After more than 3 years doing only cardio because of a shoulder injury today I manage to do 8 pull ups, I never though I´d be able to do it again

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michaelweiss

New member
Like the title said just a bit of a celebration.

I was always very active, football as a kid (soccer if you like) then swimming, then water polo for 6 years. In my adult life I did mostly swimming or gym. About 4 years ago I had a shoulder injury, it hurt a lot and I only tried to treat it about a month after because the pain didn´t completely go away, bad move.

During all this years I tried so many different treatments and saw 5 different specialists , I spent so much money on treatments! The injury, apparetly was nothing special swelling of the bursa, that lead to bursitis but all they manage to accomplish was to take the pain away while resting, every time I touched a bit of weight (even carrying groceries) the pain would appear again and if I tried to force it I´d go back to pain even at rest. It was really tough on me mentally, not being able to do anything, I was 26/27 when I had the injury, it was surreal for me that I´d not be able to do any upper body movements for the rest of my life like a senior citizen.

This year around February I slowly tried to use some dumbbells in the end of the cardio just to activate the muscles, like 2Kgs, eventually I progressed a bit without pain and tried to do some machines exercises for chest and back very light as well. After doing that for a month I asked one of the teachers for help and he planned a workout for me to try and gain muscle with very specific exercises to work around my limitations. About one month of that and I was doing those light exercises almost pain free.

In April he changed my exercises to start gradually increasing the weights and here I am today, almost pain free even though I still have to be very aware of proper form and stop if I feel an odd pain. But yeah, today I manage to do 3 sets of 8 pull ups(last set was realistic only 5 and 3 negatives) I know it´s nothing impressive at all but I´m just really happy about being able to train properly again! Hopefully it´s going to last and I can keep evolving, to me it really feels like some sort of miracle.
 
@cita Holy crap!! I think that is what I have!! I have had it for like a year and it won't go away. I don't remember what caused it. I just woke up one day and it hurt to move my arm. I couldn't lift weights, lift my arm above 90 without pain, and I couldn't even reach across my chest to scratch my back!!

I thought it would go away, but alas it hasn't. I finally decided to go to the doc and he said I have bicep tendinitis (tendinosis?) I just went along with it cause he's a doc, but in my head I thought he was an idiot cause it's my shoulder that hurts, not my bicep! I could do curls with no prob in my bicep! Hurt in my shoulder though...

I've been going to physical therapy for about a month and it already is feeling much better!! I can reach almost all the way across my chest and my arm can go almost all the way up before the pain happens!!

So cool to be able to finally put a name on it and google it for pics! Thanks!!
 
@mistap Glad you found out! Not knowing what is wrong especially with a tear like that can make it much worse. My doctor said they don't heal well on their own and if PT doesn't help, arthroscopic surgery is the only other option.

SLAP tears suck because it makes it painful to wash in the shower, among other daily things. I have them in both shoulders, and one I was able to treat with PT, the other does not seem to respond to it.
 
@mistap I think it was the bicep eccentric overload that I was doing when I was heavy into weights. I've also been pretty hard on my body when I was younger, so that may have a lot to do with it!
 
@mistap This makes three of us who woke up with shoulder pain, if you include the guy below. By any chance does your shoulder luxate easily due to instability? (that's the case with mine).

Literally I've been daydreaming about making the post OP made. I've been making good progress with PT, but I got drunk and did some arm wrestling and now I'm back to the beginning. Hurts terribly to move my arm anywhere.

This post gives me hope! Hopefully months from now I'll be making this post. But being back at ground zero due to drunken stupidity is downright depressing.
 
@naomyt Yes, please post it! The first one that was for light recovery as well as what you've progressed to. I'm 30 now, and had a bad injury around 26 and am struggling and frustrated as well. I'd love to get back to less chronic pain.
 
@naomyt English isn´t my first language so sorry in advance for any confusion.

Like I said first I did only cardio, often 50´bike and did a circuit of 4 exercises in the end, usually some variation of abs and squats and repeated 3/4 times.

Then I decided to include in the final part of the training (in the circuit part) some biceps and triceps just to activate the muscles, something very light 2/3 Kgs top), at the time it would be abs, bicepts, squats, triceps, repeat 3/4 times.

Then I increased to 5 Kgs dumbbells.
Since I wasn´t feeling any pain I decided to substitute the biceps/triceps part to bigger muscle groups and included a seated chest machine with 20 Kgs or so (less than the woman do for reference) and Lat pull down for the back (30 Kgs top) and started paying super attention on my form. Was working from there to increase weights.

I was really excited and happy just to be able to do those but once I was browsing r all and one post from this sub caught my eye, I don´t remember exactly what but was related to posture, some guy referenced r posture and other guys were linking some videos for shoulder mobility. I started watching those and doing some exercises in the morning and after going to bed for mobility, I also watched a lot of videos for correct form while doing the exercise to avoid pain (I have that rounded shoulders thing and that doesn´t help).

Between those exercises and the smalls amount of weight training I started noticing my chest expanding a (very little) bit and my posture getting noticeable better on the mirror test.
That´s when I asked a teacher at the gym for assistance and started doing more weight training. First I did those routines that train "everything" chest, back, biceps, triceps and shoulder specific exercises one that was the one that made me feel better by the day was the reverse fly with bands first and in a machine latter, very low weight as well and always controlling the movement.
The rest was increasing weights and by trial and error eliminating exercises that caused pain.

The warming up takes quite some time as I´m always very nervous to injure my shoulder again I used some videos post from Antranik to incorporate exercises to help me with that.

The most motivating part is during the process, as you start regaining muscle and confidence, when you see that exercises such as bicep curls or seated low rows that used to be uncomfortable on the shoulder were now manageable with minimal pain.

Eventually I progressed to include some body weight exercises, that´s where I´m currently, with chin ups and pull ups.

The progress was slow but it´s been paying off.
 
@michaelweiss I feel ya, hada pretty painful episode of bursitis from boxing training a few weeks back, had me feeling pretty down, but I kept making myself do light exercise and streaching a few days after it happened, it has improved to almost full strength now, which is great.

Heres a great workout that helped me heaps, something I'll be continuing to do in the future
 
@jumper214 Good to know you are back on track.

I watched this video a couple of months ago and I still do some of those exercises (see 1:45 and 2:30) for instance, like I said I watched a lot of videos about posture and correct form during this process to recovery.
 
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