anyway, so the distance isn't really a problem, it's just since I started walking uphill that they hurt. I haven't been doing the lower body portions of the WODs yet and don't plan on starting until my ankles feel completely better.

Thanks again.