This started in November of 2007, when I was a freshman in college. I swam for Ramapo College in their newly reformed NCAA Division 3 swim team as one of their main 3 distance swimmers. For about 4 weeks I was put on the shelf due to my left shoulder being inflammmed. It sucked, and I eventually went back to swimming like nothing happened.

Fast forward to late August 2022, and I have an SR350 from Bowtech. I wanted to get maximum performance from it so I switched the mods from comfort to performance. I didn’t test it, shoot it, or anything after I did this, because it was late at night and we were at my moms helping her out. We went home and to the range by our house, where I finally shot the bow. I tried to shoot it, but initially was barely able to pull it back. After some muscling, I got it back and was able to shoot. I noticed a twinge in my left shoulder and it felt a little wierd, nothing too out of the normal, but letting it relax would probably let it heal. I shot 5 arrows that day, and just decided to pack it in, because the bow and myself were not agreeing with each other. I went home and changed the mods back to comfort and decided to shoot a couple weeks later. Shoulder still felt messy but I got myself ready for bow week at the farm and that was that.

During December 2022, I went to Heritage Guild and shot the Bowtech Reckoning Gen 2 bow, and fell in love with it. I shot it a few more times, and bought the bow as a target set up for 3D and indoor. The more I shot, the more my arm started to feel worse. Over the course of January, February, and March, I wound up putting over 1000 arrows through the bow and my shoulder. The pain started to get worse towards the end of March, and it hurt the most when I put load on my hand into my shoulder. I stopped shooting my bow to let my shoulder heal or what I thought would heal, but the pain was so bad at certain points, I had to let my left arm hang off the bed to let it stretch out. My wife was putting CBD cream on my shoulder to see if that would help.

April 15, 2023, I did shoot a bow for the first time in a month because it was the baby’s gender reveal, and I needed to shoot my bow. I made the shot but almost immediately put the bow down.

Sometime after April, I felt a pop in the middle of the night in my shoulder and it felt better, but I noticed I had lost a lot of range of motion after that point.

As time went on, my shoulder just was a dull pain and I eventually saw my primary doctor who got me a referral to a shoulder specialist.

In January of 2024, I went to the Orthopedist and was diagnosed with a frozen shoulder and was told to do rehab for three weeks, as well as given prescription strength ibuprofen and a cortisone shot. The shot helped for like a day, but I’ve been doing stretches and exercises that I learned the last time I had a shoulder injury, and its been recovering well.