[dpfisher]

A few years ago my car broke and I had to get to work. My only choice was to get out my motorcycle which was parked in front of the car. I moved it to the edge of the garage, held the handlebars straight with one arm and lifted the back end around with the other, severely messing up my shoulder in the process as the bike weighs about 550lbs and I had never lifted then. I wasn't lifting at the time so I didn't pay much attention to how long it took to get fully better.

Just recently I seem to have done something to aggravate it and the pain is pretty intense even if I'm not moving, so obviously any upper-body lifting is out. I'm using this as an opportunity to do some bicycling and get my endurance back up.

My question is this: After the pain goes away how long should I wait before lifting again? I assume right away is a bad choice, but I don't know how long this sort of thing takes. If it feels better in a couple days, should I just wait until next week, or more?

[AM07]

Wait a couple weeks or even a month. Even after a month, it still may not be healed. Do you have health insurance? If so, go to the doctor and get an x-ray or MRI to see if you tore anything.

[dpfisher]

Advice noted, I will give it a while after it gets better. Actually my health insurance ran out 3 days before I injured myself... what are the odds? I've been careful with it for a couple days and it's already down to hurting only when I move it in certain ways instead of all the time, so hopefully it's nothing too bad

[Joshua86]

Once you can go about your daily business without feeling any discomfort, you could try lifting again, starting light and slow for a little while, just to gauge it. The last thing you want to do is to aggravate your injury again.