Shoulder Issues

For as long as I can remember I always felt that my shoulders were weak. A number times, over the years while playing various sports, I can remember my shoulder feeling as if it popped out of the socket while performing various actions with my arms. I don’t believe my shoulder was ever dislocated, however my shoulder hurt the rest of the day and it took around a week for it to feel normal again. Recently however, while performing a bridge type exercise and having the majority of my weight on my hands and I felt my shoulder go like it moved from its socket and I hit the floor. This time was the worst and almost 4 weeks later I am still having pain when I perform certain movements. I wanted to know if anyone knew what it going on with my shoulder and why this is occurring? Further, does anyone have suggestions how to recover from this issue as well as how to prevent it for occurring in the future?

Thanks a lot,

Mark

Go see your doctor

lewkowicz613 said:

For as long as I can remember I always felt that my shoulders were weak. A number times, over the years while playing various sports, I can remember my shoulder feeling as if it popped out of the socket while performing various actions with my arms. I don’t believe my shoulder was ever dislocated, however my shoulder hurt the rest of the day and it took around a week for it to feel normal again. Recently however, while performing a bridge type exercise and having the majority of my weight on my hands and I felt my shoulder go like it moved from its socket and I hit the floor. This time was the worst and almost 4 weeks later I am still having pain when I perform certain movements. I wanted to know if anyone knew what it going on with my shoulder and why this is occurring? Further, does anyone have suggestions how to recover from this issue as well as how to prevent it for occurring in the future?

Thanks a lot,

Mark

You have repeatedly subluxated your shoulder. It is uncommon, but possible, for a complete dislocation to reset itself which may have been what happened recently. Every time you do this it will get worse because you are stretching things out in the shoulder to the point where it doesn't take much to dislocate it. On the physical therapy side, it is important to perform external and internal rotation work in a closed packed position. This has to be every workout day for you, and will need to be a focus for a while. It is a very good idea for a physical therapist to teach this to you, learning on your own is not usually good enough and no matter how much you trust them, people who are not trained specifically in rehabilitation are probably not going to be able to teach you the finer points that will make these exercises work for you.

It is very important for you to see a doctor, because you may have torn your labrum. That's a ring of cartilage in the shoulder that gives it extra stability.

You don't HAVE to have surgery for it if tests show a confirmed labral tear, but if you don't you will absolutely 100% have to do daily internal and external rotation work forever to avoid pain and re-injury.

See a doctor or a specialist absolutely.

In all the rehab exercises that you are given, or the ones you may have found here you have to engage your mind and think you are keeping the floating ball at the end of your arm bone centered on the flat dish at the side of your shoulder blade. That is the main job of the rotator cuff to keep the head of the humerus centered on the acetabulum.

So when you are doing those external rotation exercises keep that in mind and make that the prime objective. You can treat it like a game, the keeping the arm in socket game.

Cole Dano said:

See a doctor or a specialist absolutely.

In all the rehab exercises that you are given, or the ones you may have found here you have to engage your mind and think you are keeping the floating ball at the end of your arm bone centered on the flat dish at the side of your shoulder blade. That is the main job of the rotator cuff to keep the head of the humerus centered on the acetabulum.

So when you are doing those external rotation exercises keep that in mind and make that the prime objective. You can treat it like a game, the keeping the arm in socket game.

Yes, this is the key.

Don't skip seeing a doctor, you need images to know exactly what is happening in there... that will significantly affect your rehab plan and you can hurt yourself further trying to do the wrong thing at the wrong time.

Wow, thanks for the information. I really didn’t think that it was so serious. Over the past week or so the pain has diminished somewhat while performing different movements, for example the back-scratch test (reaching behind the back as far as possible upwards towards neck), however, in the past week or so this pain has also diminished. The other symptom that I have noticed is when I extend my arm (left is the one affected) directly out to the left. While keeping my arm straight, if I rotate my hand backwards so my thumb goes from pointing forward to straight up then finally backwards, I notice a lot of popping sounds. I don’t know if this helps with further diagnosis. Would shoulder dislocations be a good stretching exercise to help?

Thanks a lot,

Mark

Right now you need to get images. MRI and arthrogram.

I am not going to try an internet diagnosis with something like that, it is possible that you have floating cartilage from a completely torn labrum and that every time you are doing something you are just grinding away at the joint capsule. Stop being foolish and go get checked out so you know what you are dealing with and can actually make informed decisions. Your particular injury history is bad, you need to get checked out. I am going to cut ant paste this on every single post you make until you go get checked out. Go get checked out!

I second everything that's been said so far. Be extremely cautious with your shoulders from this point on. See a doctor as soon as possible, have imaging done, and rehab religiously.

Even if your pain and popping goes away do not hesitate to see a doctor about this, it is very serious, especially if gymnastics conditioning is something you care about

I dealt with repeated subluxations for years, dozens of violent ones during wrestling matches even. I was foolish enough to wait a long time before i got help from a physical therapist, and then was foolish enough again to essentially ignore their advice. I waited probably five years after the issue began to get imaging done. And surprise surpise i had a very serious labral tear in my right shoulder and a more mild one in the left. I had surgery done just a few months ago and now im rehabing. When all is said and done, i'll probably have lost 2-3 years of training time to this injury. Do yourself a favor and take care of it as well as you possibly can right now, otherwise it will almost inevitably get much worse.

Hello again,

Thanks for the care and concern. I saw the doctor this week and he said that nothing was torn or anything serious. He said that I have tendonitis and possibly stretched out the ligaments over the years. He said I should give it some more rest time before beginning any exercise, slowly at first.

Thanks again,

Mark

Definitely follow that advice.

When it is time to start exercising, rotator cuff work will have to become a permanent part of your training, and something of a central theme in your upper body conditioning. Stretched ligaments are often permanently lax to a certain degree, though there is some re-shortening that can occur. As a result, you will have to have a stronger rotator cuff group than you would if the ligaments were the original length.