Dad Injuries Affecting Training

[Mr. Odom]

Long time lurker and first time poster here. I'm a teacher and former CSCS. Once I understand what my injury is, I will know what steps I need to take on how to fix it. However, I have yet to find anything online that's similar to my issue to help me diagnose it. If things aren't better within a couple weeks, I plan on seeing a professional that can help.

To make a long story short, I developed some very minor tennis elbow from carrying my daughters carseat in my right arm over the summer. It never kept me from training. Later, I started occasionally feeling a pinch in the back of my right shoulder near the joint when carrying the carseat as well. Later, I also felt the pinch while doing squats. It was very minor, but I switched over to front squats for the summer just to be precautionary.

Last week, I did back squats again very light. I did 3 sets of 8 with 205 easy and pain free. Later in the workout, I went to do some chins. The pain in my rear delt was so bad that I couldn't do a single chinup. This came out of no where. Out of curiosity, I tried a couple pullups and there were no problems at all. Rowing movements and pronated pulls don't hurt at all. Interestingly enough, I even had pain later in the workout when I layed down to do hamstring curls since I didn't want to hold the bar to deadlift. Having my arm on the handle at chin level laying down was very painful. I haven't trained since. I feel the shoulder pinch only when I raise my cup to chin level to take a drink in day to day life.

So to recap, I basically have a pinching pain in my rear right delt when my hand is supinated at or above my chin. Taking a drink and chin-ups cause the pain and I actually can't pull myself up for chins. I first felt the pain while carrying my daughter's carseat, not while working out. Chinups have never given me pain until last week. Am I correct in thinking this is an impingement of the bursa from carrying the carseat improperly?

[AndrewLewis]

Can we see videos of your main lifts? In particular, your squat.

[Mr. Odom]

I'm assuming you're looking for scapular retraction on bench, straight wrists and correct bar position on squats, etc. I have some on my computer at home that are private on my YouTube channel for demonstrating lifts to my clients. I could maybe upload a few on here later. I'm a big sticklar on form and I've always followed Rip's protocols on the main lifts when coaching. My routines are push/pull balanced as well.

Basically, I'm just wanting to know if I'm dealing with an AC strain, tendonitis, bursa impingement, etc based on my symptom of only having pain from the supinated chin-up position. The good news is, after two days of NSAIDS and rests it's doing much better (knock on wood).

[AndrewLewis]

You want me to diagnose soft tissue damage based on three paragraphs of text?
I'm glad to hear it's doing better, but you could have all three of those things (AC strain, tendonitis, bursitis), I just don't know.