Chronic shoulder pain from rowing injury

[Seagull]

Hey,
Three years ago I was rowing around 5 times a week for a year. About halfway through the year I started feeling a slight discomfort in my shoulder which was present more during and especially after rowing and slowly faded away again. It gradually got worse, then quickly got better, and then started getting progressively worse again. Originally I thought it wasn't really a problem so I ignored it. By the time it started to annoy me, a bunch of other people on my team already had other injuries and we'd have been unable to get a full boat if I also had to stop, so I stupidly decided to just continue ignoring the problem for another 2 or 3 months. At the end it got really bad and I basically did nothing for a month to let it get back to normal. However as soon as I started using it again, first at the gym, it started building back up again. It doesn't really matter how I use it, pull ups trigger it, push ups trigger it, deadlifts, overhead press, wearing a heavy backpack, lifting heavy stuff around, using a hammer, anything that involves moving my shoulder will cause it to get worse until I do nothing for a long time and allow it to slowly settle down again.

The pain comes from around the area of the infraspinatus and teres minor/major. I think I can fell the outside edge of my scapula and if I move towards the back surface of my scapula, I immediately hit where the pain is coming from.

I've been to 3 physical therapists so far, and none of them knew what to do. I've been going to the last one for a year now and he's had me do exercises for my rhomboids, lower traps, front and side deltoids and latissimus dorsi, but after a year there's been no progress from anything except me not doing anything but cycling and those exercises, as soon as I do anything like walking around with a backpack or swinging a hammer it's back to square one and the pain builds up even faster than it did before. I asked my GP if there was some kind of specialist they could refer me to for diagnosis but they said that only physical therapists deal with that kind of stuff.

Does anyone have any experience with injuries like this? And if so, any tips on how to deal with it?

[lindsayh]

get a new GP as that is just not true - a referral to an orthopaedic surgeon is the best thing - you need a CT and maybe an ultrasound to have a look at the shoulder so that a doctor can plan your treatment and a PT can make a proper plan to support it.

[RR]

If your physical therapists had done proper assessments, surely they would have been able to pinpoint the muscle/soft tissue causing the problem.
Infraspinatus/teres minor appears to be a rotator cuff issue as these two along with subscapularis and suprapsinatus are the 4 muscles of the rotator cuff.
MRI scan should show up the problem

[ArmchairPhil]

Dont get despondent that despite your efforts you haven't made any progress .I second an orthopaedic opinion and consideration for investigation. Another consideration given that you say that you can put your finger and locate your pain you could look at trigger point images for shoulder/upper back pain and see if you can identify the one/ones that closely resemble your pain and that may or may not be one of the rotator cuff muscles.

As a rule of thumb, if a physical therapist cannot significantly relieve a condition in six sessions (double that if other options exhausted) then try different pathway.

So if you determine that you have a trigger point condition then you need to find trigger point injector/acupuncturist with competence and experience needling the chest wall. Don't know your location but you could indicate country or area And get a helpful lead.

Phil

[mdpfirrman1]

This might sound crazy, but every time I've had shoulder pain, I've used some sort of "hanging therapy". Once I even had a frozen shoulder and twice a slightly torn meniscus. I swear by it.

I wouldn't start out with hanging from a pullup bar -- too extreme to start, but find something sturdy, like a table (I like to use my *** DELETE - SPAM *** island). Reach across and grab on a gently pull using your own body weight. It should hurt but not too much. Iso lat pull down machines in gyms are great for it.

Another thing that seemed to really help my shoulders was scapula pushups. Tremendously helpful.

https://redefiningstrength.com/scapular-push-ups/

[mitchel674]

What does your imaging show? You need an MRI of your shoulder.

[mdpfirrman1]

This might sound crazy, but every time I've had shoulder pain, I've used some sort of "hanging therapy". Once I even had a frozen shoulder and twice a slightly torn meniscus. I swear by it.

I wouldn't start out with hanging from a pullup bar -- too extreme to start, but find something sturdy, like a table (I like to use my *** DELETE - SPAM *** island). Reach across and grab on a gently pull using your own body weight. It should hurt but not too much. Iso lat pull down machines in gyms are great for it.

Another thing that seemed to really help my shoulders was scapula pushups. Tremendously helpful.

https://redefiningstrength.com/scapular-push-ups/

The word "*** DELETE - SPAM ***" was deleted as spam? OK. Hint -- Room in your house that you eat and cook. It deleted it again. That's odd.

[Citroen]

You're not allowed to use the word kitchen on this forum.

You shouldn't be training in the kitchen as it's unhygenic.

Use the [QUOTE] button to see how I did that.

[Slothful1]

Creative solution, Dougie. Hadn't thought of that.

Maybe it's time we got that spam check removed, seeing we haven't had that problem for a while, and we have other techniques to stop a repeat.

Not that people need to use the word a lot anyway!

Dave

[Citroen]

Maybe it's time we got that spam check removed, seeing we haven't had that problem for a while, and we have other techniques to stop a repeat.

We need to add "bedroom" because it's being spammed all over the forum.

I like that kitchen gets turned into *** DELETE - SPAM *** - it makes for some fun on here.

[davebray]

Seagull, the way it works in the UK is that your GP refers you to a physio & it's the physio that refers you to a specialist.

Physios have very strict guidelines imposed by NICE for all injuries and treatments which will include different stratagies
dependant on age. You need to interrogate your physio & ask them what course they are pursuing. The physio has to
consult their manager on whether to refer to a specialist or deviate from the reccommended course of treatment.