How I Overcame Right Shoulder Pain and Ended Up With Left Shoulder Pain

The top 3 lessons I learned from my journey that may help you along yours

Most of my training prior to 2014 or so was focused on traditional lifts like Bench Press, Deadlift and Squats. The majority of my training was done like a bodybuilder. I would focus heavily on the movements that would improve aesthetics and my muscularity as opposed to focus on my overall function and movement quality.

Before we go any further, let me first state that there’s nothing wrong with focusing on this style of training or even focusing on aesthetics if that’s your thing. From my perspective I simply choose to prioritize feeling good in my body and improving my capacity for the things I love doing instead of those things.

Let me also point out that in no way am I providing medical advice here. I simply want to share my personal journey as a means of providing context and hope for those who want to take a different approach than surgical. I’ve never been under a knife for anything that’s ailed me. I don’t claim to be 100%, and I don’t think anyone ever reaches 100% in life.

I think that surgical options unless absolutely necessary, do not always provide the expected outcomes. I also believe that Physical Therapy and training alone do not resolve all things.

In life, we all have choices as to how we want to live it. We all have bodily autonomy. Some people's tolerance for pain exceeds others. Some people are willing to tolerate a reduction in symptoms versus the setback of surgical procedures, which may or may not resolve the issue.

We must make the decisions that are right for ourselves. We must arm ourselves with knowledge, consult the appropriate professionals and get multiple professional opinions on our specific situation. I always say specific, because every body is unique. In many ways we ARE actually snowflakes no matter how someone tries to spin this as an insult of sorts.

When the Pain began

I would say that my shoulder began feeling funky once I began demanding things of it that it wasn’t accustomed to. As I mentioned, Bench Press was my thang!! So I benched often back then.

Then I discovered Animal Flow and Steel Maces. I was so excited about training in these new modalities and I jumped right in, not realizing that for years I had made my body super efficient at doing linear motions like Benching. My shoulder accommodated to specific movements in order to be optimal at that activity. Now I was asking it to do an about face and do something completely different.

I didn’t recognize this initially, but gradually over time those limitations and restrictions began to crop up. With the addition of more volume due to frequency of these new activities as well as additional load on the Mace, I began to feel a thing. At first it wasn’t major and I thought “eh, it’ll get better”. Besides, everyone had told me that the Mace and Animal Flow were Mobility Training.

I truly didn’t understand that coordinated movements are expressions of a person’s capacity for movement and not the actual training. No one tells a dancer that the dance is the training. Dancers have to do specific strength work. A martial artist doesn’t only do the activity, but there are building blocks of specific mobility work required. Shaolin Monks prepare their bodies in a myriad of ways to give themselves capacity for activities.

So I kept doing the activities and working around the pain until it was finally unbearable. What the heck? People told me that the Mace was a mobility tool and would improve my “shoulder health” and that Animal Flow would give me better mobility. The truth is that even though these tools are useful and can provide very unique training stimuli, they weren’t ever meant to be rehabilitative nor designed to improve specific health metrics.

In 2017 I decided to take my first mobility specialist course. I was already hurting and I was looking for a way out of pain. I needed something different than the usual and I wasn’t going for surgery. I needed to gain a different understanding of the human body and I went in with an open mind

My first introduction to defining mobility changed my trajectory and started me on a journey to healing. I remember like it was yesterday. I took those first steps and I never looked back

I remember being introduced to CARs (Controlled Articular Rotations) for the first time. I had no idea how significant that would be for my life. When I first did a shoulder CARs I had severe pain in my shoulder specifically going into Internal Rotation. My first thought was “oh that’s where it’s at so keep going in there”. But as I began to learn and understand that all the things I’d been taught about “no pain. no gain” had been BS, I began to gain new perspective.

The First Lesson