I am in my early forties and I ride a long board that is 22 3/4" wide. I can hardly get the board under my arm. I have been getting a lot of shoulder pain and I am wondering if this is due to paddling such a wide board,
Has any one found a correlation between board width and shoulder pain?
I would love to make my next board with an eye towards reducing shoulder pain.
Marke,
My experience is the pain associated with paddling is in my neck and back lateral muscles. The shoulder pain may be more associated with carrying such a wide board than with paddling. Do you have to walk far to your local break?
Ride on, Tom
Hey marke,
you’ll probably get lots of advice on this one. Your shoulder pain is probably related more to being in your forties than the width of your board. I started to get shoulder pain in my early forties, too. My boards were about 21 inches wide. I thought it was the beginning of the end. I went to a physical therapist, got some exercises to strengthen my shoulders, and have very little shoulder pain. Find a good sports medicine doctor and PT. Mike
My board is 23.5" wide and at times I notice that if you aren’t careful you can develop a poor paddling technique with your arms flailing at your side (sort of like a sea turtle making its way up the beach (could any analogy make me sound more pathetic!)
Marke,
I ride everything from longboards to short boards and developed some shoulder pain as well. I had a stiff neck that ended up being a pinched nerve. A week or so later my shoulder went out.
A physical therapist told me all the paddling had strengthened certain muscles, but not others in my shoulder. Since the shoulder is held in place by the counterballance of alot of different muscles, the stronger muscles combined with weakening from the nerve caused a slight dislocation. He gave me some exercises that really help, as mentioned in a previous post. Also, a doctor told me the only way to heal the pinched nerve was to take advil for a coupla weeks. It reduces the inflammation and lets both the shoulder and nerve heal. Both of these things + yoga really helped me out.
and G-d said, “let there be knee-paddling”…and there was knee-paddling…and it was good.
Guess I am going to try knee paddling more and if that doen’t work I will
have to go to the Doctor. Pretty sure my insurance won’t cover it though.
Wish I could cure my problem by shaping a new board.
If you really wanted some semi educated help, you might mention your wingspan, your height, and whether or not you have waves that allow riding 18.5" wide boards, whether you have the experience to ride such boards.
You might also mention WHERE your pain is occuring in your shoulders, so someone might be able to deduce if it’s possibly related to extreme board width for your wingspan.
For sure, for experienced surfers, a narrower board is easier to paddle, putting more arm in the water, and not needing as much mechanics out of the water.
Marke,I ride everything from longboards to short boards and developed some shoulder pain as well. I had a stiff neck that ended up being a pinched nerve. A week or so later my shoulder went out.
A physical therapist told me all the paddling had strengthened certain muscles, but not others in my shoulder. Since the shoulder is held in place by the counterballance of alot of different muscles, the stronger muscles combined with weakening from the nerve caused a slight dislocation. He gave me some exercises that really help, as mentioned in a previous post. Also, a doctor told me the only way to heal the pinched nerve was to take advil for a coupla weeks. It reduces the inflammation and lets both the shoulder and nerve heal. Both of these things + yoga really helped me out.
This echoes my own experience. Surfing strengthens muscles that change shoulder posture so that the shoulder sits low and forward, naturally, and in this position it is susceptible to impingement.
This means the supraspinatus tendon and subacromial bursa get crushed when you have your elbow out to the side, straight to the side, and your forearm pointing up.
The impingement is difficult to impossible when the shoulder is centered or back and more elevated. Once you have shoulder pain, the question is what to do?
For me it was rest and do not move my elbow from my side, for six weeks. Ice 3-4 times daily for 20-30 minutes. It really took that long to stop hurting continuously.
Then, do shoulder rehab exercises, mainly internal and external rotations. Then my shoulder felt decent. It takes a LONG LONG time to heal, that impingement related shoulder surfing problem.
OK, now my shoulder is ok and I’m painfree, what do I do to prevent this from happening again? I do bent-over reverse flys, and shoulder shrugs, to strengthen the trapezius and rhomboid muscles. These pull the shoulder up and back. And, when I paddle, I focus on keeping my shoulders back so I cannot impinge. Each year it gets better, testament to the very slow processes that operate in the shoulder to heal tissues that are hurt.
I was only in my mid thirties when mine set in, but I was surfing daily at Ocean Beach SF, one of the heaviest-paddling-waves in the world.
There is a ton of info on the web, difficult to assimilate all of it, but the clinical diagnosis is called “swimmer’s shoulder” or simply "“shoulder impingement”
There’s lots of other ways the shoulder can get screwed up, too, but this one is by far the most common among surfers.
hth.
I have a small wingspan 5" 5" and I surf east coast beach break. The narrowest board I have ridden is 20 1/2". The pain seems to move around which is common for tendonitis.
I found some exersises on the internet designed to strengthen my rotator cuff. I think I over did it with the resistance band and I may have made it worse.
I have a small wingspan 5" 5" and I surf east coast beach break. The narrowest board I have ridden is 20 1/2". The pain seems to move around which is common for tendonitis.I found some exersises on the internet designed to strengthen my rotator cuff. I think I over did it with the resistance band and I may have made it worse.
The first rule of rotator cuff rehab. You may do NO strengthening exercises until the pain is 100% gone. Until then limit mobility, mainly keep the elbow down (esp. during sleep), and ice it a LOT, 25 minutes on, and 35 minutes off, and you can do that 4-5 times daily if your schedule allows.
Then, when the pain is gone, do some internal/external rotations, and it willl probably start to hurt again, and you go BACK on the ice until the pain is gone again. And so on…
Even typing this in is bringing back bad memories.
I sure as hell does take a long time to heal. Mine still hurts 6-8 months later, specially when i haven’t done my exercises. Marke, if any of the symptoms match, I would give the icing, anti-inflamitories and exercise a shot as soon as possible.
It took me years until mine fully rebounded. The key (as has been said) is to not try and work through the pain, but rather take loads of asprin to reduce the inflamation, rest, then rehab.
I’ll pass if you’re trolling for shortarm therapy.
If you’re an alligator, maybe the board is too wide for you. Unlikely, I think. Try paddling differently, possibly more efficiently, by raising your elbows and paddling with less arm- forearm only-in the water…in other words don’t dig so deep.
There’s accurate advice in the responses relative to muscle balance, post-sesh icing.
If the problem persists and continuous discomfort occurs after (not during) surfing and seems to emanate from deeper than musculature go see a SPORTS orthopedist. This was the “tell” for me regarding osteo-arthritis in neck/shoulders.
throughout your fourties
The Ow MY SHOULDER CLUB
will welcome you with open but not raised arms.
spending hours with friends
recovering from a youth
of doing the buttterfly
pitching a baseball
throwing a foot ball
pitchin at wickets
there are open seats on the bench
yours is not padded but warm.
there are nutritional alternatives as well
but no denying quality stretches
to redeem over extentions
there is a tendon that can skip a groove
the body workers can pop it back in
but everyone of em doesn’t
they commonly diagnose it
as rotator cuff implications.
dont buy the surgury prematurely
the cartilage mass zone is hard to read in x-rays
the tendon in question
goes out on me every so often
doc x called it bursitus
doc y and z called it rotator cuff
the old man with the bench in his garage said…
oh its this it’s crossed up’lemmie get it straight’
this is gonna hurt ,as he pulled the kink out of the nerve? tendon? as it crossed my forearm
go home and go back to work.
‘dont you want me to rest?’
no it will get better just use it
would you mind if I say a prayer? the old man said…
Go right ahead freddie give me the works,says I
one hand on my shoulder
the other on my forhead
saying prayers all the while
crossing my forehead with an animated thumb
the picture of the sacred heart
on the wall of the well painted carport…
one time I gave him a surfers journal
another time I gave him a 9# pinapple
another time I gave him an aloha shirt.
my shoulder doesn’t hurt now
maybe another abusive session will flare it up.
see you on the bench outside he general store
where the old guys discuss aches and pains
…ambrose…
“Ice is for dead people” I read it in this book http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0743245512/ref=sib_rdr_fc/102-4056798-9458565?%5Fencoding=UTF8&p=S001&j=0#reader-page
and on this website