This a 9 day after injury update.
So after working on some self PT for the past five or six days, I had my first formal PT appointment yesterday. The PT heard my story, had me move through some range of motion, and essentially put me on a path of addressing my posture and strengthening the surrounding area of my shoulder. Honestly, he didn’t act super worried or concerned!
I have been trying to understand the relationship between stability and strength. The range of motion makes sense to me, but since I’ve never really had a muscular or orthopedic injury, I am having a hard time separating the ideas of stability and strength. The PT described it as thinking about distal vs proximal strength; as the load gets further away from the fulcrum (my shoulder joint), the lever of my arm is less well supported. I commented, “so, basically, I have a wobbly fulcrum” and the PT said, “well not that wobbly, there is a lot of muscle there.” He emphasized that strengthening the rotor cuff was going to be really important for my recovery.
I did electrostimulation, massage, and moved through a range of exercises, most with a stretching band. This youtube video isn’t exactly what I did, but it includes a lot of the same exercises.
My PT homework for the week is postural: shoulder rolls (2x10 reps) and holding my arms out, at full wingspan, against a wall, keeping my shoulder blades against the wall (4x15 seconds). This morning, in addition, I did the stretch band work and it went fine.
Tonight’s goal (and the goal for the next few days) is going to be the bike and treadmill. Its my aim to do easy riding, Taku (and similar) and continue the uphill walking on the treadmill.