Anyone who has any experience dealing with it have any tips to prevent/treat? I had a bad flare last year that eventually needed a steroid shot, and about a year later it is starting again. Don't want to make this a regular occurrence

What usually sets it off?

An ortho diagnosed AC arthritis in one of my shoulders 20 years ago. It was very painful, and I thought I was headed to surgery where they shave the bone and the scar tissue "acts like cartilage" at least as it was explained to me. But I first did PT with lots of long stretches. It took a few months, but the pain went away completely and never returned. Surgery should always be a last resort.

There hasn't been anything specific that set it off. I am pretty active so it is hard to pinpoint anything. I tried PT for several weeks last year with no improvement, but the PT told me to avoid overhead press type lifts. Steroid injection improvement was instantaneous.

I ultimately had surgery for this back in 2019. PT and shots did nothing for me, unfortunately. While they were in there, they found my labrum was torn and also did a biceps tenodensis. I discovered a small scar on front of my armpit that was not expected. Had no idea what it was until I went to my postop appointment several days after surgery and was informed what they did. Scar pretty much gone at this point. And the scars on your shoulder from AC joint surgery effectively disappear. You can't see them over time.

Still not sure how I feel about that but what's done is done at this point.

What? They didn't do any imaging before to see if there was a labral tear or did the imaging not pick it up? That is wild.

Had a pretty major issue with my left shoulder almost 2 years ago. Got to the point I couldn't bench press the bar, really painful just touching the bar to my chest. MRI showed AC joint issues / arthritis and some labrum damage, among other things. After about 5 months of PT, it improved dramatically. A lot of upper back, rear delt, and rotator cuff work. I can now bench and over head press like normal, no problem (including heavy singles). I also incorporate the same movements I was doing in PT into my training to maintain shoulder health and it's worked well. No pain or discomfort at all.

What all did you guys work on in PT?

aggiederelict said:

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What? They didn't do any imaging before to see if there was a labral tear or did the imaging not pick it up? That is wild.

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Yeah, we did imaging, but I guess it didn't pick it up. I was surprised as you are. My first question in post op appt was, "WTF is this scar and what did you do to me?"

Not a good look. I things can be missed but there is a big difference between some AC joint arthrosis and a labral tear and biceps tenodesis.

Band and body weight work. Rotator cuff/shoulder strengthening exercises (internal external rotation, wall walks), opposite shoulder touch while in push up position, etc.

I was diagnosed with arthritis of the AC joint and a torn labrum around a year and a half ago. I couldn't sit up in bed on my shoulder without intense pain and if I rolled onto it during the night while I was sleeping it would wake me up. The orthopedist said the tear wasn't a big deal because the arthritis is what's causing me pain.

I had a total of 3 cortisone shots into the shoulder, including 2 guided ones where they use an x-ray to get it exactly where it's needed and those helped but my orthopedist said you can only do 3 of them because after that they can actually make your shoulder worse. I did PT for around 6 weeks and it didn't really help me. The main thing that helped my shoulder was that I stopped going to jiu jitsu for a year and I also stopped doing any presses or pushups when working out. I still don't do any horizontal presses like push ups or bench press because those are the most painful to me, it feels like someone is putting a knife into my shoulder. I do overhead presses with kettlebells from time to time and those don't really hurt and I also do pull ups so my shoulders are getting some work but I've lost a lot of muscle in my chest and shoulders.

By all accounts the surgery to clean up the shoulder is no guarantee that I'd get back to normal shape so I've been hesitant to schedule it, but I haven't completely ruled it out. I've been back at jiu jitsu for a few months now and still do workouts but only really kettlebell stuff because it doesn't aggravate my shoulder. I just try to be cautious of what I'm doing. I've been trying the wolverine stack with peptides for a couple of months now and I don't know whether that's helped much but I'll probably have an idea when I get done with this current batch.

My wife has had several different surgeries on different areas of her body throughout the years and it's like every time she gets surgery to fix something, there's some sort of residual issue that she has to deal with so it doesn't exactly help me get past my fear that surgery would be a waste.

Where are you located? I'm in the Austin area and would be glad to help if you are here. If not, I can help you find someone locally.

I had surgery to clean AC arthritis in 2022. Scraped some bone and removed a bursa (which grows back).

I was one of the rare people that started getting frozen shoulder afterwards and ended up in therapy for 10 months. Still had issues when o stopped but at that point all therapy did was keep me honest.

Full strength today and I only feel it at the limits of my range of motion while under weight, primarily fly type lifts. No issues sleeping on side either outside of normal aging shoulder stuff.

Garrelli 5000 said:

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I had surgery to clean AC arthritis in 2022. Scraped some bone and removed a bursa (which grows back).

I was one of the rare people that started getting frozen shoulder afterwards and ended up in therapy for 10 months. Still had issues when o stopped but at that point all therapy did was keep me honest.

Full strength today and I only feel it at the limits of my range of motion while under weight, primarily fly type lifts. No issues sleeping on side either outside of normal aging shoulder stuff.

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I've had frozen shoulder in both shoulders. Shoulder that ultimately got operated was frozen several years before operation. Have since had other shoulder go through it.

18 months out of action for both. Three years of not being able to do much exercise upper body. Sucked hard.