New Exercies Added Tonight - By Far The Most Painful

Now that surgery is done and I have almost 4 weeks of physical therapy under my belt I can pretty much move my arm with some mobility to the left, right, up and down.  The only place I cannot move it is behind my back.  To give you an example of how far I can move it imagine you are wearing a pair of jeans.  Now picture your belt loops on those jeans.  Looking at the left side of your jeans you probably have one loop in the front, the next one is on the left side then the next one is probably on the back side of your left hip.  That belt loop on the back side of your hip is how far I can reach behind my back...and that is with quite a bit of pain.

Well tonight was the night that that I was introduced to the first exercise / stretch designed to improve my range of motion in that direction and let me tell you it was not fun.  It is a pulley exercise where I grab one pulley with my left arm and place that hand by the "back belt loop" area and grab the other pulley with my right hand in front of me and pull down with that hand.  What this does is cause the left hand to move up and back.  Let me just say that I was able to pull the pulley a couple of inches max.  The pain wasn't as bad as it could have been if I decided to really push it.  I took it easy because I have accidentally moved my arm in that direction before and the pain was excruciating.  That being said it was still a sharp pain with a certain tightness about it.  I did one set of 10 of these and each time I pulled down I would have to hold it for 3 seconds.  This is by far the toughest of all of the exercises I do on my own but not as tough as some of the stretches that Beth has to do to me.

Here is a photo of the exercise