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OatmealFitness · 05-11-2009, 08:22 AM

I have looked around the forum and have found some great information on shoulder injury prevention and care, but have not been able to find anything on my personal situation. This being my right shoulder I guess is "rolled" forward compared to my left. I can consciously adjust my shoulder position back to where I think it should be, but my natural posture places it forward and lower than my left shoulder. Even when I correct my posture, the symmetry is off between my left and right shoulder in the anterior and lateral delt. I believe that my posterior delts do not have as nearly drastic of a difference, but of course I have a hard time seeing that. My left side seems do have developed fine, I wish I could just mirror it to my right. I have noticed that my left pec is slightly fuller and the separation between my left pec and delt is more pronounced than on my rights side. Strength on both sides is even. I believe that the various causes of this range from my athletic activity playing baseball where I pitched for a decade throughout my childhood and high school, rugby where I tackled predominately with my right shoulder and played a fair amount of time at loose-head prop (only using your right shoulder in scrums) and I had a minor rotator cuff injury while wrestling in high school. However, I have to admit I am sure that much of the problem lands squarely on myself for using poor exercise habits/form. I believe that my form is much improved over my old violent lifting motions. The one thing that I have noticed is that while flat benching, when I begin to die out on my last rep my right elbow will often pop in toward my body. I do not lose control and this actually helps. I realize that this is not a good thing, but I have no idea how to control or change this habit. My shoulder muscles seem to try and dominate all my upper body exercises. I have not even done any anterior or lateral delt isolation exercises in about two years, because I have larger shoulder muscles and have not felt the need. Not sure if that was foolish or? But the one good thing is that I do not ever have any real pain in my shoulders. I do notice that I have some discomfort while doing some chest isolation exercises such as using the fly machine and occasionally at other times, but nothing that is alarming. My primary concern at the moment is injury prevention and correcting this err in posture for aesthetics. I am curious what is my best route to treating this problem? Visiting a chiropractor or consulting my primary physician and seeking out help from a specialist? Is something like this correctable? And if pictures would be helpful I could take a couple. Any information, links or details from personal experience would be greatly appreciated.

Also note that I am planning on getting the Inside-Out DVD. I have heard so many good things about it.

05-11-2009, 08:22 AM	#1 (permalink)
OatmealFitness Junior Member Join Date: May 2009 Location: Middle Georgia Posts: 21	Shoulder Symmetry Issue I have looked around the forum and have found some great information on shoulder injury prevention and care, but have not been able to find anything on my personal situation. This being my right shoulder I guess is "rolled" forward compared to my left. I can consciously adjust my shoulder position back to where I think it should be, but my natural posture places it forward and lower than my left shoulder. Even when I correct my posture, the symmetry is off between my left and right shoulder in the anterior and lateral delt. I believe that my posterior delts do not have as nearly drastic of a difference, but of course I have a hard time seeing that. My left side seems do have developed fine, I wish I could just mirror it to my right. I have noticed that my left pec is slightly fuller and the separation between my left pec and delt is more pronounced than on my rights side. Strength on both sides is even. I believe that the various causes of this range from my athletic activity playing baseball where I pitched for a decade throughout my childhood and high school, rugby where I tackled predominately with my right shoulder and played a fair amount of time at loose-head prop (only using your right shoulder in scrums) and I had a minor rotator cuff injury while wrestling in high school. However, I have to admit I am sure that much of the problem lands squarely on myself for using poor exercise habits/form. I believe that my form is much improved over my old violent lifting motions. The one thing that I have noticed is that while flat benching, when I begin to die out on my last rep my right elbow will often pop in toward my body. I do not lose control and this actually helps. I realize that this is not a good thing, but I have no idea how to control or change this habit. My shoulder muscles seem to try and dominate all my upper body exercises. I have not even done any anterior or lateral delt isolation exercises in about two years, because I have larger shoulder muscles and have not felt the need. Not sure if that was foolish or? But the one good thing is that I do not ever have any real pain in my shoulders. I do notice that I have some discomfort while doing some chest isolation exercises such as using the fly machine and occasionally at other times, but nothing that is alarming. My primary concern at the moment is injury prevention and correcting this err in posture for aesthetics. I am curious what is my best route to treating this problem? Visiting a chiropractor or consulting my primary physician and seeking out help from a specialist? Is something like this correctable? And if pictures would be helpful I could take a couple. Any information, links or details from personal experience would be greatly appreciated. Also note that I am planning on getting the Inside-Out DVD. I have heard so many good things about it.