18:55 OF, shoulder pain, etc

Lately, I don't have a chance to get on the bike during the week until Friday or Sat. I think that is too long to go without any saddle time. The legs get stale and one starts to loose the ability to tick the pedals over well.

Last week I'd done a hard high rep/low weight squat workout on Wed Enough to make the muscles tender to the touch. Then hard ride Thurs, followed by road ride with lots of climbing Fri. My legs were toasted. Yesterday I got out onto the Azure for up OF and down beast and up sidewinder.

18:55 up, legs felt better at the bottom, then started to fade. I need a new rear tire, the tread is gone and spinning out too much. Front end still feels wonky. Loosey goosey. Just can't tell if it's the wheel that feels flexy, or the fork. Gotta re-bleed the rear brake too.

My right shoulder is still a mess. Time to get a little more serious about treating it. I think a combination of events and continued use has contributed to inability to heal.

It started after we did a fair amount of shoulder work with push presses and push jerks. The problem wasn't the lifting it is my bony shoulder. My right shoulder has a little bony bump protruding from it: the acromion


On my right side it is big bump. The bar ended up bruising that bone I think. Then the next 3 days I rode on the mountain bike which places a fair amount of wear on the front of the shoulders. Then with all that fatigue in place, I was doing some basic pullups. But, it's amazing how much load is on the shoulders with pullups when you go all the way down and your arms are too close together. When you arms are fully extended and your shoulder is jammed up into your hear, it places a serious stress on the front part of the deltoid. That seemed to really do me in, and since then it just hasn't felt right. Just too much overhead work combined with bruising the tip of that bone. My right shoulder has always had some strength instability compared to my left

I ice it, rest it for a few days, then go and do something like a few days of mountain biking or back to working out. I'll take it easy, but there is no way you can avoid using your shoulder in daily activity or working out. Never realized this till it has issues.

The issue seems centered around the muscle at the front part of the deltoid (anterior deltoid). When I massage deeply and use the massage ball, muscle is knotted. Seems more so on the right side than the left, but the left also has knots.

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But I think there is more going on here than just muscle. The worst pain is when my arms extended overhead and I hold my right wrist with my other hand and the try to move the arm in an arc to my side. This is an adduction motion, and the thing is, that muscle, isn't used in adduction. If I do this isometric motion against a wall, that muscle isn't even flexed.

I've been icing it and doing isometrics and stretching it, and it gets a little better, then I go an aggravate it again. The pain is sharp sometimes and even though it feels like it's coming from the front shoulder muscle, when I press around with my fingers to try and find it, I just can't pinpoint it.

After more googling, I think I found a potential answer: BICEPS TENDONITIS (LONG HEAD OF BICEPS TENDONITIS). Here is another site.

What struck me was this description:

What does biceps tendonitis feel like?

Pain related to biceps tendonitis is usually felt over the front of the shoulder, often with some radiation to, but not usually beyond, the elbow. Typically, the pain is aggravated by overhead activity and is worse at night. People may report a clicking or popping sensation in the affected shoulder

Makes sense that it is this tendon and not just the muscle. When I press around hard with my fingers trying to see if there is some trigger point in the muscle that is I just can't seem to get to it. The pain is radiated from the front of the shoulder but it's deeper. It seems counter intuitive for this to be related to the bicep because I consider it shoulder issue. But when you look at this diagram you can see that the bicep muscle connects into the shoulder joint.


So I think several weeks dedicated to
1) no overhead work
2) limited mountain biking
3) icing
4) isometric and band type strengthening excercises
5) stretches for biceps/shoulders
6) vitamin I or naproxen

5/8

19:10
dually
dry

no riding day before
still don't feel that great on the azure, something isn't right with position or suspension (front and/or rear), maybe it's the legs, last two weeks have been off in general, not working out regularly or riding regularly.

TP massage ball

Here's a video of using the Trigger point therapy massage ball on shoulder. I this alot especially after mountain bike rides. I've been trying to keep my elbows flared out a lot ala moto style and it places a lot of strain on my shoulders, front and rear (external rotators)



You'll see when he puts the ball underneath his shoulders he'll start taking deep breaths. !! believe you me it can take your breath away

The difference that a centimeter makes

I knew something was wrong with my position on the Azure. At first my mind was explaining it away as cummulative fatigue, allergies, etc. But on rides the last two days I just couldn't turn the pedals over and had to just plain get off and walk several times on Old Farm and Beast. Now I am not saying that I'm so good that I don't ever have to walk. Yet for months I've been riding fairly well on those trails, maybe not like years past but definitely decent riding.

My left hamstring had been tender too. Deep in the belly of the muscle. I also noticed that my hip flexors hadn't been a sore as when on the hardtail. It's so obvious that my saddle had shifted on the rails given that this has happened several times before. The saddle has ti rails and this seatpost has a known issue with not being able to hold fore/aft position. When the saddle slides back, it effectively lengthens the saddle height. A telltale sign of a saddle that is too high is sore hamstrings. And for me, diminished capacity for leg turnover and good spin.

I pushed the saddle forward today and rode for a third day in a row on Brush. The result:
18:55 up OF. So that is 1 minute off of yesterday and 1:40 something off the day before. But keep in mind that today is the third day of hard riding and cumulative fatigue. So after 2 hard rides I'm now posting a faster time? I think the time savings would have been much more had I not been tired. Yesterday I climbed the beast and was just shut down several times. Today, it was noticeably different.I'm hurting for certain today. So bad that I took the offer for a ride home from the trail head. One thing though is that being tired, I just physically couldn't blow up like I had a few days ago. With out complete blowups I never did slow way down after a technical section.

It just amazes me the sensitivity to certain elements of position. Sure I can feel if my brake levers are even slightly rotated or if my cleat position has shifted a mm. But the actual affect of the saddle fore/aft on my legs was amazing. This shift for practically shut the legs down.

My body is tired. Especially my upper body. My right shoulder is tweaked a little. I'd messed it up in cross fit doing some shoulder presses where the bar had bruised the top of a little bone on the collar, but now the front muscles of the shoulder are hurting.

I see another crest forming for riding either this upcoming week or two weeks from now. I'm setting a goal to try and get the OF time down to sub 16 from the wood fence to the top.

notes - OF

Azure, dry day, loose
19:45 OF fence to top

had taken a little air out of shock. Grabbed harder gear after spinning up legs. Helped bring heartrate down.

Think saddle has slide too far back. Hamstring hurts, deep in the muscle. Hard time spinning legs like I remember and compared to hardtail,