Last Tuesday I swam, mostly 100 repeats, and the following day my range of motion on my left shoulder was really limited. I mean that I couldn’t bring my hand up past my shoulder because it was too painful.
It’s 8 days later and I’m still feeling it. With my left arm straight, I can lift my hand past my shoulder (abducting? not in front of me but directly to the side) but it really hurts to do so.
It seems like if i were to swim right now, the part of my stroke after my hand enters the water (the pull?) wouldn’t hurt at all, but it would kill me to lift my hand out of the water and start a new stroke.
If it’s just a muscle pull, that’s great, I know how to deal with that. I keep thinking “torn rotator cuff” although I really have no idea what that is or what it would feel like. There’s no swelling for what it’s worth.
Any ideas? Yeah, I know I should probably see a doctor but that’s really hard to do right now. I’m definitely not going to swim on it until it stops hurting. Running doesn’t affect it, but when I’m out of the saddle sprinting or climbing I can feel it just a little.
I hope it is just a muscle pull, but that sounds pretty similar to what my shoulder felt like after a partial rotator cuff tear. I repeat partial tear. The actual pull threw the water didnt bother me, but lifting my hand out killed. I also had pain if I lifted my arm to the front or the side w/ my palm facing down or thumb up. It only took about 3 months of treatments and exercises to fix it. I would Ice it twice a day and try some anti-inflamatories(sp). A Dr. would be a good idea though. I have little to no problems w/ my shoulder anymore.
Of course this would happen on the first day that I joined a pool. Your 3 months of treatment and exercise: was any of that spent in the pool? I’m wondering if I can still do some drills in the water or something.
Bummer man, bummer. Sounds like I need to make an appointment with the doc.
I was told to not swim for the first couple months, but this could of been my therapist’s personnel approach and might not be an industry wide idea. I tore mine in the gym and actually felt it when it happened. You can ask anyone that was present. I let a yelp out like a little girl and dropped the stupid amount of weight I had over my head at the time. What Im getting at is if you didnt feel it actually happen maybe it is something else.
For a Dr. to be 100% sure of a rotator cuff tear they will have to do a MRI, no fun. I would try a physical therapist first, although mine needed a script from a Dr. to file for insurance.
While it’s obviously impossible to diagnose something just from a brief description–it sounds exactly like a tear in the labrum. An MRI is the only way to tell for sure.
It probably is one of the most common injuries for competitive swimmers–and the reason my screen name is ‘roady’…
One word of warning–the longer you swim on it, the more it tears and the more invasive the surgical procedure. If it is a torn labrum, it won’t heal itself.
Oh fuck. Went from “healed with exercise” to “a labrum tear requires invasive surgery”. I’m definitely not going to swim on it until I get this figured out. I’ll post back once something is done.
It’s not like I’m afraid of a doctor, I just drag my ass with scheduling an appointment more than anything.
I heard mine when I tore it. However I was still able to swim and snuck in a OD race the week before surgery. Trust me, you do not want surgery if you can avoid it! It is pain like nothing else. The shoulder is a pretty complicated joint and there are any number of things that you might have. Find a Orthopedic Surgeon that has specializes in shoulders and hopefully sports related injuries. In the mean time ice and anti-inflamatories are your two best friends.
Without actually seeing you do some movements it would be hard for anyone to tell you exactly what is wrong. I had something simular to what you’re describing, that was diagnosed as impingement syndrome.
I let it go for longer then I should have and it took a little longer to heal. It could be a number of other things like a pull of one of the rotator cuff mucles or bursitis. Go to a good sports medicine guy or someone who is used to dealing w/ swimmers. I avoided the advise of cortezone shots, but did have an MRI. The doc that perscribed the MRI made sure it had a contrast die injection so that they could see the detail much more clearly.
I got a lot better after a few weeks of physical therapy that was focused on strengthening my rotator cuffs and making sure my muscle machanics in my back and chest were equal and working correctly. I wasn’t using all my back muscles to swim that was the cause of the issue.
Bryce, it sounds like the problem I had with my left shoulder while swimming in high school and college. Overuse injury mostly - it was a form of tendonitis. I would see a orthopedist - mine was cured with simple exercises done with surgical tubing (stretch cords) and some electric stim. I swam through it - used to happen in the prep time before NCAAs when our mileage really ramped up. Would always feel better as we went through taper.
Its probably nothing really serious. Take a few days off, ice, rest and see a doc.
Yeah this is the weird thing: you’d think if I tore something I’d know it right away. But you’d think if it were a muscle pull it wouldn’t be as severe as it is 8 days later.
So thanks all for the advice and your stories. Seems like there’s about a billion possible things that it could be, so it looks like I’ll be paying a visit to someone who knows more about it than I do.
Ok, so I went to the doc today and he told me that it seems I have bursitis. Prescribed some exercises to do for it and I’m going to go back to him soon for some more PT work. Holding off on calling it a torn rotator cuff or anything else.
Bryce, It sounds to me, although I have not actually seen your shoulder ROM that there are some tendonitis \ impingement issues in your shoulder. I am a massage therapist and my wife is a physio therapist and she agrees with me. I actually was feeling the same symptoms in my shoulder today, ie. pain with abduction right at shoulder height, and trouble with starting a new swim stroke, just not to the extent of your issues. I dug into the rotator cuff muscles that I can reach all day, and my wife really dug into it this evening, and it is feeling better and I am not expecting any long term problems, again, yours seems a bit more aggaravated than mine. My advise for you would be to go to a massage therapist that knows what the heck they are doing, and also a sports physical therapist, and you should be back in the pool within 2-3 weeks with no pain. Both the MT and PT should be doing deep muscle work to supraspinatus, infrasinatus, teres maj / min, sub scap, and upper trapezius muscles, as well as deep frictioning, and stretching and strengthening excs. This is pretty common with swimming. Repetitive strain injury. I hope that this helps you out.
Here’s an update for anyone who might be having similar issues:
I’ve been going to the doc for this and we feel pretty confident that the supraspinatus is mad at me, which is causing my shoulder to not track properly, and my humerus is pinching it against some bony prominence on my scapula. This inflammation makes my shoulder track even more poorly, and seems like my bursa is then becoming inflamed, making the situation worse.
Or it could be that my bursa is getting inflamed first and that’s causing my supraspinatus to get pinched. Chicked and egg. It doesn’t really matter.
So I haven’t swum in two weeks, the pain is pretty much gone now, and I’ve been getting massage, e-stim, and ultra sound. He also prescribed some light (high rep, low weight) exercises for me to do but I haven’t gotten around to trying them.
Hopefully I’ll start swimming next week, with reduced yardage and I’ll increase slowly through the winter.
Wow, this all sounds very familiar to me! I had similar issues come up about a year ago and I am finally now seeing an end to most of the issues.
The treatment you described worked for me too. I found a wonderful chiro who does massage, e-stim and ultra sound and I did the exercises too. Also, I built up really really slowly, swimming only 500 yards some days. Now I’m able to swim with a tough master’s swim class that emphasizes all four strokes and I really like that as opposed to just swimming free style.
I still get sore and have painful days, often when I swim too much or don’t work out at all and have bad posture. I am working on strengthening my core and chest muscles. Let me know if you find any good stretches or weight routines that you enjoy.
I hope it is just a muscle pull, but that sounds pretty similar to what my shoulder felt like after a partial rotator cuff tear. I repeat partial tear.
Ditto. 3 years later I still have the same exact pain. I live with it. Sleeping prone with hand over head - no way. Working with hand held power tools also kills me the next day. Steroid injection helped for about 5 weeks. I have some sort of tear in there but I’m unwilling to let them cut on me.
Started out by just hurting one day out of nowhere.
DO THE PRESCRIBED EXERCISES! The misalignment issues will not correct themselves without you changing the positioning of the described shoulder anatomy. It is less than a milimeter of gap that you need to alter in the joint but until you change the muscular stength equation in the area you will continue to have problems. This like most things in my life I learned the hard way. From years of swimming the muscles in my upper shoulder / traps / lats are much more developed than my upper chest region. I just recently started doing weights to correct the imbalance and the improvement in my pain level has been nearly instant. Best of luck to you.
You should really do the exercises. What type of exercise are you suppose to be doing? You need to strengthen the rotator cuff and the muscles that stabilize the scapular. Until the inflammation calms down, stay within a pain free range of motion (ROM). The muscles are weak, but if you work through pain - more joint irritation will occur. Ice for 20 minutes post exercise. Maintain you ROM. Most likely it will hurt more raising you shoulder to the side with the thumb down and you may have a painful arc where it will hurt to raise you sholulder from 70 - 120 degrees, but ease up through the rest of the motion.
This type of pain can last for months. I am a Certified Athletic Trainer and have worked with a lot of shoulder problems on athletes and found the average painfree recover time be several months. For a lot of overhead athletes, rehab and exercise is an ongoing process. You stop doing exercise, the pain returns.
What is you stroke like? I personally had a horrible case of tendinitis earlier in the year and believe mine was due to stoke mechanics. I had biceps tendinits that hurt for six month before I opted for a cortisone injection. An injection should be one of your last resorts and never have more than one in the same site.
I can offer you some exercise tips on shoulder rehab if needed. Some doc are better than other about what exercise athletes should be doing. I