My left shoulder makes a cracking, popping noise when I move in an up and down motion. Whenever I bend my forearm and move my arm around up and down or side to side it makes that sound and I can feel it a little bit. I don’t have this problem in my right shoulder. I’ve seen a doctor about my shoulder before and he wasn’t trippin’ off it, just said to do some mobility exercises and all that. I notice that after a rotator-cuff workout it goes away but it comes back after a while. What do you guys think about this?
I’ve had the same problem for years. Doesn’t affect perofrmcance at all. And doesn’t hurt at all. Used to be able to do it all the time. But started doing the shldr traction exercises with a band that Dave Tate recommends on elitefts, shldr’s feel a lot better now, can only crack them about 1/3 of thte time now. If it doesn’t affect you’re performance or hurt I wouldn’t worry, alot of my other joints crack too.
It’s probably just old tissue floating around in your shoulder joint capsule. If it doesn’t hurt don’t worry about it. My whole body cracks and pops after heavy squat or bench days but it doesn’t cause any trouble. I think the tissue or debris is called crepitis. It’s harmless as far I know. You can have it cleaned out w/ a scope but it will come back eventually due to usage of the joint.
I’d be surprised if atleast 75% of this site didn’t have popping in one of their shoulders and/or knees of some sort. It goes with the territory.
If it’s painful or keeps you from ding what you want to do, get it checked out.
I saw an orthopedic surgeon about it once, and he said “If it pops and it doesn’t hurt, it probably just needs to pop. If it pops and it hurts, come see me and I’ll take your money…”
HI i am a physical therapist, usually cracking means instability in the joint, however i usually have patients in pain when they have a joint that is cracking and so is contributing to the overall problem, if there is no pain then just be careful, my advice is to take a look at both shoulders, see if there is any difference in muscle bulk and also muscle strength, also check if it cracks with a lighter weight, let me kknow how u get on, regards.