This short article comes from a personal issue I have with ongoing shoulder pains arising in the past three years. There is nothing worse than building up your training, achieving your interim aims and training targets and then out of nowhere somewhere in your shoulder gives out, for apparently no reason what so ever! Or is this really the case?

My own problem arose again on Easter Monday after a good year without shoulder pain whilst - wait for it... 'drying my back with a towel'! There I was drying myself off thinking about the days intended squat session and I get a shooting pain behind my left shoulder. I thought surely I had seen the last of this kind of irritating set-back after getting over the last similar strain last year.

I know exactly why and how this has happened but I was hoping I would escape the possibility of reoccurrences. Before I reveal all, let's look at the history as some of you readers may be able to relate to some of the issues and maybe some of what I have learnt can help you avoid some of my mistakes.

2004:

Lower Back injury whilst fitting new doors and bathroom to my house

2 year chiropractic care to get to a comfortable state of back health, but not 100%

Throughout the following 2 years I carried on training Bench, shoulders and arms, seated or lying to save my back. NO legs or back work at all apart from basic exercises recommended by chiropractor and cycling back and forth to work every day.

2007:

Late this year I was able to return to back work (pull ups mainly)

Still carried on with normal Bench, shoulder and arm work

2008:

From quite early in year I began to get twinges and strains in muscles behind shoulders, usually taking a week or so to clear up and usually set off by simple day-to-day tasks.

Late summer 2008 training was going well, able to squat and deadlift again (after a 9 year absence) without lower back pains. I gradually built loads up until a nerve injury at my right bicep tendon halted all upper body work and deadlifts. I couldn't bend my elbow without shooting pains!

I carried on developing my squat with complimentary lower back work, ab work and such to maintain some essential deadlift requirements.

No rear shoulder strains - yippee!

Feb 2009:

I am able to get back into bench work and seated machine shoulder press (after nearly 6 months off!) but not able to carry out any loaded arm flexion work like pull ups or arm curls.

I worked on upper back strength with rack pulls building up to 320kg mainly for traps and grip.

April 2009:

At last my nerve injury seems to have dwindled some-what allowing me to do basic pull ups but only with the widest grip as flexing arms with a narrow grip or chin up posture seemed to irritate my nerve a little!

Three sessions later in mid April along came the old pain, in the back of my shoulder L a day after a rather ambitious back workout. I knew the back of my shoulders were tight and tried after the session itself, I did my stretches and thought no more about it. Next morning, up, shower, dry myself... ouch... the afore mentioned pain!

So what went wrong?

In a nut shell, imbalanced workouts for extensive periods.

For over two years I did no, that's NO posterior chain work apart from basic core exercises prescribed by my chiropractor. Whilst I continued anterior work, building up strength and tension I was unwittingly loosing my shoulder girdle posture. My shoulders were rolling forward, my arms were pronating (knuckles facing forward rather than thumbs forward as a normal arms posture should be) and it was only a matter of time before the over-weak rear of my shoulders were over-stretched through poor resting and working posture and became injured.

An imbalance recently re-arose owing to the lack of rear back work whilst my arm was injured and I returned to bench work months before I was able to include back work. The whole time I had hoped that the rack work and some light core work would be sufficient but whilst these activities maintained some movement and activity not working the lats, rhomboids & teres major created imbalances in tension in the rotator cuff.

This experience has been a learning curve in the making. Whilst I believed that some maintenance work for my back was enough to allow me to continue progressive anterior muscle work I was wrong! The variance in muscle tension between anterior and posterior was too much for my shoulders to safely handle. I would have been better off just maintaining anterior work, with lighter activities, but alas like many I learn the hard way in this instance.

This same training advice applies to other body parts. If one part if injured and unexercisable (I know that's not a word but I hope you get its meaning lol) then the opposite or antagonist muscles should not be over worked above a maintenance level. Injured hamstring = basic quad work, injured bicep = little tricep work, injured lower back = basic abdominal work; all until pains have gone and exercise intensity can be partially resumed.

In all cases the advice of a professional therapist should be sought, rather than letting chance play its role!

Aches and pains arise and occur for a variety of reasons. In the case of trauma the fault is often easily identified but for some developing injuries diagnosis can be time consuming and difficult. For the shoulder area a physiotherapist or other therapist may use some of the following tests to confirm a suspected cause of pain or to diagnose an injury or imbalance.

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