It's been 6 months since I subluxated my shoulder in boxing. I've been hitting the gym regularly and strength is up in everything except the bench which is around the same # as before my injury. I feel totally fine and have been cleared by the doctor and PT a long time ago. My current (p)rehab concists basically of doing a lot of rubber band work and external rotations in addition to my normal lifting routine. And some TGU's (turkish get ups), but my roof is too low so it's just every now and them at the gym. I'm wondering about a couple of things though: has anyone returned to boxing or MMA after dislocating/subluxating their shoulders? What kind of other joint strengthening excercises can I do to make my shoulders take more impact? I'm 200 pounds now but my joints are probably not that much stronger than they were when I was 170.
Did you have surgery for it? I just had surgery to repair a labrum tear in my shoulder and my surgeon tells me that I will be back to boxing 14 weeks after the surgery with no restrictions. I alos had a previous surgery in the past to repair the same labrum and also the rotator cuff. Going from memory I'd say that I returned to boxing after 20 weeks or so. My first surgery lasted 5 years before I had problems again and I trained very hard. I was told that I had problems again do to the shoulder being loose.. Anyway, I'm not sure how similar my experiance is to yours but it seems as though 6 months is more than enough time to get back to full activity. I think the only thing you can do to try to prevent it from happening again is to never stop doing rotator cuff exercises. Do external and internal rotation exercises evey week. Also, be alert to overtraining and do your best to avoid it, especially when it involves the shoulders. Here's a link that I got from a post by Entropy...it's got some great exercises here. http://www.powerandbulk.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/shouderbattery.pdf Good luck
