Shoulder Injury

I had two shoulder injuries playing sports eleven and six years ago, neither of which I did much about. I’m 31 now.

I’ve been going to the gym for three years. I’m very diligent with form and execution. Typically I don’t go for huge weight, but these last two months I’ve been hitting my max on all my exercises. This past weekend the popping and clicking in my shoulder became much more evident and I had a terrible stiff-neck after a hard day on shoulders. Otherwise, there isn’t any associated pain except tenderness on a normal basis. And, I’m fine when I sleep.

I’m trying to gauge the severity of my situation. I don’t have health insurance and want to have a better idea of what I can and cannot do. I’m bummed out I can’t go heavy.

WHAT I KNOW: my lateral clavicle is raised. But, this injury typically doesn’t cause popping and clicking. My range of motion is slightly less than my strong shoulder. The first injury happened with downward pressure on the shoulder. The second was a very hard fall and roll onto my elbow, which - I guess, caused upward pressure on my shoulder. My shoulder cracks/pops/clicks just by doing an overhead press with no weight.

All the research I’ve done has this fall somewhere between a rotator cuff injury and a separation. If anybody can give me some useful information, I’d hugely appreciate it.

Disclaimer: This is a complete (educated) guess. You must go to see a physio, who lifts weights (night and day to me- non-training physios may know anatomy but not sports injuries too well).

The fall on the elbow, and subsequent clicking and popping sounds to me like an ac joint sprain. I had this in the left shoulder. I did lots of things to help.
Keys:
Don’t sleep on your side, sleep on your back instead. Put your head between two pillows in a little valley to stop you rolling about.
Do lots of scap wall slides, some external rotations.
Light massage of upper trapezius, lats and pec minor may well help.
You may have to do limited ROM shoulder work for a while: e.g. do not lower bar all the way to clavicle on OHP, and do lateral raises from your side, raising only to about 30degrees from parallel to floor. Further than this and you get popping and pain.
Strengthen your lower trapezius/rhomboids, with strict bent over rows where you shrug back and down. This will help offset the pull you likely have which makes your shoulders hurt.

Practice military posture, all the time. Chest up, shoulders down and back (when I cue my girlfriend the prompt is ‘big tits’ if that makes sense lol)

I’ve had chronic shoulder problems in the past, have contributed to lots of threads on the topic, have a look to see if other people (wiser than me) have said anything useful in them maybe? :

I hope that helps mate

Hi,

I’m new to the site but have been lifting for years. Back in February I took a bad fall snowbaording and broke my collarbone, and separated my shoulder(it was a level 2 separation). Let me also add this is the second time I have separated this shoulder .It has been 4 months since my accident and my ortho told me I can start lifting again. I started lifting with very light weights trying not to put a lot of pressure on my shoulder/collarbone.

This week I decided to step it up a little and I have noticed a popping sound in the shoulder that I separated. It doesn’t hurt, but I’m worried that i have developed an impingement from my injury. Has anyone had something similar happen to them? Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks