So Your Shoulder Hurts?

My wife always prefers that this column addresses the things that I know best.  Like sports injuries, physical therapy, athletic training, and rehabilitation.  Oh, she will acknowledge that I do have a pretty good understanding about things like dedication, dignity, effort, exercise, and persistence.

My best critic and biggest supporter, I do listen to her (most of the time).

So after reading last week's column (which she really liked) about my Bucket List (or lack thereof), she suggested I write about something more medical. 

Being the always attentive husband (this was, by the way, sitting over coffee after Sunday breakfast), I asked "like what?"

"Well, what do you do most of?"

That one was fairly easy.  Much of every day is spent on helping people deal with their shoulder problems.  It seems like we're in the middle of an epidemic of shoulder problems. 

I put those into two categories.  The first is the most common and I blame it all on the computer.  

Everybody spends too much time on the computer.  For many, it's part of their job.

I know I do.  Medical documentation and the many administrative responsibilities inherent to my job put me in front of a computer for several hours most days.  At times it seems like I spend more time on the computer than I do treating patients. 

I even talked to an employee of a local manufacturing plant and his day was spent in front of a computer.

So what's the problem with computers?  It's the posture that using a keyboard requires you to assume.  Head down.  Shoulders hunched forward.  Our computers are rarely high enough and our arms are never supported enough.

And so we pay the price with shoulder problems.

The other category is the weight lifter.  Typically, it's the younger athlete who has really gotten into weight lifting.  But too often it's the older lifter who has been at it for years.  The common denominator?  The bench press.  The younger lifter spends too much time on the bench press because that's what all his buddies are doing (and yes, it's mostly a male thing).  The older lifter spends too much time on the bench press because...well...it's what he's always done.

It's easy to spot them both.  When you look at them standing in front of you, you see the backs of their hands since their shoulders are rolled so far inward.

And that, friends and readers, is where I come in.  Maybe they've torn their rotator cuff or had other shoulder surgery.  Hopefully we get to them before it has gone so far that surgery is their only option. 

In a nutshell, it's their posture.  They may stand up perfectly straight but their shoulders aren't where they need to be.

The key ingredient is to training those muscles that hold the shoulders back in a neutral position.  Part of that is likely to be adjustments to how they work at a computer.  And for those dedicated to the bench press, it is likely to mean that they need to turn their focus away from the bench press.  Far away sometimes.

Oh, it's sometimes more complicated than that (that's why I have a job) but those are the basics.