Strained shoulder while serving in tennis - been 2 weeks and still not fully healed?

H

htie09

New User
2 weeks ago I played a bit too much tennis and pulled my shoulder while serving. I don't feel any pain unless I'm specifically doing a service motion. It's like a weird sharp funny-bone feeling, except inside my shoulder. It's in the side/back area (Google images shows in the "teres minor" region). Hurts enough that I cannot serve anywhere close to full speed.

I've taken time off from tennis but still wanted to be active. At the gym I can do all my usual routines: bench press, pushups, cable woodchoppers, running, bicep curl.

But I couldn't do military shoulder press. I got the same painful feeling.

Just today I was able to do military press with only 15lbs in each arm (usually I do 35 each), but still felt worried about overdoing it.

I can fully rotate my arm with no pain now. I can stretch it up high in any direction, no sleep issues either. Just the press and serving seem to aggravate it.

I have a doctor's appointment next week, but does anyone have any ideas what this could be, and how I can help to heal it in the meantime? I'm worried I've done permanent damage.

Thanks!
 
Stop stressing your injured shoulder right away.
See a well qualified Dr and get a firm diagnosis. Sports or orthopaedic specialist.

Research healing times of tissues in general. For example, two weeks is nothing,for injured tendons and probably most other tissues. For undiagnosed injures who knows?

Tendon Injury Nuthouse
https://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/index.php?threads/tendon-injury-nuthouse.442912/

Read especially post #1 on tendinitis (with inflammation) and post #15 on tendinosis with defectively headed tissue that may be permanent. Post #1 says that tendinosis can be present in about 2 weeks after a new injury. Don't stress torn tendons while they are healing.

Physics & leverage -
1) If you curl a dumbbell and the biceps muscle supplies 25 lbs to your hand
2) and the distance from your hand to your elbow pivot is 10X the distance from the elbow pivot to where your biceps tendon attaches to your forearm
3) then the force on the biceps tendon is about 250 lbs - that is all supported by a very small tendon attachment area.

That is for a healthy tendon.

Now suppose that one end of the attachment to the bone has been torn so that forces concentrate there and tend to increase the tear. The forces are transient in tennis strokes and can be high. That pertains to the injured tendon area that is trying to heal.

I tore my rotator cuff at the end of 2016 on a escalator. (Stupidly I even played platform tennis afterward 2-3 times before stopping.) I needed surgery for a minor tear of the supraspinatus tendon - the most common rotator cuff injury. The recovery time for this minor shoulder surgery was 9 months and then begin normal activities slowly. I played no tennis in 2017. Shoulder feels fine now but I have not gotten back to tennis for other reasons.
 
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I strained my back playing tennis back in college. I went 3 weeks before the pain subsided and then I went right back to tennis full speed (I was stir-crazy after 3 weeks) and immediately hurt myself again. I went 3 weeks with pain, then 3 weeks more before playing again. It took 6 months before I was back to full strength and 2 years before I could be active without soreness.

Don't rush it.
 
I had this shoulder problem since December. Thought it was Cymbalta related.

Just 2 days ago, I had 1.5 hours of high quality of massage from indo masseur who is a friend of my wife's and she's very good at deep muscle tissues. She said my back, shoulder, and arm are connected to each other which explained why I had shoulder injury, actually it's not injury, more like very sore but she also said they were clogged and trapped with each other. Today I could feel the muscles between shoulder and back are starting to unclog.

You should try a good masseur, just tell them why you have this shoulder problem. They might fix it for you.
 
Sounds like the rotator cuff which is a complex joint. Could be a pull or a tear. I had a friend with a separation in his RC and he had it looked st six months later and by then it was too late to do anything about it. So he had decreased strength in that shoulder permanently. It would have required surgery to fix it.
 
movdqa said:
Sounds like the rotator cuff which is a complex joint. Could be a pull or a tear. I had a friend with a separation in his RC and he had it looked st six months later and by then it was too late to do anything about it. So he had decreased strength in that shoulder permanently. It would have required surgery to fix it.
Click to expand...
what could have they done if he went earlier to the doc?
 
Sux, see a specialist. If you can get away with a Granny serve for 2-3 months maybe the best. Granny serve you bring racquet up in front and slice ball into court Its an arm serve uses little shoulder or body no good against decent players I've seen state ranked players use it when injured ok But they are fast and aggressive baseliners and playing 1 level below their ability. The crud serve is still hard to dominate . Good luck Tennis is hard sport, redlining it is normal Federers lack of injuries is rare most players regardless of fitness have issues as you can always push harder. TBA the better you get the more injuries from my experience
 
My supraspinatus shoulder tendon tear was diagnosed as a '10 mm' full thickness tear. The Dr said that I could play on it and it would probably get larger. As it gets larger the chances of successful surgery decrease considerably. For a small tear like mine but maybe smaller the stats were 95% successful outcome. 10 mm was on the borderline for the next larger category when the stats for success went down.

I never understood the specific geometry of my tear from the description '10 mm full thickness tear'. I was shown pictures but didn't understand how they applied to my injury. It was diagnosed with an MRI and the surgery confirmed the MRI as far as I know.

Full thickness means to the bone but there may be some tendon on the sides that is not torn. Maybe 10 mm applies to the width? I could not see this 10 mm full thickness tear in the MRI even when the MRI radiologist explained it to me as we were looking at it. The Supraspinatus tendon injury is the most common 'rotator cuff' injury.

image.axd


I believe that partial thickness tears are often treated successfully with physical therapy.

You can picture how using this for tennis is likely to enlarge the tears.

Stats on outcome success of rotator cuff surgery.
http://www.synthasome.com/review-of-effectiveness.php

I have some outcome stats for my procedure vs tear size and will post when I can get them.

There are many threads on shoulder injuries in the Health and Fitness Forum.
 
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If it is a real strain with muscle fibre tears and not just pulled a little it will take about 3-4 weeks to heal. Make sure you really rest. First 3 days try to avoid any movement at all and then very slowly start again. Tennis really should be the last step.
 
more than likey u have a rotator cuff sprain. Same thing as a small tear. Stop all exercises for couple of weeks and let it heal. Dont aggrvate it any more. Ice and stretch ( to maintain full ROM) in the meantime. More than likely thats what the orthopedist is going to tell u besides giving u something for pain.
 
My experience with sprains (ankle, wrist) is 6-8 weeks until full recovery and then another month for mental recovery. It's probably worth a doc having a look.
 
no, rest means rest. the more u aggravate it the longer its gonna take to heal. I see it all the time on the courts, players trying to compensate for an injury. Never turns out good in long run.
 
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