First day at the gym... got tendinitis in my shoulder

[mwanafalsafa]

My doctor says I should take it easy on that shoulder indefinitely due to the tendon issue and some scarring I have on my right shoulder/neck. This puts my in somewhat of a jam. I'm so skinny it's a joke and want to bulk up at least a little in conjunction with my martial arts training. Now I apparently can't do any weight training for muscle gain...?

Do you guys have any advice? I guess I could train the rest of my body normally but if I don't lift much with my right arm/shoulder then I'll just look weird and uneven right? Or is it possible to train related muscles and have my right shoulder grow as a supporting muscle?

I'm not really sure at all how to begin because I have very little experience in weight training.

Thanks

[newy085]

I thought that you could only get tendonitis from overuse of muscles/tendons which are not accustomed to it. Was this an old injury redone, or is it just from one big day at the gym. If it is the first injury a bit of ice and rest, and some anti inflamatories might be enough to allow you to use the tendons.

I haven't had much to do with tendonitis, but from what I have gathered, it is only temporary and once your tendons become used to the increased workload, they will stop becoming inflamed. So unless you are in a rush to get some muscle (not a good choic anyway), just take it slowly, ice and recover after workouts, and keep your workouts short and slow, increasing intensity and duration, as you improve.

As always, I am not a doc so run this advice past someone who knows (your GP/PT)

[newy085]

Just another note, with workouts, I don't mean weights or strentgh. I mean another activity like swimming or rowing. Something the uses the joint but not in an aggrevated or stressfull manner.

Hope this helps

[mwanafalsafa]

Well I have a problem with scarring under the skin on my shoulder and neck from a preexisting medical condition. I suppose that didn't help matters. It's one of the reasons the doc said I should take it easy indefinitely, because I'm a special case.

In the past I've used the universal gym unit we have at my house working, apparently, the same muscles without issue. I worked very hard on the seated military press and the... uhh... bar that you pull down from over your head.

But when I tried about the same amount of work with free weights I immediately got injured.

But regardless of whether I use free weights or not I'm still concerned about how to figure out how much by shoulder can take without causing myself another injury.

What I'm really wondering is if there's a way to work around the issue and still have some sort of even muscle growth on my upper body. I mean how can I exercise my chest or right arm without putting strain on my right shoulder? It seems like a deal-breaker.

[mwanafalsafa]

Just another note, with workouts, I don't mean weights or strentgh. I mean another activity like swimming or rowing. Something the uses the joint but not in an aggrevated or stressfull manner.

Hope this helps

I'm pretty sure I won't have a prblem with swimming and such. Just weight training. I'd be perfectly happy to eschew weight training entirely if it were possible to increase overall muscle mass through something like swimming, but I don't know if this is the case. I've never heard of such a thing.

[newy085]

Yeah, your in a bit of a situation then. If you just want to strengthen the muscles in your arm it is possible. You can isolate your arm for bicep curls and tricep extensions, by resting them on a surface, and keeping them tucked into your side.

I cannot think of any substitute for strengthening your pecs/chest or traps/back without moving your shoulders. I would be doing some swimming though as it will help to strengthen the joint, and who knows, maybe in six months time you could be at a point where small weights are possible.

[Gary]

There's usually a substantial difference between what you can lift on a machine and what you can do with free weights, since you'll be using a lot of extra muscles you won't necessarily have trained before. A straight transfer from machines to free weight susually means a drop in the weight you can use.

Cissus is good for tendonitis, I know cosmicfish has used it in larger doses (10gpd) than usually recommended by manufacturers but again it's worth checking with your doctor since you have a pre-existing medical condition. It could just be muscle strain caused by using relatively heavier weights. Have you tried using the machine since the injury (assuming you're not still in rest/recovery from the first incident) ?

[CosmicFish]

^ Yep. I'll second cissus. 10g ED cleared up joint problems pretty damn quickly.

[mwanafalsafa]

Good to know, if a little late, haha.

It only happened a couple days ago but since then I've been to the doctor and am now recovering. I guess the plan is that I'll stick to very light weight/high rep training on machines a slowly work back up.

My worry is... how do I find out where my limit is without getting hurt again?

I mean the whole point of weight training (and any physical skill for that matter) is to push through the pain to get better, so I can't really use that as a gauge of how my tendons are doing...

I'll def check out Cissus

[CosmicFish]

Deep tissue massage may help out with the scarring (I'd have thought you'd need a decent rest peroid if it's a recent injury to tendons though - But I'm no doctor, so I'm only giving my lay-opinion. Use your own judgement here). Oh, and it'll hurt!

IMO, the best way to increase the weight under these circumstances would be to do it as gradually as possible. I have some home-made wooden weights that allow me to increase the weight in increments as small as ½ kilo if I want to. A commercial gym is unlikely to have anything similar, but you can improvise. A couple of ideas:

* Take two ankle weights to the gym and use them to increase by tiny amounts.

* Increase the weight by 2½ kilo increments, but stick at each increment for a good few sessions. E.g. If you're overhead pressing 30kg. Do it for 4-6 sessions before jumping up to 32½kg.

It probably doesn't need saying, but just for completeness sake, stay a good couple of reps away from failure when you're working problem areas as well - you don't actually need to go to failure to make progress. Also, never try to macho through the pain for an injured area. I know first hand how tempting that is! ;)

[mwanafalsafa]

That's good to hear. I thought for sure you needed to push it to the point of failure to really grow new muscle.

[newy085]

What your talking about is hypertrophy, which is used to increase muscle size. But size does not always equal strength and power. Every time you put your muscles under stress they find a way to adapt (either by getting bigger, or by getting strong), so that next time the stress is reduce.

There are optimum ways to develop your muscles, but working with an injury means that you cannot train in an optimum way. You have to set acheivable goals and take steps to meet them. In your case getting muscle bulk will not come before rehablilitating your injury. So all your steps know should be towards rehabiliting your injury. If you try to focus on to many goals you will get frustrated and not see progress in any. Get a clear direction, and make concious steps towards it.

If I was in your shoes, I would be swimming and light weights, with long warmups/cooldowns. As well as a decent massage hear and there to help clear that scar tissue.

Once you start to feel improvement, you'll be amazed at how much easier it all will become.

[tophalf69]

Hi.
I have trained for over 19yrs now and in that time I have had my share of injuries. The most major being a prolapsed disc which caused me to lose 3 stone of hard earned muscle, 3 months on the couch and a year getting the 3 stone back on but once I was back on my feet the first thing I did was get back to the gym, with very limited exercises mind you. The most recent injury has been damage to my right rotator cuff when I did a ridge hand to a floor bag, oh and I strained my brachialis at the same time. This injury has been ongoing since October of 2007 and let me tell you in ways it has been more frustrating than when I did my back!! It seemed like every time I picked a weight up or moved in a certain way it caused me pain and my strength dropped dramatically. Anyway, I went to a physio who did deep massge therapy along with ultrasonic therapy, while I used ice packs, Glucosimine and Chondroitin (which I have used for years now anyway) and trained around it.
It got very slowly better but one exercise, one of my favourites, was still causing me pain and problems, it was incline dumbbell press. I continued to struggle with this exercise in the belief that eventually it would come right but it didn't. Two months ago I decided to try incline barbell press as an alternative and to my surprise, no pain and no problem. I then stuck with this for a month. After the month I tried dumbbells again and amazingly, no problems. I have now moved back up from doing 40kg dumbbells with pain to doing 62kg dumbbells with no pain.
If you think about it I should have had more problems with more exercises than I have, say flat bench press or shoulder presses but these did not agitate the shoulder, it was mainly inclines and when I picked weights up and moved. Due to this I could still manage to perform some exercises with maximal weight as it didn't bother the injury.

Just not training is not the answer as is not using the shoulder at all. The only way you couldn't train any upper body part would be if your injury was agitated by every single upper body exercise. What I am trying to say is that if you can't do a barbell press don't do it, but you might be able to dumbbell press or use a shoulder press machine or do side laterals with no pain at all. If there is no pain at all then you are not affecting the injury. If you feel pain I simply wouldn't do the movement at all, but that's me, I am cautious that way. Also, don't forget that when you wish to gain weight by far the most effective exercises are the large multi joint exercises that stress your entire body. For examply deadlifts are awsome. The reason a lot of people don't do them is because they are so hard, like throwing up in a bucket stressful on your system. The thing about deadlifts is that due to the stress that is applied to your whole system your whole body grows in response. If you look at some of the top powerlifters, they have huge arms but they don't specifically train arms!! Their arm size is a side effect of the huge weights and compound exercises they do. I have seen loads of people train bi-ceps every session and then wonder why their arms aren't huge. It just amuses me as they look at you as if you are mad doing deadlifts and squats, then ask how to get bigger arms, then go off and and continue with what they were doing in the first place. It is possible to train around injuries just listen to your body and train sensibly. Do deadlift if you can, do squat, do eat every 3 hours if you can, do take rest, do try and continually overload the muscles you are working but NOT at the expense of the FORM of the exercise you are performing as that is a sure way of getting even more injuries!!

Hope this helps.

[ralphie]

I agree with tophalf -- dont stop, take it easy, be careful, and do your best to 'train around' the injury.

I have tendonitis in my elbow (tennis elbow). I got it a year ago, after I had been weight training about 6 months, and overdid it one day with some bicep curls on a curling bench. I took on too much weight (typical stupid rookie mistake), and the dumbbell ended up throwing my arm down (and around a bit) too hard.

The thing about tendonitis is that it can easily come back. It takes a long time to heal, typically. Cortizone shots reduce the inflammation and speed up recovery (but you really have to limit how much of that you get). But, tendons can be easily re-injured, more easily than the first time. I re-injured mine once, and still feel it occasionally. I cant take on curls, or really anything that requires flexing my elbow much, especially downward pushes, such as the tricep pull-downs.

When I do work out, I work around it, doing only those things that dont hurt the arm...so I'm limited with upper body work.

[mwanafalsafa]

Great stuff guys. I will def. get back in the gym asap.

Interestingly, I'm pretty sure the exercise that did it was the incline dumbbell press. hehehe. It's the first time I ever tried it; I gather I probably had pretty bad form.