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,...

Here’s the setting. Masters competition, clean and jerk with a  toe to bar ladder (sound familiar), 50 year old male lifts a barbell for a clean and jerk and feels a searing rip in his arm and has to drop the bar. He cannot lift his arm away from his side and is in agony, maybe had a little “bursitis in past” but nothing bad enough to stop him. Second scenario is 40ish year old 930 class filled with bunch of overachievers and...

I want to update biceps tenodesis as the treatment of some conditions has evolved over time. Studies show that this procedure is a very reliable procedure for people with SLAP (superior labral anterior-posterior) tears, biceps labral complex tears, or even biceps tendonitis that has not improved with conservative measures. People who have pain in the front of the shoulder over the biceps tendon radiating down the arm to the muscle belly are...

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...

The biceps is a great muscle with some intricacies that has provided decades of confusion for orthopedic surgeons. We finally think we have figured it out, but then again that’s what they said about VHS videotapes. First the anatomy of the biceps muscle. It is made up of two tendons that attach to the scapula in two different places. The short head of the biceps starts at the part of the scapula called the coracoid. This is a pressure point and...