Monday 10 October 2011

Week 6 - Active Movement Allowed

Made it week to 6. It's now Monday, so we're into week 7 and progress is - touch wood - good.

Range of motion is coming on and is now around 85-90%. Getting into extremes of range requires plenty of warm-up and this is a phase I remember from previous recoveries. It takes a few weeks before certain muscles will stretch without being warmed up first.

I'm doing fairly gentle arm raises, not using any weights but I am using a light-weight resistance band. It's not pain free, but it's not as painful as I expected.

Generally the pain is getting easier to manage. The front of the shoulder is the most frequently painful (the tenodesis area) which hurts when I raise my arms out front.

The best news though is the improvements I notice each day. They're small, but this tells me the repairs have probably been successful. The aim is to continue the improvement without overdoing it.

Before the tenodesis, I was concerned that I may lose certain mobility of the shoulder from the change to my biceps arrangement. So far I can see no evidence of this, so lets hope this is the way it'll stay!