Frozen Shoulder

[Eamo]

Hi,
A question for anyone that can help.

I'm 36 and competed in a couple of powerlifting comps. Last April I got a twinge in my tricep/delt insert when doing push ups. Iced it and basically ignored it. It never went away and in November. Went to a physio who gave me a few external rotation exercises. Not sure why as I had no loss of mobility or strength. She also recommended that I loosely tie the arm to my body to prevent me from sleeping on it under my head (my normal position).

Within two days the pain got much worse and I completely lost all external rotation mobility. Believe or not the physio skipped town.

Last week I saw a sport medicine doctor who diagnosed a frozen shoulder and booked me in for a distension arthoscopy. They basically blow up the shoulder capsule with saline and cortisone.

My question, has anyone any experience with this condition or the rehab from the operation. ANy advice would be much appreciated.

Cheers
Eamo

[Mark Rippetoe]

We'll open this up to the board.

[Alex Bond]

As I understand it, frozen shoulder goes through an 18 month process. The first 6 months are the freezing stage, where you lose shoulder mobility and are in pain. This stage has already started for you. Next comes the 6 month frozen stage, where you have reduced range of motion staying roughly constant. Lastly comes the 6 month recovery phase, when range of motion improves back to normal. Apparently, pretty much all frozen shoulder cases go through roughly this same time scale. You should try to keep range of motion as high as possible using rotation exercises and such, but expect to lose some for a while. I don't know whether or not you'll have the range of motion to press overhead, but if you can it would probably be good. You should also expect to have to find out a way to prevent you from rolling around in your sleep - when you roll onto your shoulder and put weight on it, it is pretty painful and will wake you up.