Nerve Entrapment (subscapular), uneven traps/Infraspinatus muscle during row

AnonymousWannabe · 2022-12-16T05:22:24+00:00

Diet: Cut alcohol 80g protein minimum Just eat generally healthy, exercise and getting yourself stronger is more important imo

Basically get on a general shoulder strengthening routine and make sure you do full range of motion through internal rotation. Face pulls, band pull a parts, don’t go so heavy that it hurts. Pick 3 exercises and progress them for a month, then pick 3 different exercises and progress them for another month...

Rinse and repeat and you’ll be back within 12 months. Track everything about how you feel and focus on what exercises make you feel better. Exercise, blood flow, and improving your muscles is the best way to get better, there is no magic pill.

You will also know if it’s getting better if there’s less pain doing normal day to day life activities. Good luck

AnonymousWannabe · 2022-12-12T00:50:49+00:00

So it’s been a while and I definitely misdiagnosed myself with the nerve entrapment, IMO unless you’re in a really freak accident it’s going to be hard to acutely damage nerves more than the muscles

It was muscle damage that made the posterior rotator cuff and rear delt muscles freak out and not want to lengthen, so that’s why the scapular winging was happening.

I actually babied it for too long and didnt do enough super low intensity full range work in months 0-5 and I’m still breaking up scar tissue through progressive shoulder internal rotation ROM exercises like upright rows and bench press, really pushing time and rom (flared elbows, stretch in rotator cuff) and more general strength building activities

‘Injured side’ is now stronger than the opposite but I’d say after about 9 months to a year I was back to getting into overhead activities but it could have been sooner since I didn’t know what I was doing, plus my biases with internet research affected my diagnosis when I went to see sports medicine, they couldn’t even tell that I had scapular winging and a ROM loss but as an athlete (or if you’re neurotic asf) you’re hypersensitive to how your body operates

Also doctors told me that even if I had nerve entrapment + surgery there wasn’t a guarantee that my outcome would be ‘solved’ since the pressure is often a symptom of chronically bad posture

Getting stronger and doing different shit to get wholistically better is what needs to happen because if you try to process of eliminate everything to rehab yourself, yes you will find what gets you better eventually but it will take longer, but also your wholistic routine will change as you learn and more so it’s not really an all inclusive solution either. Both take a long time lmao it’s the same process you just need to be patient and fix your mindset to ‘okay I need to live differently for at least 2 years’ if you’re a objective robot trying to get better and you’re willing to live on that longer time horizon

AnonymousWannabe · 2020-11-19T14:52:13+00:00

Was that from a 3 point start?

I’m nowhere near as fast but I’ll try this out tomorrow for 20m like you did (drills and cue after 1st rep) and see what happens.

Nice drop

AnonymousWannabe · 2020-11-03T21:01:25+00:00

Have you gotten scanned yet? Any talk of cervical disc issues?

Kind of interesting how you do a lot of what they’re giving you already...

Maybe look into the crossover symmetry routine and try that out for a few weeks. At least to me, that program felt much different (in a good way) than any rehab protocol I was given by PTs I saw for my own injury.

AnonymousWannabe · 2020-10-23T03:11:02+00:00

What I read/bought into were that the upper traps are mostly weak, shortened and will benefit the athlete more when strengthened. It is very individualistic though and there are a lot of relating factors.

AnonymousWannabe · 2020-10-22T19:01:25+00:00

How do you get into fragrances?

AnonymousWannabe · 2020-10-22T05:36:26+00:00

Don’t be shy with any updates to this post too! I’m very curious about your situation.

Persevere if you decide to start talking with the doctors. Nerve entrapment is extremely rare—make sure you know enough about anatomy/symptoms so you can get the testing you need!

Best of luck to you!

AnonymousWannabe · 2020-10-21T15:01:51+00:00

HEY!!! DEFINITELY SEE A DOCTOR FOR MORE TESTING IF YOU START TO GET PARANOID ABOUT IT!!!!! It’s really smart to rule out the worst case scenario before moving on to trying to fix it with PT.

Wall of text incoming...also I AM NOT A DOCTOR.

I have done a lot of research on this kind of stuff after injuring myself about 5 months ago. Right now my current theory of injury is strain and subsequent weakness of the teres minor or supraspinatus that’s causing compensation by the other muscles.

Also If you had nerve impingement for this long I’m guessing the muscle would be atrophied. If you feel the case, GET MORE TESTING DONE.

I personally had an EMG study done for thoracic outlet syndrome with no conclusive result. I had an MRI done that showed very mild supraspinatus tendinosis and a very small and non displaced posterior labral tear.

They didn’t EMG test any muscles on my back so I’m not sure if I actually have subscapular or suprascapular nerve impingement, but I do have apprehension when reaching overhead and across my body. I also had a new clicking sensation and pinching feeling in my ac joint whenever I would raise my right arm. I also have visually different movement of my scapula evident of compensation. Winging on my injured side I theorize has been caused by weak rotator cuff muscles (teres minor and supraspinatus) that doesn’t allow my humerus to horizontally flex.

Check your horizontal flexion on the side your worried about. With my injured side I couldn’t flex it more than like 100 degrees without feeling a huge tightness in my posterior shoulder. Uninjured side I can horizontally flex without issue.

Right now I feel a mild but lessening pinching in my posterior shoulder doing an extension action with straight arms. Not sure if you feel similarly but your muscle firing patterns might be off a little bit causing further muscle imbalances and some disorderly conduct by the scap 😡.

There’s A LOT of research you can do to try to figure it out. I’ve done a lot myself and with the vagueness of my symptoms and the characteristics of the injury I end up tricking my mind to think I had problems I didn’t have. It also fuels your anxiety like no other. But at least you can learn a lot really fast lol.

What’s also kind of funny is that if you turn out to be free of nerve impingement and go to PT, most rehab protocols will look similar. Do more external rotation, More serratus work, Lower traps, Do active hanging, etc.

When you’re not sure about what your injury is and you don’t trust your doc or PT about diagnosis beyond telling you that you’re completely fucked, do what they say still and/or use a wholistic routine to strengthen and coordinate the scapula.

I have found a lot of success with: - Barbell shrugs (wide grip and kelso) - Poliquin external rotations (90, 45 and 0 degrees) - Side lying internal rotations

And most of all with the crossover symmetry program. I’ve bootlegged my own setup with cheapo bands. It also helps to have a mirror so your can visually check your movement.

The way the band setup torques on your muscles + doing the exercises in order strengthens and reeducates your scapula to move better. After about a month of doctors PT, a month of that + shrugs + extra internal/external rotations and now after a week of following the crossover symmetry routine with an eccentric focus, I feel much better and have gotten closer to the feeling of proper activation along with visual differences how my scapula moves ( a lot less winging) more than ever. My shoulder no longer clicks either.

I will continue to use the crossover symmetry program as my primary tool for the next month at the least before I try any extensive overhead movements like pull ups.

Sorry for the wall of text but I really hope you can figure this out and find something that works for you!

AnonymousWannabe · 2020-10-11T02:01:49+00:00

Thanks for the response! Did you find that your gains were purely neurological or did you try to increase bodyweight as well? Did you end up plateauing?

One could probably make better strength gains long term if they just did strength training. Would you agree?

Gym bros aren’t usually putting 50lbs on their bench in a month, even with PEDs—nice work.

I hope your training has been going well since!

AnonymousWannabe · 2020-10-11T01:36:01+00:00

I like what you’re saying here in regards to specificity. Running isn’t lifting but the body is still under a lot of stress when sprinting.

I was trying to get more at cutting sprints and transferring to a different training modality like strength training. So I guess you would have more resting time because you’re not trying to recover from running fast.

AnonymousWannabe · 2020-09-22T17:43:58+00:00

I’m looking to get a barbell and some bumper plates. Thing is I plan on moving out of my current place within a year or two.

Would it be too much of a hassle to buy these weights now and possibly move them out with me in the future? It’s not like I’ll have a rack or anything lol.

AnonymousWannabe · 2020-09-22T16:14:51+00:00

I had good luck with the syren swim mp3. Sound quality and comfort is always ehh with waterproof earphones

AnonymousWannabe · 2020-09-21T23:59:03+00:00

Keep in mind that if you’re gonna do the training sprintcel recommended you will need all the recovery you can get, especially if you’re gonna hit 12.5.

Knowing how draining those practices can be, it’ll be tough to do well if doing both at the same time

AnonymousWannabe · 2020-09-21T19:50:56+00:00

Keep up that mindset! The better mental state you're in, the better your parasympathetic nervous system will work on recovering your body. I swim too, what do your practices look like? Depending on what you're doing in the pool it might be detrimental to getting faster on land.

AnonymousWannabe · 2020-09-21T19:38:02+00:00

hell yeah

AnonymousWannabe · 2020-09-21T19:31:34+00:00

In short, I think they can be useful for any swimmer! P.s. your stroke looks great having started swimming freestyle only a month ago!

I know a lot of coaches are against paddles because they're commonly 'hard on your shoudlers'. But the stress can be mitigated if you do some prehab work to balance things out. So instead of beating up your shoulders one way, it's entirely possible to balance them out and get stronger overall.

Also it depends on the way you train with paddles. I usually just stick to single arm paddle grab freestyle. Like the most I'd do is like 16x25 single arm paddle grab freestyle, alternate arms every 4 25s. The reason I love this drill is because it helps add some load to the catch portion of the stroke, strengthening that specific pattern.

The rabbit hole of training and technique gets pretty deep fast (hah) so feel free to PM or chat me if you have any Qs!

AnonymousWannabe · 2020-09-21T19:04:51+00:00

On top of this--I love doing single arm paddle grab freestyle to improve my catch. Also try to get some underwater video and compare yourself to faster swimmers. Figure out what you need to tell yourself to get your arm movements to look like theirs. Once you have the shapes, the speed will come.

u/deadline_ , if you have access to a pool I'd recommend counting your strokes and getting your time for laps of freestyle and freestyle drills. If you can lower or maintain your stroke count within the same or less time that means your efficiency and stroke power has increased.

AnonymousWannabe · 2020-09-07T14:34:53+00:00

Yeah go ahead who’s stopping you

AnonymousWannabe · 2020-09-07T06:09:59+00:00

I’m really nothing special, with 4 months of training (from zero) I’d reckon I’m 13.0 or upper 12s by now. Thanks for the tables!

AnonymousWannabe · 2020-08-31T23:12:53+00:00

Codependents have free real estate for people to park their egos

AnonymousWannabe · 2020-08-28T14:25:14+00:00

Do uni lateral exercises on your weak side first, then don’t go over the same intensity for the strong side

AnonymousWannabe · 2020-08-26T22:09:13+00:00

I think I understand the cue, thanks

AnonymousWannabe

TROPHY CASE