Shoulder pain (internal rotation?)

Hi guys.

Long story short:

I had this kind of pain for a long time. It's been on and off, it usually appears after training hard, and disappears after like 2 days of passive rest.

The pain is in anterior deltoid.. I would say in its attachment on humerus or somewhere beneath the muscle (???)

It sometimes hurts when I try to move my arm overhead as in shoulder dislocate motion.

I've been pissed off big time today because of this.

HOWEVER where I'm 100% sure it hurts is internal rotation of the shoulder (I guess?)... Like you would do cuban presses. Just putting your arms overhead, lowering them so you have 90/90 angle in your elbows, like you would do a cuban rotation, and then lowering your arms through cuban rotation to parallel, and EXACTLY below the parallel is where it hurts like hell. Oh and by the way it happens only with my right shoulder.. I think.

Thanks for any advice. :wink:

Lay off for a few days. Maybe do KStars Mobility WOD internal rotation stretch that involves holding that arms hand behind your lower back. Check it out on mobility WOD.

Or maybe just cuban presses, light. Maybe some scar tissue needs to be broken up.

There are only a few things it could be: Supraspinatus tendon, long head of the biceps tendon, or subacromial bursa. One of those is inflamed.

What is probably happening is that you do not have the strength to keep the shoulder perfectly stable in the socket, so it is moving and compressing one or more of those structures.

There is a good reason why I am recommending more now that people spend a good bit of time specifically building the tissues with lower resistance, slower tempo, higher TUT work. It's to build all of the muscles that keep the shoulder stable so that things like this don't happen.

Your higher resistance training is just teaching your body to use the muscle you have (and it does build as well, but with much higher pressures in the joints which is again why the lighter work is so therapeutic and preventative), so you are going to build strength and tissue at least as quickly by incorporating more of the light work but you will avoid much of the pain and potential for injury.

I think it could be the long head of biceps tendon.

It makes sense. I'm building up volume with 303 Tempo PPPs and the next day I'm always doing straight arm stuff, DB Planche presses included. My biceps were sore this week, maybe it got inflamed from all the straight arm work and as I said, it makes sense...

And as I found this: "During the motion from external to internal rotation, the tendon is forced medially against the lesser tubercle and superiorly against the transverse ligament." I have no idea what it means ( ), all I get from it is that something happens with the tendon when moving from external to internal rotation, and that's where it hurts.

So I guess typical anti-inflam nutrition and sets of 20 reps biceps curls at 30% of max. done slowly. I wonder if doing the same with for example overhead presses would help :?:

Thanks!!

Might seem unrelated but do a bit of looking at Scalene Trigger points. I am willing to bet many people have issues with these and end up missing it. They can lead to issues "down stream" and if left un-relsolved will continue to cause "down-stream" flare ups and pain patterns.

That is good advice.

Falcon: You don't really need to worry about that, it's just an explanation of what the biceps tendon is doing in the groove at the top of the arm. To me, it sounds like a bursa issue because that is a common MOI for such pain, because of the specific position you feel pain in, and because I have MRI confirmation of an inflamed bursa in me and I have similar issues.

The trigger points can absolutely mess with other muscles in a variety of ways and end up keeping your shoulder from working correctly in addition to simply referring pain to an area. It is a good idea to do whatever self-massage you can for everything, but especially everything from the head down to the hips, perhaps focusing slightly more on anything connected to the scapula or upper arm.