[throwforfeds]

I've seen a lot of friends and family members almost immediately get offered surgery for shoulder pain. It's just often the default for people that do surgeries for a living.

I also had a pretty painful shoulder issue at one point, where the pain just wasn't subsiding for months. I tried massages and acupuncture as I didn't want to do surgery, but it wasn't helping at all. The thing that fixed it for me was just really focusing on doing pull-ups. I couldn't do them at all when I started, so I began with dead hangs and scapular pull-ups, eventually progressing to regular pull-ups, and then training with a "grease-the-groove" method once I could get a few per set. I stopped the training schedule once I was getting in around 17 pull-ups per set, and now just do 6 sets of about 7-8 pullups 3x per week spaced throughout the day. I'll also do some shoulder mobility drills [1].

Whenever I get lazy about keeping up with them inevitably discomfort will start arising again, but it goes away once I get back to strengthening.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vP8YmmRMz6I

[ktosobcy]

I had issues with my shoulder for years. Tried PT as well as pull/push-ups but doing that made the pain worse (if I wasn't doing any exercises involving the shoulder it was "fine")…

[alistairSH]

On the flip side, when I had rotator cuff issues, the surgeon recommended months of physiotherapy before resorting to the knife. And it worked. And by weight training regularly with a focus on correct shoulder movement, the pain stays away.

It really seems like if you, as a patient, go looking for a quick fix, that’s what you’ll be offered. And if you educate yourself a bit and then go t for the best fix for you, you usually get they.

[preg_match]

Physical therapy is very often under recommended in the US under the belief that insurance won’t cover it. They might. And, for anyone reading, you don’t even need a referral for the first 30 days in some states. Physical therapy is for more than just hip replacements and car accident trauma. Like regular therapy, a lot of “normal” people can benefit from it. It’s also not just stretching.

[huhtenberg]

What did you have exactly?

With calcifications, physio without the shockwave component definitely doesn't allow going back to the normal gym routine. It's just not enough.