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Flackahamm

Shoulder dislocation

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I am a level 4 AFF student and was turned away from the DZ Saturday due to my shoulder issue. Approx 20 years ago I damaged my shoulder. (Never went to the dr, so I'm not sure exactly what damage it sustained.) Anyway, I no longer have pain in my left shoulder, however, I do have limited range of motion and it does come out of joint easily. Which brings me to the reason I was turned away. I have a wicked left turn during free fall. I think my shoulder may be coming out of joint in free fall... My instructor wants me to go to the wind tunnel in hopes I can learn to fly my body/ see if the dislocated shoulder is the source of my problems. I begrudgingly agree this is the safest approach... I bought some kinesiology tape in hopes of taping up this shoulder. Anyone have any idea if taping my shoulder will be able to give enough support to get rid of the dislocation/ turn?

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I only popped my shoulder once, but once was enough! I wear a neoprene and velcro brace on every jump... EVS makes some good ones, maybe you should try that before you get cut on.

Airtwardo:"There is a bit of difference between a rigger with a nipper and a guy with 138 jumps and a swiss army knife...usually!"

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Fyi- Tunnel waivers specifically prohibit shouder dislocation sufferers from flying. You should consult a doctor about appropriate levels of stress for a damaged joint and approproate solutions...

My opinion: Everyone has a side or part of their body they lean towards or which is stronger, by default or due to previous injury (I've read some articles on here I believe). I 'leaned' on one ankle when I started flying, but learned to compensate as I learned to fly my body. You will learn how to fly YOUR body as you progress in the sport.

In my experience, building muscle to support a weak or damaged joint helps the most, braces or tape helps as well but be sure you retain flexibility as well.

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Re-habilitation is s slow process.
Returning to skydiving before your shoulder is 100 percent might kill you.

Six years ago, I dis-located a shoulder during an airplane crash. After five months and two rounds of physio-therapy, I was cleared to return to work. I still needed another three months of push-ups, chin-ups, stretching, etc. until my shoulder was strong enough to do tandems. It was most of a year before the pain in my biceps subsided. I did about 300 tandems the year after my dis-location.
When I went to visit a tunnel after that, tunnel staff gave me dirty look even though they knew that I had survived 300 tandems since the crash.

If you have problems with dis-location, find a physio-therapist who will teach you a bunch of strengthening exercises.
Once you think your shoulder is strong enough, go visit a tunnel, but be gentle in the tunnel. during your first few visits. Gradually up the roughness as you gain proficiency in the tunnel.
Wait until you can do hard-core maneuvers in the tunnel and have bounced off the walls a dozen or more times. If there is no more pain or instability, then ask your doctor to write you a script to return to skydiving.

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Maybe you got turned away because instead of listening to your instructor (who probably told you to relax, arch, et cetera) you insisted on blaming your shoulder injury??

Just a thought...
"There is no problem so bad you can't make it worse."
- Chris Hadfield
« Sors le martinet et flagelle toi indigne contrôleuse de gestion. »
- my boss

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20 min in tunnel is way cheaper than several aff level 4.

and know how to put your arm back in to socket before you do the tunnel thing. Tunnel instructors will not help you when you have shoulder dislocation, and sucks and hurts alot when it is out of socket for extended amount of time.

I've seen two dislocation inside the tunnel, both of the student never had prior shoulder dislocation.

Normal box man position will stress your arm socket even more, you'll need to learn how to fly in mentis position.

Skydiving requires two arm, having to flair with one arm is very difficult, but not impossible. Think about all the possible scenario.
Bernie Sanders for President 2016

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Get your shoulder fixed prior to skydiving. Your life depends upon it. I had the same problem with my shoulder. It dislocated once in freefall, and I struggled in getting to my pilot chute. Too many things can go wrong. You need to be in good physical shape to skydive. Its an extreme sport. That's the bottom line.

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good suggestion...

There is also another aspect to this issue.
Wherein someone without any weaknesses or history of problems, can suddenly find themselves FACING a shoulder dislocation... either during a gripped up exit, which tumbles, or a doorjamb biting you on exit, or from any sort of "kamikaze relative work " .. Suddenly you CAN find yourself in freefall, with one arm or another Flapping wildly over your head....
( been there , done That )[:/]
talk about a rude awakening :o:|

So it could be sensible to run that scenario through our heads a few times, JUST IN CASE ...

It helps a lot to know HOW you'd handle that sort of emergency,,, and being IN freefall without the normal use of Both arms...IS an emergency!!!

stay cool. assess what's going on around you.. Where?? are all the others?? with whom you exited?? is the dive building??? where Are YOU in relation to the formation ? Check your altitude.. resist the temptation to Pull Immediately, What if there are Others above you??? what if you CAN'T Get..... to your main PC??/
What if you deploy either of your canopies waaaaay above normal pull altitude. and it's a windy day... Bad enough to be incapacitated, and so you sure don't want to make an off field landing.. while injured.

assess the situation. and accept that it could be best , if it's your main PC arm,,, to go directly to your reserve. Do NOT pull tooo high.... nor Wait for an AAD to activate.
Pull at normal altitude plus maybe 500 feet. AND Wave... with t he good arm, before you DO pull. :o

Figure out Where you ARE relative to the spot,
ANd to the landing area. Concern yourself with accomplishing a SAFE landing, and in the right place...
I had a right shoulder dislocation during a pregripped 6 way, off a CASA.. ( long story :( ) Bang...knew I had a problem, right away [:/]

followed these above guidelines.. and managed to get safely to my ( less than graceful ) landing. A friend who witnessed the reserve opening from the ground, had my freebag IN Hand,,,before I even got below 1,000 feet...;)
Only thing I did wrong,,, was NOT taking Both toggles into my left hand... in order to flare the reserve squarely.... wound up with a left turning touchdown.. BIG reserve 225 Sq ft...B|and did a plf. friends got to me and helped me out of my gear, and Tspoon got me to the local ER.
No fun... but a good learning opportunity..
If that experience can help others here and in the future.. then much more good will have come of it,, than the saving of my butt!!
So think about it....WHAT would you do????: if you're perfectly sound, in your shoulders... BUT something happens during a dive to CREATE a dislocation...
It could be a real saver for you sometime down the road to run that situation through your head BEFORE it happened..
gotta dirt-dive the BAD,,,, as well as the Good ;)
jmy

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Dislocated my right shoulder a bunch of times over several years after an initial injury, I've even dislocated it in the tunnel, a friend provided traction to reduce it in the antechamber and I kept flying. ;)

You should go see an ortho to find out what is wrong and if it warrants surgery. Then you need to look up exercises for shoulder rehabilitation. I had a couple of "that felt funny" moments in free fall which made me go at PT hard, haven't had any issues since. Specifically I have a torn labrum, it can be surgically "fixed" at the cost of light duty for 6 months and reduced range of motion. Because it responded to PT so well I have opted not to get cut on. For now anyway.

Good luck, PT hard B|

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First thing: your shoulder is not dislocating in freefall. If it were you would be in excruciating pain and would have no control over your arm until getting to the ground and having it put back in, something you generally need medical assistance to do.
I will accept that it might be subduing but that's unlikely to be the cause of a turn. Listen to your instructors advice and get some coaching on body position to see if you can fix the issue, plenty of things can cause a turn and it's not necessarily anything to even do with your arm.

Second: don't go buying a bunch of expensive gimmicky tape which you have no idea how to use. If you genuinely think you have a weak shoulder, get it checked out by a medical professional rather than self diagnosing something you have no idea about

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hc92

First thing: your shoulder is not dislocating in freefall. If it were you would be in excruciating pain and would have no control over your arm until getting to the ground and having it put back in, something you generally need medical assistance to do.



This is patently not true, personal experience and x-rays confirming dislocation, and other jumpers I've talked to who have had dislocations in freefall. Not everyone is built the same and it isn't always painful.

hc92

don't go buying a bunch of expensive gimmicky tape which you have no idea how to use. If you genuinely think you have a weak shoulder, get it checked out by a medical professional rather than self diagnosing something you have no idea about



This is true, tape is a gimmick, multiple studies have shown it is basically worthless in almost all situations. #placebo effect

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Anachronist

***First thing: your shoulder is not dislocating in freefall. If it were you would be in excruciating pain and would have no control over your arm until getting to the ground and having it put back in, something you generally need medical assistance to do.



This is patently not true, personal experience and x-rays confirming dislocation, and other jumpers I've talked to who have had dislocations in freefall. Not everyone is built the same and it isn't always painful.

hc92

don't go buying a bunch of expensive gimmicky tape which you have no idea how to use. If you genuinely think you have a weak shoulder, get it checked out by a medical professional rather than self diagnosing something you have no idea about



This is true, tape is a gimmick, multiple studies have shown it is basically worthless in almost all situations. #placebo effect

Mine was not horribly painful when it was ripped out of its socket in FF thanks to some quality flying by a fellow DIZZIE DOT COMer on another friends 500th jump in 2008 at LP. Landing a small canopy1.8 to 1 at LP with a single left hand was kind of "sporty" it went back into its socket while bouncing along the landing.
I tried tunnel time six months later when it started to feel better and felt like it was going to kill me from the pain.

It tends to dislocate at the oddest times like picking up my laptop bag a couple times.. another time while trying to put a 2 U server onto the server lift to install it into a rack in the DC..
The torn rotator cuff and paying the MRI bill out of pocket when my wonderful insurance would not even pay for that (Thank you crap insurance company)at the time of injury. Years of pain later due to not wanting to take the chance of them not paying for surgery it still gets reinjured from time to time.
Now that I got several other medical issues addressed ( Heart issue and abdominal issue from a car accident) with the newer improved insurance... and that whole pre-existing condition thing is supposedly gone now... perhaps I can finally address the shoulder issue and the chronic pain.

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Subluxation is different to true dislocation, a messed up rotator cuff or particularly lax ligaments can mean your arm sorta 'slips' out of the socket but it self relocates pretty easily and doesn't always need intervention however if you have a problem with a lax shoulder some rotator cuff and general stability exercises are a good start.
Also an x ray following a dislocation that has been relocated will show a normal shoulder, there wouldn't be any evidence of the event unless you'd suffered a fracture at the time of injury.
(It may show a bankart lesion after the event but typically they don't show on x-ray immediately after injury)
Speaking as a qualified physio by the way, not meaning to come across as harsh but it does annoy me when people get the terms wrong and go asking advice off strangers on the Internet rather than go to a doctor first

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I am a Doctor of Physical Therapy. Sounds like you need to have an Ortho/sports PT or Orthopaedic doc/surgeon take a look at your shoulder. There a number of issues that can be causing the problem. You need to address the specific cause/s of the problem and not just cover them up to "get by"

Kinesiotape can help some, but will never be a substitute for good strength and control about a joint. The shoulder is a multiplanar joint with 3 degrees of freedom, requiring good stability and control during upper extremity activities to limit injury/degeneration

I got into skydiving while working as a PT aide. A patient who had repeated sublux/dislocations of his shoulder in skydiving/BASE underwent surgery for his shoulder. Following a successful rehab he was back in the air.

Hopefully all you need is a decent shoulder/rotator cuff conditioning program. But if you have had multiple dislocations, they might have caused collateral damage to other structures in the joint, you might be looking at surgery.

Be sure and get 2nd opinion, some surgeons love to cut on you no matter the issue.
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Twin Falls BASE Co.
208-423-8080
www.twinfallsbase.com

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This last August my right shoulder dislocated in free-fall and let me tell you it was no fun especially because it was during a hop-and-pop from 4,500 ft. My arm was in excruciating pain and I couldn't even reach my hacky to deploy. I had to go straight to reserve during terminal. Once my reserve was open I couldn't raise my arm to reach my right toggle. Good thing it was a windy day because flaring was not an option. Once on the ground I couldn't do anything but just stand there in pain and needed help gathering my parachute. Spent the next 10 hours in the ER getting it put back in place.

It's been 6 months now and I'm back in the air regularly. I had to have my hacky moved for a left hand deployment (I'm left handed anyway). I was wearing a neoprene brace for awhile as a little added security. I've avoided surgery so far but I'm sure it's in my future because since then I've avoided relative work in fear that it will get pulled out and most free-falls I've been in preying mantis form.

My point is that's it's still possible to jump with a prior injury, but just know your limits and listen to your body. I'm giving it a year before I let anybody cut into me.

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2 points

1- Did you try grabbing both steering toggles with one hand? Hint: grab the toggles from inboard and pull both of them straight ahead, towards your belly to flare.

2- I can count on one hand the number of left-handed BOCs that I have sewn. The first customer's shoulder was shoot during the war in Viet Nam. The lady was a BASE jumper with too many "exciting" landings.

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I dislocated my shoulder shoulder playing middle linebacker on the JV scrub team. After fracturing my skull in a baseball collision, I decided that I wanted to basejump. After a year of persistent begging, my buddy finally obliged to indulge my deathwish, and guided my accident prone dumbass through a few basic jumps.

But that's all it's been since then. Pretty basic stuff. I'm looking to progress, and the best way seems to be through skydiving. My shoulder has always been a concern. I've re-dislocated it several times just sleeping the wrong way.

Just wanted to say thanks to all who posted here for giving me some hope.

Thanks!

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