Calcific tendinitis is a very common condition for shoulder pain. The pain can be sudden and dramatic, often debilitating. People usually experience severe pain in the front or down the side of the shoulder. Patients have trouble lifting their arm up and finding a comfortable position. There is usually no history of trauma and a cause for the calcium deposit is usually never found. There are some associated conditions in the literature but the...

This post will focus on frozen shoulders as in frozen not moving, not frozen as in cold outside.  The most common story is that someone will notice, they can no longer reach above their head, behind their back, or off to their side without severe amount of pain. They have trouble in the shower, drying off, putting on underarm deodorant, and getting dressed. They have trouble at the box pressing or jerking overhead. The basic problem is loss of...

The rotator cuff is made up of 4 muscles that attach to the ball of the ball and socket joint known as the shoulder. There is a space between the rotator cuff and the bone that lies directly above it. On top of the muscle is a bursa that allows the muscles to glide against the bone easily. When the bursa becomes inflamed it is called bursitis. Here is the shoulder with its 4 muscles. When you lift your arm overhead, there is a tendency for the...

Who gets pec tears? Looking at the numbers, men are much more likely to get pec tears because of the bulk of the muscle and the stiffness associated with muscular hypertrophy in this region. The decreased flexibility can then result in tearing of the muscle or tendon. Just as in most tendon tears people are between age 30 to 50. The most common mechanism is a heavy bench press where the tendon is stretched as the bar comes down to the chest....

Our last post talked about anterior instability of the shoulder especially with dislocations or subluxation events.  I have seen this with overhead squats or snatches. What if someone is loose or unstable in different directions? What are the symptoms that can occur and how does this happen? If someone has loose ligaments then they may have something called multidirectional instability.  Typically this can occur in females from 20 to 50 years...

Has anyone told you that you are UNSTABLE?  An unstable shoulder can be very dramatic or more often a silent issue that rears its ugly head only in certain situations or movements. Who would have thought that your shoulder could give way on you? What does giving way mean?  People will describe looseness, laxity, a weak feeling, instability, that their shoulder is not in the right place. Normally a shoulder provides stability with ligaments,...