Pain in the...

About a week ago I noticed my right shoulder was particularly sore.  Now this is my "good" shoulder, ie the shoulder thats only had 1 surgery.  The pain was external, it wasn't in the joint itself, and for lack of a better description it felt like my side delt was twisted around the bone in that area.  There were some range of motion issues too, but that stemmed mainly from the pain and I don't believe it was anything mechanical.  Don't get me wrong, I already have some range of motion issues because of the surgery (and don't even get me started on my other shoulder), but this was obstructive.

So I tried working it out over last weekend but couldn't really make any headway.  Monday was back/biceps and the shoulder was sore, but it didn't interfere with my workout.  Tuesday was shoulders/traps, however, and some problems did arise.  Military press movements with that arm became difficult towards the end of the sets.  I already had to truncate my press motion to accomodate how the shoulder was feeling, but by the end of the 4th set I had to stop because it definitely did not feel right.  Front and rear delt movements were fine, but when I moved on to side delts the pain became an issue again.

I tried to get with my trainer friend there but she was with a client, and since the next day was legs I figured I'd try to squeeze in some time with her then.  Now normally I'd head straight to my doc, but my insurance has run out so thats not an option.  So I got with the trainer after my leg workout Wednesday and she took a look at the shoulder and poked around.  She said she could feel where it was tender and recommended I get at the muscle with a deep massage 3 times a day, and then apply ice.  Also liberal amounts of ibuprofen/alleve were in order as well.  We also decided that since I was due for chest the next day that I would take the rest of the week off from lifting and resume my split on Monday, providing I felt better.

So I went straight home and dug in to the area pretty hard.  That seemed to make it hurt even worse, and when I went in to the gym Thursday morning to do cardio it hurt worse than ever.  In fact I couldn't raise my arm at all.  But it was necessary, and sometimes you have to get worse before you get better.  By the end of Thursday my shoulder had regained its mobility and come Friday morning I had to restrain myself from resuming my lifting program because I really did feel better.  It was still sore to the touch, but movement was no longer an issue.  So I did an hour on the treadmill again and decided to just follow through on my original plan and rest the shoulder til Monday.  I went in for another hour of cardio this morning as well, and as per usual tomorrow will be an off day completely.  I've also maintained my diet (well, I did have a cheat meal in there...sigh) throughout this.

I think I'll be able to go come Monday, the shoulder is feeling that much better.  I massaged the area just a bit ago and barely felt anything as I dug around.  The trainer also gave me some warmup rotational exercises to do with light weights before lifting.  I have some 5lb dumbbells at home so I'll do those before I go into the gym, that way I can hit the ground running per usual once I get there.  I won't lie though, it was scary for a minute because I was afraid the shoulder gave out on me again.