anyway to help my shoulder joints?

[Forklift]

I thought I was over this problem, seems not.
Monday while in the gym I started my set with a stretch and then a plate per side on the incline machine for a warmup. After that we went to 2 plates per side, then 2 plates and some 25s I think it was, normal stuff. Right after that, my shoulders started hurting, bad! I went and did some more stretching and tried to move on to flat bench, still hurt. It seems that usually if it isnt too bad I can walk over and grab a bar at about shoulder level and crouch down so my arms are above me holding onto the bar so my arms are pointing almost straight up. I'll do that once or twice and they will be ok, but not this time. It seems the only way to get them to stop hurting was to take some weight off them keeping them at about shoulder height leaning on a banch sitting backwards. Trying to arms above the head thing or stretching didnt help at all. 10 minutes after I left they didnt hurt so bad, just sucked missing most of my workout
The next night I did dips, triceps, biceps, butterflies(didnt do them the night before), and a few others without a wimper from them

so what did I do? or was it just a bad night and mostly, what can I do to help this not happen again or at least lessen it or make it happen less often, etc?

[billy_ray]

i've had a bad left shoulder for a year now. pain comes in cycles, just as i was making progress on my bench it flared up again and i can bench about 150lbs before the pain gets too much to even do a couple of reps

had a massage during the week, helped a bit but could feel it again when i was training y'day. the massooooose said she'd need another go sorting my shoulder. really cant see how it'll eve be 100% again

[Cactus]

Have you seem a Doc about this?

[John Benz]

Try taking 5-6 tbs flax oil or even better fish oil daily to relieve joint inflamation. You can add Beverly Joint Care which is the best Glucosamine/Condroiton supp I've found and also contains Evening Primrose Oil and several tace minerals like Boron and Manganese which are vital in tendon healing.

Always warm up, and do the following excercises to strengthen the rotator cuff.

http://www.aafp.org/afp/20030315/1315ph.html

[PWRBILDR]

How about your back exercises and movements that work your rear delts? Without proper stabilization on the opposing side joint pain can be quite common. It may be a result of a strength imbalance.

I'm currently working through this now and getting my back balanced back out is doing the trick.

[Forklift]

thanks guys
and as far as back exercises, honestly I really dont have any other than doing dips
nope, havent seen a doc, but I wanna schedule a general check-up soon and do all the enzyme tests and such

[gotgame83]

You can do dips and flys without pain? Wow. I know exactly the stretch you are talking about i do this all the time. I used to have really bad shoulder pains, from bursa, tendonitis and tracking problems, mainly do to being very active in football, boxing, basketball when i was young. THe only recommendation i have is to ease up on your other excercises that bother it and concentrate on slow med/weight shoulder excercises. Do tons of different excercises to help strengthen every aspect of your shoulder girdle. Its very possible that you have an imbalance.

Also, i still cant do heavy inclines without pain but incline dumbells i can do pain free.
umm, Vioxx at 25mg ED along with stretching everyday and taking it easy for a while is what really helped me out. Hope this helped, later bro.

Oh yea btw, if it doesnt improve, please just get an MRI and stop playing games and find out whats going on.

[Forklift]

thanks man
yeah I can do dips and flys, but inclines can kill me
I might be off a tad, balance wise. I have alot of shoulders but not a ton of back or chest so

[PWRBILDR]

Yeah, this sounds familiar. I used to be much more balanced and then it just slowly slipped away as I got more serious about deadlifting. I let the back isolation exercises like rows slip for an extended period of time and gradually my shoulders started hurting.

Here's what I did. After a short lay off of shoulder work, I started with low cable pulls with a real easy weight. Did 3-5 sets of 20 or more reps for a week or two. For me 3 times a week did it just fine. The thing I had to keep reminding myself was that the purpose of these were to work the range of motion rather than build strength. After a couple weeks of these I started doing some lat pull downs with the same light weight and the same rep range. I did them in addition to the low rows. After about 4 weeks I started to increase the weight very cautiously. At the first increase in weight I kept the reps in the same range since it was still really easy, just burned deep inside the shoulder joint (in a good way). I kept increasing the weight for a few more weeks. Still doing the rehab work 3 times a week I made sure to never increase the weight on 2 consecutive workouts. Then each time I upped the weight by one plate on the machine, I dropped the reps by 2 or 3.
Eventually I started doing some standing overhead presses with really lite dumbells. I also kept my palms facing each other and elbows pulled forward to keep from opening up the rotator cuff.
Also, the entire time I was going through that I made sure to religiously do rotator cuff exercises with one of those rubber bands with the handles oneach end. Mostly external rotaion movements since that was where the major weakness was.

This all a result of talking with both my chiropractor and orthopedic doctor as well as some research of my own.

I'd still recommend seeing a doc though.