I have been strength training for over a year steadily. I have encounter shoulder pain and weakness over the last 6 months. A few time I have had debilitating pain a couple of times. All my symptoms seem to point to TOS being caused at the scalenes.

I get pain in my arm, front and rear deltoid, neck and shoulder blade.It gets really bad about 3am-4am. My hand feels week and tight.

I have narrowed down the trigger. When I do upright rows, I strain and flex my neck at the peak. I am in the middle of an episode now and it has been almost a week. I have a high pain tolerance and this almost brings me to tears.

Being that I have no health insurance. What would be the best over the counter pain med? I use Kratom when it gets too bad, but I don't like the fog or my tolerance.

My wife is a massage therapist. Have any of you found a particular typ of massage to be helpful?

Thanks for any advice in advance.

Have you considered stopping the weightlifting/strength training for good since it seems to bring on symptoms of something? Don't know if it's tos, sorry. But if it is, any weightlifting is probably a very bad idea.

I agree, stopping any offending activities is the first thing.
Have your neck muscles increased in size? could be crowding the area..

Explore our sticky threads at the top of the main tos forum page.

Does your wife know about trigger points, muscle balancing, posture correction...treating muscle spasms...
oh and maybe top rib mobilization..

If you can find a PT or chiro with a low level laser (LLLT) (aka soft or cold laser)..

I had nearly instant relief with LLLT for many kinds of pain, elbow, shoulder, foot, wrist, low back... with chiro.

You might get a better price break with an expert chiro than PT, but doesn't hurt to ask..

If you do have TOS, nothing I have seen in the last 11 years would suggest you can stop the symptoms without stopping or significantly reducing the aggravating activity (weight lifting). The good news is lots of weight lifters who've posted here have gotten better when they stopped lifting. Maybe you could do another sort of core strength type of workout once the pain subsides.

Good luck.