Freakish shoulder injury

I woke up one day with severe pain in the Teres Major. After 3 days, I still can’t get my wallet into my back pocket: intolerable pain trying to do that.

I had had the flu for a couple of days, with NO exercise, so this wasn’t brought on by an overdose of pulling with paddles, or anything like that.

It’s acting like a muscle strain (going away with massage and light exercise) but I don’t want to play with fire if this is some kind of rotator cuff disaster in the making.

It hurt so bad I couldn’t sleep for 2 days without heavy ibuprofin doses.

Had a quick look by a Doc who said “rotator cuff: stop swimming.” (Yikes!)

Advice?

Get a real diagnosis from a real orthopedic guy. Do it ASAP. There aren’t many injuries that can’t be treated effectively.

How much were you training before? I haven’t read any material to back this up, but I heard from my a local PT that us triathletes often train so hard, that we wear down our bodies without knowing it - Take a few days off, and BAM! Our injuries catch up with us.

I know it doesn’t sound very scientific…I just thought I’d pass what I heard. You should probably see a doc.

Not too much, about 10kyd/week through Oct, Nov, then actually cut back to about half that in Dec & was feeling great. Add to that, 3 days totally off before the injury: I just can’t believe it’s the swimming.