After reading
Push-Ups, Face Pulls, and Shrugs for about the fifth time and going through my anatomy books yet again, I'm pretty sure my shoulder problem is a downward rotation and anterior tilt of my left scapula. Shouldn't have taken me this long to figure out (it starting hurting back in Dec and thought it was an AC sprain for a while), but since my left scapula is winged a little bit I thought it was protracted and elevated, and I thought the humerus was internally rotated. So I heavily emphasized rows and retractions, even did extra sets of cable retractions with my left arm, helped a little, but I think that's more because I wasn't pressing, not because it was getting better. Now I realize the inferior angle is winged because it's anteriorily tilted, and impingement is the result. I figured out a while back this has to be the result of driving, I've driven a stick shift for several years and made many long trips, and I'd drive with my left hand up on the center of the wheel and my right on the stick. Being in this position for several minutes to hours every day for years has obvioulsy led to some problems. I don't think it's a thoracic posture problem either, I have great posture, I can easily perform thoracic extensions on the roller with no tightness, and my right shoulder is fine.
So now that I think I've got the problem figured (I hope) I need a plan of attack. I've noticed rolling the pec minor with a tennis ball (rather painful) loosens it up and temporarily alleviates pain, so I'm pretty sure that's tight, I'll keep rolling and stretching it. I'm going to hold off heavy benching as long as possible (I have a meet on Aug. 4, I'm not going to do anything to hurt myself again, but I'd like to bench heavy in that meet if possible), and I'll include push-up plus, face pulls, scaption shrugs, and prone trap raises every day in my warm-ups, as well at least a couple of them in the strength training throughout the week, but is there anything else I can do? Can ART help with something like this?
As a side note, the pain is not bad at all, just enough to know something's not right, and it comes and goes. In certain positions, certain movements, etc. Sometimes I'll get a stab just getting out of bed, but then I can do a heavy upper body training session and no pain, go figure.
Think I finally have a hold of what my shoulder problem is, now how to fix it?
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