RICK NEWCOMBE’S STORY: STRUGGLE AND SUCCESS IN OVERCOMING SHOULDER PAIN. “A MIRACLE THAT CHANGED MY LIFE”
After years of lifting weights, you can expect shoulder pain. It goes with the territory.
I say this as a 62-year-old man who has been lifting weights his entire life -- and as one who has seen countless others in the gym either quit working out altogether or succumb to shoulder surgery. Just last year, there was a famous photo on the Internet showing Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone sharing a hospital room during their recoveries from the shoulder surgeries they had undergone.
Mr. Olympia Frank Zane writes about having shoulder replacement surgery. Mr. Universe Dave Draper tells of his commitment to training after his shoulder surgery. There are countless others.
For many years, I worked out at World Gym in Santa Monica, California, and saw all of these bodybuilders and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of other bodybuilders and weight lifters come and go. I can't tell you the number of times people told me that they would have to take a layoff for a while because they were going to have shoulder surgery.
"My doctor says I have bone on bone" was the usual way of phrasing the problem at the gym. I had heard and read about many different theories for the cause of this problem. The most common explanation was worn-out cartilage. Another theory was that weight lifters created an unhealthy imbalance because they developed muscles that were much stronger than their ligaments and tendons.
My first encounter with shoulder pain occurred when I was 50. It was my right shoulder, and the pain was very severe, forcing me to use light weights. I did a ton of high-rep shoulder exercises using 2- and 3-pound dumbbells. The pain finally subsided after three months.
Then, five years later, the pain came back with a vengeance. Wow, did that hurt! I could not lift a bar off a bench for bench presses because it felt as if someone were driving a nail through my right shoulder. I dealt with it by doing sets of 50 and 100 reps of extremely light-weighted, or freehand, physical therapy movements. I could still work my legs, abs and back, but that's it. No shoulders, chest or arms, because my right shoulder was in some way involved with every exercise. I should mention also that I tried alternative treatments, such as acupuncture and Chinese medicine, but to no avail. I found the best treatment was time and rest, and a year and a half later, I was finally able to resume my normal workout routine.
But it wasn't quite normal, because I was secretly dreading another injury to that same shoulder. Consequently, I would not work so hard as I did before. And then it came, one month before my 60th birthday. I was climbing into the driver's seat of my car, holding a heavy briefcase horizontally in my right hand. As I sat down and simultaneously laid the briefcase flat on the passenger-side seat, I heard something go "POP!"
Oh, no! There goes my shoulder again! I couldn't believe it. Three times in ten years! I thought I would never get back to my workouts again. I felt all washed up. For years my disciplined workouts had made me feel young for my age, and now suddenly I felt like an old man because I could hardly raise my right arm.
I saw an orthopedic surgeon, who said, after a series of tests, that I had a rotator cuff tear and was a candidate for shoulder surgery. I would get cortisone shots and feel relief for a few days, and then the pain would return. I babied my right shoulder because it hurt so much, and I was living in a state of constant fear of damaging it more. I had won a contest in high school for doing 75 pushups in one minute, and now I could not do a single pushup. I could not even do one on my knees; that's how bad my shoulder pain was.
During this time, I started reading everything I could find on the subject of shoulder injuries. I read dozens of books and hundreds of articles, and then, at some point with all this reading, I discovered an earlier edition of the book you have in your hands, and my life was changed.
What I loved about Dr. Kirsch's approach was that he was saying it was up to me to heal my shoulder -- not some passive solution like lying unconscious on a hospital bed while a surgeon chipped away at my shoulder bone to create more room. Dr. Kirsch said that, by regular hanging, I could create the room between bones myself.
Initially, I found it difficult to hang with full body weight for more than 10 seconds. So I would stand on a stool or bench, grab the bar and hang with as much body weight as possible, but always using my feet on the bench underneath to take a little pressure off. I would do hanging exercises for between 15 and 20 minutes per day, with each hang followed by the dumbbell exercises recommended in the book. I used very light dumbbells for those because I regarded them as flexibility movements rather than strength training exercises. In fact, I often used Indian clubs rather than dumbbells for those exercises.
At some point, 10 seconds became 20 and then eventually 30, which meant that I could hang from a bar comfortably for 30 seconds.
I corresponded almost immediately with Dr. Kirsch. He asked to see my X-rays, which I sent. He then wrote out detailed instructions for the medical imaging lab to take CT scans of every nook and cranny of my shoulder. After he had studied the results, he said that my subacromial arch was curved more than was natural ("hooked" is the word he used) and at times was touching the rotator cuff -- creating that "bone on bone" sensation that the weight lifters at the gym experienced. No doubt this was the same source of the problem for many other athletes as well, such as swimmers and tennis players, where their CA arch gets bent down over the years and touches the rotator cuff, creating an impingement that feels like a pinched nerve.
Dr. Kirsch's advice was to keep hanging. He also encouraged me to talk to some of his patients, which was telling. It was amazing how they all got rid of their shoulder pain by hanging. But what struck me was how they succeeded in a relatively short period of time, with much less hanging than I was doing.
Initially, Dr. Kirsch could not explain this, and he said he was frustrated because I was doing so much hanging and the impingement was still there.
Then one night, just before going to bed, an idea flashed into his head, and he raced to his computer and sent me an email in red type, saying: "You have been a heavy weight lifter for all these years and your skeletal structures are massive in comparison with folks who seldom lift more than groceries. Your X-ray studies confirm this: You have strong, solid, hard bone, and your CA arch is certain to be very rigid. So there it is: the answer! And it ... will ... simply ... take ... more ... TIME for gravity to bend your CA arch and for Wolff's law to act. You are doing it right, doing a lot of hanging from your bar."
Well, that is what I did, and now, one year later, I hang at least six days a week for a minimum of 30 seconds, for three sets, with each set super-setted with one of the three dumbbell exercises, doing 30 reps in each of those sets. Sometimes I will hang for a full minute, just to test myself. When I hang with full body weight, with my feet several inches off the ground, I visualize my CA arch straightening out. I weigh 195 pounds with 15 percent body fat, which means there is a lot of weight pulling my very dense CA arch a little higher, which is creating space between my CA arch and my rotator cuff.
There are other benefits from hanging, as well, such as improved posture, better balance and relief of pressure on the lower back. I don't mind the calluses on my hands, but if you do, you can always wear weight lifting gloves. I have noticed that my body actually gets taller during a hang, where if I start with my feet three inches off the ground, by the end of 30 seconds my shoes are practically standing flat while I hang. I am not saying that hanging will make you taller, but I suspect it will help in slowing down the natural shrinking that comes with old age.
This treatment has been life-changing because I feel young again. After one year of daily hanging, I have total flexibility with both shoulders, and I can do windmills, jumping jacks, yoga, archery, throw a football, swing a baseball bat, play tennis and golf, swim — you name it. And of course, I am working out with weights harder than ever, knowing that my shoulder has been remodeled and will never again be injured because of my daily hanging. Talk about a miracle!”
