shoulder rehab advice

[FitForLife]

Hi everyone,

It's my first time posting here. I'm a male in my mid-40s and have been weight training for more than 20 years. Throughout much of that time I have had pain in my shoulders, mainly in the front of my shoulders, and mainly from working my chest. I've been able to minimise this pain by changing the exercises I do and using lighter weights.

Recently however I have also started getting pain in the rear of my right shoulder, mainly when working my back or shoulders. The other week I had to stop in the middle of doing shoulder press as I was getting a very sharp pain in my rear right shoulder. (I can also get a milder pain sometimes when holding the bar doing squats. My right rear shoulder becomes really tight all of a sudden and I have to stop.)

One thing that I have noticed is that I have limited external rotation in my right shoulder: Suppose I stand with my back against a wall, my upper arms also against the wall and parallel to the floor, and my forearms bent at a 90 degree angle. If I now try to externally rotate my arms so that my forearms also touch the wall, it's harder to do with my right arm and near the end position the rear of my right shoulder hurts.

My right side also has reduced external rotator strength: If I lie on my side and do the standard rotator cuff strengthening exercise, my right arm becomes fatigued more quickly than my left.

Currently I am doing Kit's long stick external rotation stretch which feels pretty good and may be helping.

Other things I have tried include
- the two standard external rotator cuff exercises
- face pulls
- various band exercises
- pec stretches against a wall

All of these cause pain in the front of my shoulders, either fairly immediately, or later in the day. (I tried all these before I started getting rear shoulder pain and hence I don't know if doing them now would also cause rear shoulder pain.)

In addition, any stretch that involves placing my arms across my body tends to lead to front shoulder pain.

In the past I've also used a ball to massage the rear of my shoulders, my shoulder blades, and also my chest. I am not really sure if that was helping or not.

I'd really like to improve my shoulders. Any suggestions on how to proceed would be greatly appreciated.