Just an update. Things haven’t been going so great with my shoulder. My right shoulder is better since I went to bodyweight workouts but my left shoulder, after some improvement, went downhill again and is hurting worse than it ever did. (background–I had a torn rotator cuff in 2020 that surgery repaired–this pain is worse than that) My ortho did an MRI and it turns out my rotator cuff is torn again but this time in a different place (the original surgery site looks good) and almost completely torn through or off the bone, not sure which. It is 80% torn. So I need surgery again. I have completely stopped even body weight strength exercises with my upper body. I have also stopped rebounding since it turns out that the bouncing could make it continue to tear and now I am terrified of completing the tear since that would probably immobilize my arm/shoulder. The surgery has not yet been scheduled since I just saw my ortho last week and we have to wait for insurance approval.
What that means is there will likely be no reviews for a while longer. I also plan to permanently change how I workout. I have not stopped working out. I am still doing mobility and lower body strength work (bodyweight and booty band work), as well as walking workouts for cardio (mostly BurpeeGirl). Once my shoulder is healed and rehabbed I am not sure what I am going to do. No more Caroline Girvan, much as I love her. I believe my desire to lift heavier is what caused this. I tried to increase the weight I was lifting too quickly. I’m probably going to stick with lighter weights. I will probably limit myself to 25-30 pounds max (sticking with 8-20 pounds primarily) and modify any exercise with the potential to mess up my rotator cuffs. I did some research and the exercises I should avoid are shoulder presses with arms in goalpost (a favorite of Caroline Girvan); instead I should do hammer press, no more tricep dips and no more upright rows. I always hated upright rows anyway because they were uncomfortable which should have been a clue!
What does that mean for this blog? I’m not sure. When I am finally able to lift weights again, I plan to revisit workouts already reviewed here–Jessica Smith and Tracy Long, both of whom do great yet safer strength workouts using more moderate weights. But since I always want to change things up, I imagine I’ll be back to reviewing workouts again eventually.
