How long am I out?

[JazMerkin]

I suffered a freak shoulder injury in sparring yesterday. As I parried a shot away I felt an extreme pain in my shoulder. I finished the round, but my shoulder felt in constant pain. Put some deep heat on & went hospital & they told me I'd sprained my acromioclavicular joint & gave me an injection & told me I'll need to go on physiotherapy.

However, I forgot to ask how long I'll be out, so I thought I'd ask if anyone here has any experience of this & knows how long it will take before I can get back in the gym?

[1##]

you should go back to the doctors/hospital because if some1 on here says "8 weeks" and you go back after 8 weeks and do you it in again,you cant come back and say"this guy or that guy says 8 weeks n id be sound"but if a doctor says 8 weeks and then u do it again you can go back and blame the doctor
(btw im not saying it will be sound in 8 weeks im just using that as an example)

[JazMerkin]

Yeah, waiting in the hospital will be awhile, I'm going to see a physiotherapist in a week so I can blame him if he's wrong, but I just wanted to have a rough kind of estimate now for how long I'll be out of training.

[1##]

yea yea i no what you mean id want to no the same how long am i going to be out for?? whats the quickest i can get back can i still train?? i asked those questions when i nearly broke my ankle but my ankle is f**ked till this day its been 4 years i hope you shoulder heals quicker and better than my ankle

[AdamGB]

Sounds similar to an injury I had a while back, obviously I can't see you and take a look at you so if your physio tells you any different to this then ignore all of it!

The likelyhood is that you've damaged the tissues around the joint... probably caused from having an imbalance between your anterior delts/pecs (too strong) and rotator cuff muscles (weak in relation and probably not being recruited properly). This is going to course an instability in the joint, during the injury this will have put the shoulder out of place and damaged toe surrounding tissues... you have a space in the joint called the subacromial space, a muscle runs through this called your supraspinatus, it probably got nipped between your clavicle and one or more of the bones that make up the joint (shoulder impingement).

to test if it's badly impinged simply put your hands by your side and then take them up to your head.



ideally they should both have no problem going through a complete range of motion to your head but the injured shoulder will probably start to nip/be unable to move before you reach 180 degrees)

It shouldn't take too long to sort this if your physio is good and you take care of it. When it's impinged the muscle will swell, if it swells it's more likely to get impinged and get inflamed again (it ends up going in a circle!! so initially avoid doing anything over head or that you feel is nipping the muscles (even having my shoulder elevated on the phone would impinge slightly and start to ache after a minute or two... so i used the other arm!!). at the same time though don't immobilize the joint, do light shoulder shrugs for a start throughout the day to stop the scar tissue forming in clumps (your physio should give you some better exercises than that though!!) and keep blood in the area to get rid of the dead tissue/waste products and swelling.

The problem with boxing is that from bunching so much we tend to overdevelop our anterior delts and pecs in relation to our opposing upper back muscles, this pulls our shoulder girdle slightly forwards into a bad position ('Kyphosis').

Once your physio has sorted you out I'd definitely add some medial shoulder rotation and seated row into your routine to try and make it a bit more balanced.

Your physio will be able to guess what stage of recovery you're at, right now you are definetly in the acute stage... and will be for 2-3 days, then subacute for up to 21 and remodeling for an indefinite ammount of time... it's definetly possible you could be well on the way to recovery in 8-10 weeks if you have the injury I think and during this time you won't be 100% out of training, just make sure you listen to your physio... even if it gets frustrating not being able to train like normal - it will pay in the long run.

it won't heal properly just by waiting, it's going to have to be exercised and manipulated back into full function

[jamiebhoy]

Great post by Adam, I had the same type of injuries years ago and went to hospital and got a cortisone shot in the shoulder right in the AC joint. I had a real bad imbalance between my front delts/pecs and rear delts which has caused some problems over the years until I put the effort in for the small muscles and got away from the showy muscle work !!.

Another point worth noting is that if you are also doing weights the problem can come from bicep work as the tendon runs up through the front of the shoulder at the AC joint. That was partly my problem through bad form when lifting.

A good physio can give you some great stuff to work on which you can even do sitting at a desk which is great for anyone stuck in an office.