Frontal Shoulder Injury and Front Lever?

[Kutay Serova]

I just injured my frontal shoulder (anterior deltoid) in Planche Leans. I was wondering that can I continue Front Lever training while it heals.

The pain is only during the front raising movement under the horizontal. If I start raising my arm to the front, the pain is only around the "planche lean angle" that I was training, above the horizontal isn't affected. It's only in the frontal plane, it moves easily in every other plane.

I have stopped all horizontal pushing exercises for at least a week. My question is can I train Front Lever and (probably not but I'm asking anyway) Handstand without aggravating the injury?

[DiTi]

yes  you can train front lever

[Colin Macdonald]

Don't just jump back to where you were when you're feeling better. If you injure yourself with something like a basic lean, you're probably pushing yourself too hard in some aspect or you're lacking mobility.

 

I don't know at what point you're at with your skill development, but if you're having trouble with planche leans, my instinct tells me you're not ready for ring training.

[Alessandro Mainente]

If you feel pain during the front raise is a problem of the rotator cuff. rotator cuff works to depress the upper arm during the over head movement, if your rotator cuff is not well prepares you can suffer from impingement . The front delt is a clear sign of that problem, usually supraspinatus pathology leads to pain on lateral/front delt (more concerned with impingement) or near the edge between upper urm and distal chest fibers (more concerned with long head biceps tendon inflammation). both are symptoms that you are trying to learn to run before being able to walk.

Stop with overhead movement until the pain is gone.

[Mikael Kristiansen]

Listen to Alex87 here. Pain in the anterior deltoid does often come from some of your rotator cuff muscles or can even be your biceps tendon. Both are attached to the scapula and will be in use in most upper body work. Isolation of muscles is hard to do(and to a certain extent irrelevant) with gymnastic movement because you are moving your body in space and you will need to stabilize from many different angles. Training through pain is never an option. Listen to your body and find out what you can do with no issues at all and stick with that until you recover.

[Richard Hamilton]

Mithrandir, just a little to add to what Alex and Handbalancer said... it does sound like a rotator cuff issue and I've had problems with both of mine. If you're not already doing it I'd highly recommend the Foundation and Handstand 1 courses. I tried all sorts of rehab stuff to deal with my issues such as the exercises in Eric Cressey's article 'Cracking The Rotator Cuff Conundrum' among other things. My shoulders continued to cause me problems. The aforementioned courses have done more for my shoulder mobility/stability than anything else I've ever done, and I'm only on the first couple of exercises! Looks like you've not posted in the F1 & H1 forums so I'd recommend you buy the courses and work through them if you can. By the time I've completed the prep elements I know I'm going to feel confident about moving on without the constant anxiety of getting niggling injuries which to me is as much of a problem as the injury itself. I hope it sorts itself out soon mate