Six months later -- shoulder recovery coming along well

My shoulder surgery was December 19th, almost exactly six months ago.

The last couple of days have seen a number of new milestones for my shoulder recovery.

I wandered into the gymnastics gym at UCLA and couldn't resist playing around a bit in there. I took it slow and careful but I ended up chucking a round-off, laid-out back flip with only a little pain. I've been able to hang on a high bar for a few weeks but I can only swing lightly and even that still hurts. So any swing tricks are still a few weeks away.

Then on Saturday I was playing beach v-ball for the second time this summer and I was able to serve overhand! I haven't been able to do that since before last March, fifteen months ago! The shoulder really didn't hurt at all and since I've been doing so much strength/rehab, it felt pretty strong already. I even got off a half-decent spike during the game and didn't have to totally wuss out like I've been doing since the shoulder injury.

And on Tuesday I was feeling strong enough to add bench press to my shoulder strength regimen. I've heard from a couple sources recently that incline bench is the only one worth doing since it works a broader range of muscles. I haven't benched at all in years since I haven't had a gym membership since I've lived in California. So I was only repping 95 pounds on the incline bench and even that was tough to finish my third set of ten.

Still it was enough to make me pretty sore afterwards, which I was actually really happy about. My regular shoulder strength workout wasn't leaving me sore so I felt like I wasn't accomplishing as much as I could.

Anyway it seems like so far the shoulder is well on its way to recovery. It's still not at 100% but it's already better than it was before the surgery and it's getting better every week. I'm a happy camper.