Ow, my shoulder! Fixing shoulder impingement.
In the gym today, I happened run into two guys who each experiencing pain their right shoulders. What they most likely have, seeing that they were pointing to the front part of the shoulder, I told them, is an impingement of their biceps tendon. Of course, they wanted to know how to fix this problem.
When this particular shoulder problem arises, it is usually the result of imbalance/overuse that develops due to habitual rounded posture and too much pushing movements, like the bench and the dips with improper technique. The tendons on the front of the shoulder basically get crunched by a boney part of the shoulder generating pain which in turn makes lifting your arm overhead a real “pain” in the… shoulder.
Here’s what I told these guys to do next:
Use ice and self-massage with a tennis/lax ball to reduce the inflammation in the area.
When the pain subsides a bit, start doing active mobility on the chest and shoulder muscles.
Limit pushing exercises that cause pain—in particular overhead pressing.
Focus on strengthening the 4 rotator cuff muscles in the shoulder, along with other re-balancing exercises.
If you lift a lot like I do, shoulder impingement is bound to happen to the best of us. I have a little impingement myself currently. However a simple set of practice like outlined above will go a long way to get you back in the gym, hopefully pain-free.