I am feeling a pain in the shoulder. Yes yes, I know there are millions of threads like this floating around, but I have to ask.
How can I distinguish between a normal shoulder muscle sore and a shoulder injury? Are there circumstances in which the shoulder hurts but for completely normal reasons?
My shoulder is having a dull sore, not a sharp pain. I happened last night. I was swinging my arm around with no apparent reason, and doing backstroking motions when I suddenly felt a pain on the top portion of my deltoid. If I were to draw a circle around the pain, the circle would face out and forward. When my arms are over my head, there's NO pain, but when my arms reach about 45 to 30 degrees to my body, the pain starts. The pain is mainly when I'm moving my arm.
Right now, there's no pain anymore. I gave it a night and today, and currently there's no acute pain, but just a dull soreness much like an aching muscle. However, last night I sensed a bit of pain while moving in the 45 degree zone mentioned above, but when my arms were above my head or even above horizontal I couldn't feel a thing.
When the arm's hurting, after a bit of rest it felt like it had been charged up with lactic acid and had that kind of sore feeling (my entire arm). Then it disappeared. Right now I can't feel any pain while moving my arms, except that very mild soreness. Oh yea, I sense no obvious weakness in the arm or inability to sleep on it.
So...what's happening? Any ideas?
Thanks a lot.
Parents
Former Member
A little over a year ago I myself damaged my LH shoulder while doing ballistic arm swing type stretches. It is pretty much pain free now but it took a good 8-10 months to get to the point where I could go a day or two without thinking about it. Let me tell you what worked for me..
1) NSAID's are good and bad. They reduce swelling but the cause of the swelling is actually beneficial to the healing process. When I layed off of the drugs my recovery improved drastically.
2) Limited shoulder exercises. If I did them every day to fatigue my arms would be too tired to swim.
3) Breaststroke caused a lot of clicking in my shoulders so I avoided it as much as possible.
4) When swimming, stop immediately when you notice any pain. Never swim through the pain because it will only make things worse.
5) Use your arm. Keeping it immobilized when not in the pool causes problems such as adhesive capsulitis in bad cases. The more I used my arm, in a gentle manner, the better it felt.
I'll post more as I have time.
A little over a year ago I myself damaged my LH shoulder while doing ballistic arm swing type stretches. It is pretty much pain free now but it took a good 8-10 months to get to the point where I could go a day or two without thinking about it. Let me tell you what worked for me..
1) NSAID's are good and bad. They reduce swelling but the cause of the swelling is actually beneficial to the healing process. When I layed off of the drugs my recovery improved drastically.
2) Limited shoulder exercises. If I did them every day to fatigue my arms would be too tired to swim.
3) Breaststroke caused a lot of clicking in my shoulders so I avoided it as much as possible.
4) When swimming, stop immediately when you notice any pain. Never swim through the pain because it will only make things worse.
5) Use your arm. Keeping it immobilized when not in the pool causes problems such as adhesive capsulitis in bad cases. The more I used my arm, in a gentle manner, the better it felt.
I'll post more as I have time.
