Coming back from a shoulder injury
After three months of physio for a rotator cuff strain, I'm lifting again. This is the 12-week plan I wrote to get strong without ending up back at the physio: starting weights from my own training log, a pain rule decided in advance, and every session set up in Hevy.
In June I strained my rotator cuff. For the next three months my training was physio: resistance bands, light dumbbells, and a lot of patience. By September the shoulder was pain-free in daily life, and I wanted to lift again.
Pain-free in daily life is not the same as ready for a barbell. So instead of picking up my old routine, I wrote a 12-week plan with one goal: get strong again without ending up back at the physio. This is that plan, the rules behind it, and how I set it up so I don’t have to think about it at the gym.
Starting from my own numbers#
I’ve logged every workout in Hevy since 2024, 180 sessions in total. That meant I didn’t have to guess where to start. I took my typical working weights from the months before the injury and started at roughly half:
| Lift | Before the injury | Week 1 |
|---|---|---|
| Lat pulldown | 70 kg | 35 kg |
| Seated cable row | 47.5 kg | 25 kg |
| Romanian deadlift | 60 kg | 40 kg |
| Pressing | 50 kg barbell bench | 10 kg dumbbell floor press |
It feels too easy for the first week or two. That’s the point. Muscle comes back faster than tendons adapt, and the gap between the two is where people get hurt again.
The rules#
Ten minutes of shoulder work before every session. Band external rotations, band pull-aparts, scapular push-ups and side-lying external rotations with a 2.5 kg dumbbell. These are the small muscles that keep the joint in place. They go first, every time, and they stay in the program after the 12 weeks are over.
A pain rule, decided in advance. Discomfort up to 3 out of 10 that’s gone by the next morning: carry on. 4 or 5: keep the same weight next session. Anything sharp, or worse the next day: go back to last week’s weight. Mid-set is the worst time to make a judgement call, so I made it before I started.
Pull at least as much as I push. Every week has more sets of rows and pulldowns than of pressing.
Earn overhead pressing back. Nothing goes overhead for the first seven weeks. Half-kneeling landmine presses come first. Dumbbell overhead pressing returns only after two pain-free weeks of those.
Leave reps in the tank. For the first three weeks every set stops with 3 or 4 reps left, after that 2 or 3. Nothing goes to failure for the whole 12 weeks.
Three phases#
Weeks 1 to 3 rebuild. Light weights, dumbbells, pressing from the floor where the range of motion is limited, and a lot of rowing.
Weeks 4 to 7 build. Barbell squats and deadlifts come back, along with dumbbell bench and the landmine press.
Weeks 8 to 12 are for strength. Barbell bench returns, starting at 40 kg with a pause on the chest, and overhead pressing too if the landmine press has stayed pain-free.
Every session is full body: legs, a push, a pull and abs. There are three of them, A, B and C, and I do them in order on whatever days I can train, with runs or walks on the days in between. A missed day doesn’t break the week. I just do the next session in the rotation. The one exception: if I trained the day before, I only do two sets of that session’s pressing exercise, so the shoulder always gets about 48 hours between full pressing sessions.
Abs, without loading the shoulder#
I also used the reset to change what I’m training for. The goal now includes visible abs, and that comes from two separate things.
The first is training the muscle like any other muscle: 8 to 15 reps with weight that goes up over time. Cable crunches, machine crunches, reverse crunches and Pallof presses, around 9 to 12 hard sets a week. Hanging leg raises and ab wheel rollouts are held back until the last phase, because both put real load through the shoulder.
The second is body fat, and no amount of crunches changes that. That part is food and running: a modest calorie deficit, plenty of protein, and runs or walks on the days I don’t lift. Cardio is legs only for now. The rower and air bike both pull on the shoulder, so they wait.
Putting it all in Hevy#
The whole program lives in Hevy as three folders, one per phase. Each folder has Day A, Day B and Day C, plus a bodyweight routine for days I can’t get to the gym, which only needs a resistance band. Starting weights, rest times, and a note on every exercise with how far to build it are already in each routine.
Hevy’s library didn’t have four of the exercises, the band and dumbbell external rotations, scapular push-ups and band face pulls, so those are custom exercises. Everything else maps to something that already exists.
When I open the app, the next session is ready. There’s nothing to decide at the gym except whether the pain rule says go or hold.
What I’d tell anyone coming back#
Get cleared first. Your physio has seen your shoulder. A plan off the internet, including this one, hasn’t.
Start lighter than feels necessary. You can add weight next week. You can’t take back a flare-up.
Decide your pain rule before you start. In the middle of a set, you’ll always talk yourself into one more rep.
Keep the rehab exercises. They didn’t stop being useful when the pain stopped.
Use your own log. Your past numbers are a better starting point than any percentage chart, and they show you exactly how far you’ve come back.
I’m in week one. I’ll write again at the end of the twelve weeks.
Asnim Ansari is a senior backend engineer at Sensibull (by Zerodha), building real-money trading systems in Rust and Golang.
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