A (Not So) Miraculous Story About Shoulder Pain

The wildest thing happened during my baseball career. After thousands of baseball games and countless max effort throwing reps with essentially zero overhead training, I wrecked my shoulder.

By the time I was an NCAA player, I was dependent on NSAIDs and normalized debilitating shoulder pain. As a professional, I couldn’t perform the way I could when I was sixteen years old (SEE: a child). 

The old guard of baseball performance was committed to prohibiting throwers from training overhead. “You don’t want to get hurt in the gym,” was the consciousness in the baseball world. Meanwhile, if you made it through a career with less than two arm surgeries you were unique. 

When I transitioned into non-athlete life, I started training with the barbell overhead. And, shocker… it hurt. Any orthopedist would love to operate on my labrum, but I wasn’t an athlete any more so I figured there was no point. 

Then, this miraculous thing happened… 

I trained my (damaged) shoulder, got strong for the first time in my life overhead, and the pain went away. 

I’m not here to diagnose your pains or prescribe a treatment plan for whatever you’re experiencing. But, I do know this:

Being weak is dangerous. 

And, being strong is the best insurance policy against pain and injury. If you’re afraid of strength training, you can be certain that you’re calling your fear in by having a body that is vulnerable to injury.