Looking for some outside suggestions and advice on a possible rotator cuff strain I suffered. On Christmas almost three weeks ago I tried to do as many chin ups in a row that I could and agitated my rear left shoulder which became painful for the next few following days.
I didn’t notice any pain after the random attempt with the chin ups nor any excess strain when doing them. But the day after I woke up the part of my rotator cuff attached to the back of my clavicle had a dull ache, and I also noticed some sharper pain when moving it in certain positions.
The pain was never anything more then a 3 or 4 out of ten at the most. But I had some clicking and popping, and minor shoulder pains before. This was the first time a shoulder issue was unilateral and sensing pain and agitation when moving my left arm into certain planes of movement.
Since I had shoulder aches before I still didn’t think it was anything too serious and I took time off before Christmas because of a bad cold. I noticed after that day that the pain felt the same and wasn’t diminishing much so I took about four days off and the pain went away. After that I went to the gym and lifted lighter weights, dropped certain exercises that might aggravate the injury and cut my work outs shorter. Along with my volume, and frequency to keep healing and not make things worse. Instead of taking a complete break from lifting for a few weeks or more.
Its been three weeks now and I continued to just go the the gym less often, and lift lighter and not cutting any exercises that could cause any pain or discomfort. I haven’t noticed an increase in pain or discomfort from working out since the strain. Even though I didn’t take extended time off to allow it to heal.
I don’t know if I am doing the best thing if I did actually end up tearing something though. But what I am doing hasn’t caused more pain or discomfort either immediately or in the days after each work out. Some peoples opinions I read about say it would be smarter to take more time off (2-6 weeks) to prevent delaying the recovery of the injury. I don’t really feel because of the lack of worsening pain or discomfort that I would feel it was really necessary though.
My biggest concern is that I don’t want to have suffered a moderate tear and jump back into things too quick and end up tearing it worse. Or mess up how the scar tissue heals my shoulder and end up getting more permanent scar tissue because I jumped back into things too soon.
I noticed behind my left clavicle bone where I strained my shoulder that there is more separation and indentation of the muscle or tendon on that shoulder, compared to my other.
It also looks different when I move that shoulder into different directions and is pretty visibly noticeable and different then my other shoulder. My left clavicle is more prominent then my right side though so maybe it could have just been there for a while and I never noticed.
But if I tore my shoulder a few weeks ago bad enough to cause an indentation in my muscles from ripped apart tissue, wouldn’t it have caused more pain or discomfort? Or some kind of weakness or instability? The injury only hurt for three or four days, especially the sharper pain with certain movements.
And nothing has really caused it to be aggravated since it happened. Could you tear a muscle and such visibly noticeable changes like that without having more pain, weakness, or instability after? Something that would more affect my workouts or where working out around that muscle group would cause me to feel more pain and discomfort? Just curious about other people’s knowledge and experience on this.