Background & detailing the acute injury

To start I think I’ll provide a bit of background. Today is Oct 29th, 2014. I first remember having shoulder pain following a layout at PUFF (same site where Mars is hosted, outside Pittsburgh) way back in 2005. Simply put, I landed more towards my side/armpit instead of on my chest. There were a few of these instances of the next 7-8 years but normally nothing that couldn’t be handled with a little bit of rest. Symptoms included pain mostly at the front of the shoulder where the biceps tendon, labrum, and rotator cuff sit, so really it could have been any of those pieces that was injured. Flick hucks were difficult for a while, but the real issue was bench press, more on this later.

The real moment of an acute injury that made this all get rolling is unclear. Maybe it was that bid 9 years ago, and I’ve progressively made it worse with each layout and 40 yard hammer? I’m usually pretty diligent about logging everything I can from each meal I eat, the supplements I’m taking, each rep and set of my workouts, and even my injuries. Based on my logs it seems likely that another major turning point (for the worse) was during a trip to Jamaica in January 2010. I was doing flat dumbbell bench press with 65s and slightly lost control with exhaustion on a later rep when my arms were about 80% extended from my chest. As I tried to catch the weight from falling laterally, I felt a distinct pain in my shoulder joint and immediately had to quit. At this point I was benching about my body weight (160-165 at the time), but never got back anywhere close to this for a long time. Still, in this case, rest and some lighter weight strengthening through lateral and front dumbell raises, cable rows, and tension band work, seemed to fix the issue. My shoulder became a more serious issue around the time of the second-year Philadelphia Spinners combines in February 2013. I’ve been the most detailed in logging my workouts since then, and it is clear that I have lost strength progressively in the past 20+ months. I was unable to bench any more than 125-135 pounds without serious pain, and usually with a higher number of reps would start to feel the pain at lighter weights. Additionally, I found that it was in the first 1/3 of the pushing motion that I felt the most pain.