An injury requires a specialized training. Can you help?

[kevinsky18]

13 years ago I broke my left collarbone in a skiing accident. The bone was never set properly (I was told by the doc at the time that it’s next to impossible to properly set a collar bone) anyways it healed improperly. Other than a funny bump there was no ill effects to this healed bone. However, in the past couple of years I have become much more physically active and I have started to have troubles with my left shoulder blade muscle specifically: M. infraspinature, m. teres minor m. teres major (It has been suggested that the abnormality of the collar bone and the connecting muscles might be the first cause of my on going troubles). Three years ago I tore these muscles while doing some rock climbing. They tore fairly easily, I was doing normal moves and nothing extraordinary like a big fall happened. I took 9 months off from climbing then I started to hit the gym. All was going well, I bulked up about 20 lbs in 5 or 6 months. But one day when I was trying to up my weight limit I tore that same shoulder blade muscle again. This time it was really bad, I could hardly sleep at night for the first week. I laid off the weights for about 6 weeks then tried getting back into lifting with some very light weights. But the minute I put on just a touch of weight to get more than a feather feel Bam! My left shoulder tore out again. So then I went off the weights for 6 months, and when I returned again only a small amount of resistance was enough to aggravate my shoulder blade muscles. Now I have waited about 9 additional months and I can tell that I still can’t apply any reasonable amount of resistance to my left shoulder blade muscles. To understand how much this affects my exercise routine you need to realise that these muscles are not used in just back exercises. They are used in bench press, bicep curls, basically almost all exercises involving the back, chest and left arm.

Not wanting to take any more time off from the gym I returned with an altered workout. I basically do heavy lifts with my right side and I do light lifts with higher reps on my left side to fatigue the muscles but not stress them. For example, when working my chest I will do a bench press on the universal gym. Instead of doing a lift of 110lbs using both hands I lift 55lbs with my right hand only. (3sets of 6 reps) Then I switch the weight to 35lbs and do lifts with my left hand, I do many sets to failure usually around 12-15 reps. When my reps drop below 6 reps I reduce the weight and continue on (maybe 7 sets). Basically I am going for total fatigue failure with very light resistance. Thus, I give the left side muscles a bit of a work out without causing the injury to recur. (Funny I seem to be developing relatively evenly with little or no difference between my left side and right side)

I do a similar thing for bicep curls and using dumbbells. At the moment, I am able to work most of my muscle groups. Chest, Arms, Legs, Abs. However, I can’t figure out how to work my back muscles because it seems like all these exercises require a two handed grip.

Now here is where I need some help. I need to come up with some good back exercises that only require a one handed grip. Further, if you have any experience with this kind of injury let me know some of the things you did to recover and prevent further recurrences.

[ebon00]

First - what was the exact nature of the tear injuries? Was it the muscle fascia that was torn or was it the attachments? If it was the attachements you need to get some good supplements to help rebuild the collagenous tissue there.

Second - try to do some rotator cuff work. The muscles you've injured work together with a few others and you need to strengthen the entire group to prevent any further problems.

Third - one-sided back exercises can be found but they're generally the kind that needs a little bit of weight to be of use. Any one-arm row (dumbell or barbell) will work. You can use a regular bent-over row form or you can use bench rows. You can also do dumbbell cleans but that's a coordination nightmare as well. One-arm deadlifts can be done, whether you do them sumo style or suitcase style. And unless the injury is catastrophic you should be able to do regular shrugs but with a relatively light weight (shoot for a hard peak contraction).

[kevinsky18]

Originally Posted by ebon00

First - what was the exact nature of the tear injuries? Was it the muscle fascia that was torn or was it the attachments? If it was the attachements you need to get some good supplements to help rebuild the collagenous tissue there.

It was the attachements. I don't have a clue as to which supplements I should get. Any recommends?

Thanks for the other recommendations. I'll give them all a try.

[ebon00]

Chondrithin (hope I spelled that right). Anyway, look into Twinlab's Joint Fuel. That has a good blend of stuff you need.

[kevinsky18]

Thanks, Ill try and locate these items this weekend

[gettnlnr]

IMO the torn muscles you are mentioning probably had very little to do with the collar bone injury. Rotator cuff injuries are pretty common among the weightlifting world, a lot of different exercises stress these muscles.

Be careful in working with different weights and rep counts, this can cause imbalances. Imbalances can cause other problems down the road. Actually the cause of the torn rotator cuff was probably caused by a musculature imbalance, once again IMO.

What I'd do if I were in your shoes would be to go with rotator cuff exercises and follow up with a basic weight training routine. Consisting of light weights on all upper body movements but working in a high rep range to build muscle endurance. The workout I'd use would consist of barbell bench presses, barbell bent over rows, barbell military press to the front, lat pull downs, and then finishing off with arm movements that feel ok. As you can see that in working with an injury I prefer to use primarily free weights and primarily barbells, IMO this promotes synergy from side to side as well as stabilization muscles.

For finishing exercises I would use laterals (side, front, bent) with light weights, to help build the muscles around the collar bone injury.

I would use a program such as this for probably around 6-8 weeks depending on how much pain I was feeling as time goes on. At this point I would then start adding weight accordingly, and know that progress will be slow.

[kevinsky18]

thanks for the additional feed back. I think you make some good points.