Shoulder problems while jumping...

[feramare]

Hi all! I’m new to the forums, but have been perusing threads for a couple weeks now. I thought I’d post and see if anyone had any input!

I’m 19 years old and I began English riding last school year. I rode at my college’s school barn and was jumping low crossrail courses by the end of the school year. I took a year long break due to knee surgeries and recently just got back in the saddle a month ago. I rode stirrupless for three weeks (on a suuuper bouncy 17hh OTTB- fun stuff!), added stirrups back in two weeks ago, and then had my first jump lesson last week. But funnily enough, the problem right now isn’t my knee but my shoulder!

I should start by saying that I have had this shoulder checked out by an orthopedic surgeon and my physical therapist and have had an MRI done. It’s a bit of a mystery as we’re not really quite sure what it is, but it’s either a SLAP tear and/or tendonitis in my rotator cuff. I tried physical therapy, which didn’t help much, and the only thing that really relieved the pain was to not use the shoulder. The shoulder was fine with all the flatwork I had been doing prior to my jump lesson, so I’m a little baffled as to why jumping would cause problems.

I’m lucky enough that my PT is actually a rider herself (she’s done everything-- dressage, H/J, xc, and even glitzy Western-y things). I haven’t seen her since the jump lesson, but I’ll bring it up when I see her tomorrow (I normally see her every week for my knee). Meanwhile, I was wondering if anyone here had any ideas or suggestions?

[Bristol_Bay]

If you search for other shoulder threads (or just look down for the list of related threads), it’s not unusual for a tear not to show up even on a contrast MRI. Sometimes a surgeon just has to go in with the little camera to see what needs to be repaired.

I have been in your shoes. I had to sit and watch other people ride my horse for about six months, but I finally had surgery and now I can ride without causing pain.

Good luck finding the cause.

[canadianbacon]

Jumping uses a different set of muscles and tendons in the arm and puts different stresses on the joint than just flat work. I could do almost everything normally except for lifting my arm up in front of me before I had mine repaired. Lifting the pasta strainer to the top shelf of the pantry one night had me nauseous from the pain it caused, but I could sweep and do laundry just fine.

Bristol is correct, some tears don’t show up on the imaging, mine didn’t. My MRI looked pretty clean with no obvious tears so they sent me off to physio. After about 6 weeks with no improvement my therapist sent me back to the surgeon saying it was definitely a mechanical issue that physio couldn’t fix. Turns out i had 2 tears in one of the rotator cuff tendons once the doc got in there and looked around.

Go back and talk to your therapist, she might want you to try some new exercises or she might send you back to see the doc. Shoulders are tricky and can take a long time to rehab so don’t panic yet but don’t be afraid to ask to go back to the doc either. Good luck!