What makes it worse - swimming?

I have not swam in awhile as I am sure that that would bother it. This has been ongoing issue for me as I believe it stems from playing tennis in my high school and into my early 30’s. I stopped playing tennis about 4 yrs ago due to this issue. I did Ironman in 2013/14 in WI and the pain was tolerable if I only swam 2 times a week. Now it is bothersome anytime I do lifting above my shoulder or even if I just raise my arm up… lack of general strength too. It feels very weak.

One thing which is apparently difficult to diagnose without going in there is bicept pulley lesion where supraspinatus and subscapularis are torn apart leaving the bicep tendon too free to move or something like that. In my case, the muscles where surgically sown together around the tendon among some other repairs and now about 6 months after the shoulder is much better.

This happened in an hockey accident and resulted in a painful enough shoulder that swimming was not possible and some bad sleep due the toothache like pain (nice description). So after trying fysio etc. for some months I decided to go for surgery. The aforementioned injury was only found during the surgery.

Yeah, my injury is not due to a one time incident as it has been a result of many years on and off pain. I did go water skiing in early August and had a couple wipeouts. I am sure that did not help the cause and since then my shoulder has not been very good not that it was great to begin with.

How are you doing? Have you been able to sort it all out and get that shoulder healed 100%?

I get some grief from my shoulder from time to time. first hurt it at around 15-16 yrs old. went to see the best 'shoulder physio' who worked with swimmers and was a swimmer when he was younger. everyone who had shoulder troubles went to this guy - he was the best where i grew up.

what he put me on - sorry I don't know all the techical term - was a strengthening program using elastic bands and some weights. Essentially from all the swim and pulling and throwing my front muscles were much more developed than the muscles on the back and it was unstable.

Pain now comes and goes only in right hand size, sometimes dull ache, sometimes like a nerve pain. i am swimming a lot more at the moment and it is bothering me somewhat at the moment but not too bad. mainly sometimes when I do butterfly.

What I do is the exercises he gave me decades ago - 3 exercises 2 x 15 on each side. now I do it as 2 x 30.

you seem pretty in the know on the terms and lingo so I hope these make sense (these are brief descriptions). first exercise is standing side on to the band, keep your elbow at the hip and do external rotation. 2nd exercise is facing front on to the band, make a 90 degree shape with your arm and keep the scapula or whatever it is as stable as possible. Last one is face on and pull your arm back like you are going to cocking your arm to throw

if these dont make sense i can send you links to photos.

is really simple but this works for me

What I find is when my shoulder gets sore now a bit of dedicated band work for a week to 2 weeks sorts it out. i need to be better at it and just do it every week year in year out

Look into Tenex for the calcific tendon. I had it done for a calcific quad tendon.

Message me your email and I can connect you w a swim specific PT who works w people online. He has been really helpful to me . And let us know how the ortho appt goes

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maybe she's born with it, maybe it's chlorine
If you're injured and need some sympathy, PM me and I'm very happy to write back.
disclaimer: PhD not MD