Part 4: Physiotherapy

Everyone i had talked to about my surgery warned me about physiotherapy. They said it would hurt like hell. It turns out they were absolutely right. The thing about physio is, it is a controlled aggression approach that you must take if you want to get anywhere. If you are passive and don't work your pec/shoulder, you wont get anywhere. However if you go too hard, stretch it too much, and try to start using the pec right in the seventh week, you will find yourself right back in surgery. There was no way in hell i was starting over.

I have read many horror stories about physio where the therapist knows nothing about pec tears and ends up hurting the patient. With this in mind, i made sure to tell my therapist to be careful and take it slowly. Luckily, he had a pec tear protocol ready that moved at a good pace. I started going three times a week, and the routine was always the same. I would start with heat to my shoulder and pec. I would then have my therapist stretch the arm by pulling it back until the point where it hurt. As soon as it hurt he would stop, and would repeat this maybe 20 times. Next i would have cables that i would pull up and down just using the weight of my arms to help stretch the shoulder further. Next i would do wall climbs. After all this was done, i would receive direct ice to my shoulder and pec. This all took around 45 minutes. Here's a good video of the physiotherapy involved with pec tears:

For anyone reading this with a pec tear or shoulder injury, if you are wondering if there are times where you think you may have re injured the pec in some way because it is sore, there are. There were probably 5 or  6 times where i was very worried that i had done something wrong. I soon noticed that this is all part of recovery and that my pec was fine a few days later.

I continued the stretching up until about week 12 when i started doing light weighted movements. They were basically for my shoulder, not my pec, to start undoing the atrophy that had taken place. During weeks 6-12 i went from about 20% ROM to 80% ROM. After starting the weighted shoulder exercises i moved to light pec exercises with cables and medicine balls at week 16. Between weeks 12 and 16 i went from 80% ROM to 95% ROM. I soon realised that i was just about finished with physiotherapy.

I continued this until about month 5 when i stopped going. I had purchased Bodylastics (http://www.bodylastics.com) and decided i would continue with my own rehab.