Lifting with an old injury
kbaby2020
Posts: 63 Member
Can I still lift when I have a shoulder injury that’s been around for 3-4 years? It doesn’t hurt that bad at this point and I’m going to do some rotator cuff strengthening/rehab work 3ish times a week. But should I still do upper body training?
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Replies
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Depends on the injury. Have you been to a doctor? If it's a rotator cuff tear, more exercise will likely tear it more.0
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Depends on the injury, the severity of the injury and how well you have recovered.
I've torn my supraspinatus tendon and displaced both AC joints at various times and got back to lifting and hit the same weights as before - recovery times have varied.
I trained upper body following all three injuries but my selection and intensity of exercises had to be modified during recovery.
Have you seen a Physio?1 -
quiksylver296 wrote: »Depends on the injury. Have you been to a doctor? If it's a rotator cuff tear, more exercise will likely tear it more.
I saw a PT and a chiropractor and both said that it was a subscapularis impingement. When I first injured it, it was super bad but has healed significantly over the years. It’s just at the point now where it feels tight and weak because I haven’t trained upper body very consistently since it happened.
I’ve tried several exercises recently to gauge how it’s feeling and most rowing movements feel fine, almost seem to make it feel better, and some pulldown variations are okay. I haven’t tried any pressing movements.0 -
Depends on the injury, the severity of the injury and how well you have recovered.
I've torn my supraspinatus tendon and displaced both AC joints at various times and got back to lifting and hit the same weights as before - recovery times have varied.
I trained upper body following all three injuries but my selection and intensity of exercises had to be modified during recovery.
Have you seen a Physio?
Overall the recovery was slow because I’ve suffered injuries before, but they were minor, so I was dumb and just thought that I could push through the pain... not the case with this injury 🙄
The rehab exercises I’m doing will be a majority of my upper body work at the moment until I can get the achy feeling to not be there everyday but I’d like to at least do 1 upper body training session a week if I can, if that sounds realistic 🤷🏼♀️
And as mentioned above, I did see a physical therapist and chiropractor and both said it was a subscapularis impingement.
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You know more than us about your situation. I can just add that, once you've worked with a PT for a while-- they are usually frustratingly conservative, in my experience-- you can move on to a sports therapist or trainer, who will push you much harder.1
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Depends on the injury, the severity of the injury and how well you have recovered.
I've torn my supraspinatus tendon and displaced both AC joints at various times and got back to lifting and hit the same weights as before - recovery times have varied.
I trained upper body following all three injuries but my selection and intensity of exercises had to be modified during recovery.
Have you seen a Physio?
Overall the recovery was slow because I’ve suffered injuries before, but they were minor, so I was dumb and just thought that I could push through the pain... not the case with this injury 🙄
The rehab exercises I’m doing will be a majority of my upper body work at the moment until I can get the achy feeling to not be there everyday but I’d like to at least do 1 upper body training session a week if I can, if that sounds realistic 🤷🏼♀️
And as mentioned above, I did see a physical therapist and chiropractor and both said it was a subscapularis impingement.
I'm quite good at understanding what is "good pain" and what is "whoa, back off you are damaging yourself, pain" and plain old soreness from pushing limits gently.
With my last injury there were many false starts and false dawns when I thought I could return to full training but had to take a step back. Plenty of experimentation with different angles, lifts, weights, volume, frequency to see what helped and what was a bad idea. Found the cable machine to be excellent for rehab.
In the end it was about 18 months before I could really start to train freely and then strength came back quickly.
(Agree with previous poster - I've also found that a sports therapist or at least a sports oriented Physio to be in a completely different league to general hospital and primary healthcare Physios who seem to have lower expectations for their patients.)
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As others have already said it sll depends on the injury, how well it healed and what you want to do now.
FWIW, I had a left subscsp/rotstor cuff tear repaired surgically 6 yrs sg and there wasn't anything I couldn't do after 1 full yr of rehab and recovery wc began 3 months after surgery
But then my rt elbow degenersted developed a chronic pain, wc is NOT surgically repairable and prevents me from doing any pushups, pulllups or upper body lifts like SQTs, BPs or curls anymore.
So, the only weight lifting I csn still do are DLs and SQTS.but my elbow condition foes not prevent me from rowing 5-20,km which I do daily.
So, what you can do following your particular injury just "depends."1 -
Yes. If the injury was more recent(6 months) I would be more concerned.
How you train will depend on your current stress adaptations and recovery with rehab.
Perhaps you can give more detail why you are doing rehab exercises for a injury from 3+ years ago and not performing strength training with appropriate intensity/volume/frequency as in general. More info would be helpful.0 -
Yes. If the injury was more recent(6 months) I would be more concerned.
How you train will depend on your current stress adaptations and recovery with rehab.
Perhaps you can give more detail why you are doing rehab exercises for a injury from 3+ years ago and not performing strength training with appropriate intensity/volume/frequency as in general. More info would be helpful.
The first year after my injury, I pushed through the pain and kept lifting without doing anything to truly assess the problem or to assess the exact area/muscle that had been injured (what exercises would help it, didn’t help it, etc.) Eventually the pain got to be too much though so I started to cut back on upper body training to see if I just needed time to let it be.
The second year after my injury, I decided to seek help and was told I had a subscapularis impingement but shortly around that time, I had heart surgery and that threw things off even MORE with trying to do upper body training - I had something else to recover from 🙃
By year 3 (this year), I finally am back lifting again, not as frequently as I’d like or I used to, but I’m trying to figure out where I should even start for my upper body.
In another post someone mentioned they had a similar diagnosis, though their pain was drastically worse than mine, and they suggested doing some rotator cuff/subscapularis strengthening exercises that they sent over in videos.
So that’s where I’m at 🤷🏼♀️ I don’t know if I should use them as a supplement to upper body training and keep trying to do what I can to do some training, or if I should just prioritize the strengthening exercises that they mentioned.
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Yes. If the injury was more recent(6 months) I would be more concerned.
How you train will depend on your current stress adaptations and recovery with rehab.
Perhaps you can give more detail why you are doing rehab exercises for a injury from 3+ years ago and not performing strength training with appropriate intensity/volume/frequency as in general. More info would be helpful.
The first year after my injury, I pushed through the pain and kept lifting without doing anything to truly assess the problem or to assess the exact area/muscle that had been injured (what exercises would help it, didn’t help it, etc.) Eventually the pain got to be too much though so I started to cut back on upper body training to see if I just needed time to let it be.
The second year after my injury, I decided to seek help and was told I had a subscapularis impingement but shortly around that time, I had heart surgery and that threw things off even MORE with trying to do upper body training - I had something else to recover from 🙃
By year 3 (this year), I finally am back lifting again, not as frequently as I’d like or I used to, but I’m trying to figure out where I should even start for my upper body.
In another post someone mentioned they had a similar diagnosis, though their pain was drastically worse than mine, and they suggested doing some rotator cuff/subscapularis strengthening exercises that they sent over in videos.
So that’s where I’m at 🤷🏼♀️ I don’t know if I should use them as a supplement to upper body training and keep trying to do what I can to do some training, or if I should just prioritize the strengthening exercises that they mentioned.
Okay.
What equipment do you have access to?0 -
Yes. If the injury was more recent(6 months) I would be more concerned.
How you train will depend on your current stress adaptations and recovery with rehab.
Perhaps you can give more detail why you are doing rehab exercises for a injury from 3+ years ago and not performing strength training with appropriate intensity/volume/frequency as in general. More info would be helpful.
The first year after my injury, I pushed through the pain and kept lifting without doing anything to truly assess the problem or to assess the exact area/muscle that had been injured (what exercises would help it, didn’t help it, etc.) Eventually the pain got to be too much though so I started to cut back on upper body training to see if I just needed time to let it be.
The second year after my injury, I decided to seek help and was told I had a subscapularis impingement but shortly around that time, I had heart surgery and that threw things off even MORE with trying to do upper body training - I had something else to recover from 🙃
By year 3 (this year), I finally am back lifting again, not as frequently as I’d like or I used to, but I’m trying to figure out where I should even start for my upper body.
In another post someone mentioned they had a similar diagnosis, though their pain was drastically worse than mine, and they suggested doing some rotator cuff/subscapularis strengthening exercises that they sent over in videos.
So that’s where I’m at 🤷🏼♀️ I don’t know if I should use them as a supplement to upper body training and keep trying to do what I can to do some training, or if I should just prioritize the strengthening exercises that they mentioned.
Okay.
What equipment do you have access to?
I have resistant bands ranging fro
5-35 lbs, dumbbells that go from 5-60 lbs, a pulldown machine which also has a cable to do rows, barbells (smaller ones and larger ones) and a squat rack where I can also do pull-ups/chin-ups.
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Yes. If the injury was more recent(6 months) I would be more concerned.
How you train will depend on your current stress adaptations and recovery with rehab.
Perhaps you can give more detail why you are doing rehab exercises for a injury from 3+ years ago and not performing strength training with appropriate intensity/volume/frequency as in general. More info would be helpful.
The first year after my injury, I pushed through the pain and kept lifting without doing anything to truly assess the problem or to assess the exact area/muscle that had been injured (what exercises would help it, didn’t help it, etc.) Eventually the pain got to be too much though so I started to cut back on upper body training to see if I just needed time to let it be.
The second year after my injury, I decided to seek help and was told I had a subscapularis impingement but shortly around that time, I had heart surgery and that threw things off even MORE with trying to do upper body training - I had something else to recover from 🙃
By year 3 (this year), I finally am back lifting again, not as frequently as I’d like or I used to, but I’m trying to figure out where I should even start for my upper body.
In another post someone mentioned they had a similar diagnosis, though their pain was drastically worse than mine, and they suggested doing some rotator cuff/subscapularis strengthening exercises that they sent over in videos.
So that’s where I’m at 🤷🏼♀️ I don’t know if I should use them as a supplement to upper body training and keep trying to do what I can to do some training, or if I should just prioritize the strengthening exercises that they mentioned.
Okay.
What equipment do you have access to?
I have resistant bands ranging fro
5-35 lbs, dumbbells that go from 5-60 lbs, a pulldown machine which also has a cable to do rows, barbells (smaller ones and larger ones) and a squat rack where I can also do pull-ups/chin-ups.
Bench flat and/or incline?0 -
Yes. If the injury was more recent(6 months) I would be more concerned.
How you train will depend on your current stress adaptations and recovery with rehab.
Perhaps you can give more detail why you are doing rehab exercises for a injury from 3+ years ago and not performing strength training with appropriate intensity/volume/frequency as in general. More info would be helpful.
The first year after my injury, I pushed through the pain and kept lifting without doing anything to truly assess the problem or to assess the exact area/muscle that had been injured (what exercises would help it, didn’t help it, etc.) Eventually the pain got to be too much though so I started to cut back on upper body training to see if I just needed time to let it be.
The second year after my injury, I decided to seek help and was told I had a subscapularis impingement but shortly around that time, I had heart surgery and that threw things off even MORE with trying to do upper body training - I had something else to recover from 🙃
By year 3 (this year), I finally am back lifting again, not as frequently as I’d like or I used to, but I’m trying to figure out where I should even start for my upper body.
In another post someone mentioned they had a similar diagnosis, though their pain was drastically worse than mine, and they suggested doing some rotator cuff/subscapularis strengthening exercises that they sent over in videos.
So that’s where I’m at 🤷🏼♀️ I don’t know if I should use them as a supplement to upper body training and keep trying to do what I can to do some training, or if I should just prioritize the strengthening exercises that they mentioned.
Okay.
What equipment do you have access to?
I have resistant bands ranging fro
5-35 lbs, dumbbells that go from 5-60 lbs, a pulldown machine which also has a cable to do rows, barbells (smaller ones and larger ones) and a squat rack where I can also do pull-ups/chin-ups.
Bench flat and/or incline?
Both!
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