Aaah. Now my shoulder's gone.

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If you didn't know, I also blog about my training on testedtodestruction, however, it appears that it is more like my body that is destroying itself than me destroying gear.

As a bit of background, I had quite a lot of shoulder issues last year - pain on the acromion process whenever it was touched - which is odd as there are no soft tissues going over the process - and therefore, there should not be pain unless I bruised the bone. Which certainly did not happen.

The muscles all around the shoulder were short, and the entire right shoulder complex was raised - so I actually looked pretty lopsided. After having massage, it was clear that I had lots of trigger points around infraspinatus, supraspinatus and levator scapula, but even after relaxation of these muscles, some residual pain was still there.

After some more in depth research and movement research I noticed that the structure that was actually hurting more than anything was the long head of the biceps brachii - going anteriorly up over the shoulder complex. It was this that was in pain, and the shoulder was basically hunching over forward in order to slacken the tendon off, pulling the scapula forward, which caused an impingement on the bursae below the acromion process.

Bingo. Thats the reason for the pain.

For the past few months I have been taking time out of any overhead movement, pressing movements etc. and it seems to have got much better.
I went out and did a weights session last week - which turned out to be chest and arm work - and what do you know, the shoulder pain is back with a vengeance.

Plus side - I know exactly what caused it- and I shall be steering clear of overhead presses and excessive push-shoulder work for quite some time. I think static hold are ok - and wierdly enough, pulls are fine - so climbing is not actually affected.

Minus side - I'm back to square one on the shoulder issue - and rest is the only way forward for it. I shall be stretching and going back to rehab exercises, because if I don't, its just going to get worse.