Question about shoulder injury from exercise?!

Rannoch3908

Hi there, 

I am considering going to see a orthopedic doctor but don't have insurance and want to get everyones opinion first.  

I have never had shoulder pain until about 3 weeks ago. 

I think it is related to my exercise.  I am 285lbs (was 316 in September) and started doing yoga three times a week and bodyweight training three times a week back on Jan 1.   

The pain started 3 weeks ago but has gotten worse over the last few days even though I stopped working out at all. 

I can move my arm normally, lift it above my head, rotate my arm out to side - no pain. It happens when I try to lift myself or boost myself somewhere - say getting off the couch or adjusting myself in my seat. 

I don't not feel pain all the time.  And when I do it's a sharp pain (not achy).   But it is starting to happen with more and more small movements every day. 

I am wondering if I should be making an appointment or maybe just a couple of weeks of rest, ice, and heat before doing anything.

P.S. What type of doctor will I see if needed and what kind of testing do you think I might need?

NorthCascades

You could be describing tendinitis, or probably a lot of other things too. It sucks not having insurance. A sports doctor would probably be my first call if it was me.

What yoga or body weight have you been doing that involves your shoulder?

This is probably obvious, but stop using your shoulder in any way. Take ibuprofen because it works very well for inflammation.

DoubleG2

You can enter your symptoms here. https://www.buoyhealth.com/
It's not a replacement for seeing your doc. You can also try to visit your local urgent care - they tend to be a good self-pay option if you don't have health insurance. Depending where you live, Walmart has very good in-store urgent care services. If you do try to schedule an appt. with a doc, begin with Family Medicine or Primary Care. You will need a referral to an ortho if necessary. Good luck!

lorrpb

You’ve ramped up a lot of exercise pretty quickly if you weren’t exercising at all before. Pay attention during you workouts and try to identify if any particular exercise causes more pain. Then stop doing it
It could take a few to several weeks rest for it to resolve on its own if it’s just tendinitis, so give it some time.
First you probably need to see a PCP and physical therapist. If that doesn’t help, you would need to eventually see an orthopedist, who determine if there’s a tear. After a physical exam, they would probably do an MRI without and with contrast. They would tell you whether surgery is necessary and possibly offer you a steroid injection to reduce inflammation and pain.
Wishing you the best.

ninerbuff

Could be a myriad of things. From bursitis, to tendonitis, to impingement. Have it assessed by an orthopedist.


A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

heybales

Understand the difficulty.

The wait time to get into what is considered a specialist, and the fact some require a family Dr to recommend you first means another Dr visit and payment and wait.
The lack of insurance for the now more expensive Doc and original. And perhaps visits to 3rd party for MRI or Xray with wait times and expense. ugh. And no cut rate for paying cash up front.

I'd personally recommend a Sports Physical Therapist in this situation. Not a general PT that may focus on just helping people live and do normal daily routines. You want to get back to exercise, plus the normal stuff.
They generally can't do X-rays or similar which would really add to your expense anyway, and if soft tissue would not always point out something anyway.

And from times that I did have something found by a Dr first - the end result was still a PT, and things for me to do.

Ask local family and friends for recommendations while researching local options. Drive around to some and see how busy they are from parking lot during lunch hour and right after work. Good ones should be busy.
While a PT may want you to come back say 3 x weekly for so many weeks, just to make sure you are doing the recommended treatment and progress changes - not required I've found.
Get all the info up front, starting movements, what would be next, when would it be brought in, how would progress be done.
And how many weeks out to visit to evaluate again?
And then do the treatments.

I've actually been surprised how much good PT stuff is available on youtube now, but shoulder I'd want personal eval because many tests could be needed for where the issue is. But once that's known, I'd bet you'd find exactly the same treatments mentioned on youtube as PT would give you, along with the progress to move to.

Even if the issue is more serious, the PT would likely give a treatment that would not cause more problems - it at least would strengthen the area, and help confirm or narrow down whatever might have be suspected.

Around here it could take 3-4 weeks to get into specialists anyway - that's 3-4 weeks of doing something useful that may end up being all that's needed anyway.
On some things lack of movement isn't helpful. You do need movement. Correct movement.
Like ice is generally only helpful for initial inflammation from whatever caused the issue - weeks later it's not doing much unless you are continuing to cause incidents and inflame it.

MikePfirrman

I'm a strong believe in Dr Kirsch. He was an orthopedic surgeon who has written several books on shoulder pain. He claims that 99% of it can be fixed by hanging from your shoulder (we all came from apes and they hang a lot!).

Adjusts your shoulder the way it should behave. I've rehabbed several impingements and even a couple of rotator cuff tears this way and it works wonderfully. If it's too painful, there are pulley devices you can buy on Amazon for like $20 that pull your arm up more gently. I have an island in my kitchen with a granite counter. I'll lean over it and wrap my hands around the far side of it and use my body weight to pull gently on the shoulder. Works magically for shoulder pain. I know a lot of rowers that have used these techniques with great success as well.

My favorite, when I had a bad impingement and rotator cuff tear one time, was I used the overhead cable lat pulldown at the gym, with independent handles. One where if you pulled on one side down, the other side raised your arm. This was just hard enough for me to get my arm pulled up all the way gently. I gradually worked on that until I could hang. I have a Total Gym knockoff right now that I bought. You can find old Total Gyms used pretty easy. They are great for both shoulder rehab and also for assisted hanging.

Here's one of several articles (there are dozens of them) about Kirsch's work and books.

https://www.elitecme.com/resource-center/rehabilitation-therapy/hanging-like-a-monkey-to-fix-my-shoulder-pain

MikePfirrman

Here's some more resources talking about John Kirsch's book (from his website).

https://www.kirschshoulder.com/video