Since around 2012, my shoulder will partially dislocate a few times a year. It’s often when I’m just getting back into working out and not quite paying attention.
A few examples of when it has happened:
- Reaching behind my head to get something behind me in the car
- Briefly attempting pull-ups without controlling my descent following ill-informed advice to “just drop to the bottom so you don’t waste energy”
- Doing an “around the world” with a light sandbag where you rotate it around your head
- Reaching up for a high hand-hold while rock climbing
- Performing a barbell snatch
- Doing floor slides (lay on back, arms bent at sides with palms and elbows on the deck. Slide arms up and as close to overhead as possible while maintaining contact)
- Reaching up behind me in bed to grab something near the headboard
However, 99% of the time, I don’t have issues. I can still do everything I need to do for my job (primarily pull-ups), and I don’t typically notice it as an impediment when I’m working out. So it’s not like “Oh woe is me, my shoulder is the bane of my existence” all the time.
However, the issue is that the workout program I’m running now involves hanging leg raises. Any kind of hanging (knees to chest, let alone the more difficult variations) makes my right shoulder feel like it’s going to pop right out. I don’t have any issue at all with pull-ups; it’s the hanging that does it, and it’s just the one shoulder. I try to engage and not just dead hang, but regardless I can only manage a few reps before I have to stop.
This is frustrating, because I feel like the leg raise is something I ‘should’ be able to do. Yet whenever it shows up in workouts, I find myself either barely getting the reps in (without much percieved benefit, since I stop for my shoulder well before I feel anything in my core) or skipping it entirely.
Has anyone with a similar shoulder issue dealt with this before? Is it something that can be fixed, or should I just avoid it in terms of juice vs the squeeze? Simply dead hanging from the bar has the same result - it doesn’t feel like I’m getting stronger, just feels like I’m on the edge of it popping out again.
If leg raises are really that great an exercise then I’m willing to try, but given that I’m not competing in anything and can already perform what I need to for my job, this isn’t a hill I necessarily want to die on either.