when i first blew out my shoulder back in 1986 getting thumped off the bottom in Nags Head North Carolina i was told it'd never be the same. i didn't believe it, but it turned out to be true. the rotator cuff is tricky and more complex than say a knee injury,...though they're no fun either. i've had both. anyway, during law school in 1990 i first heard about connective tissue supplements glucosamine and chondroitin sulfate and superoxide dismutase in the form of SOD wheat sprounts. the combination worked really well for the first 5 or 6 years and this is where you should initially seek relief. my shoulder injury was already 4 years old, the knee injury was older from a pole vaulting mishap in highschool. it worked better on the shoulder.
by 1998 or so each surf session was getting less and less fun and my ability to paddle into a wave, particularly steep ones was getting more and more difficult. by '99 i pretty much gave up surfing unless it was just too good to not go out...then residual pain for about 5 days afterward was taking the fun out of just even a short 60 minute session. it got to a point by 2001 i could hardly swing a golf club anymore due to no grip strength in that left hand, that and at 3/4 through my backswing the lead shoulder would "clunk" as it popped slightly out of place and completely fleshin' my swing plane. when surfing to duck-dive i'd have to hug the board with the bad arm and actually got pretty good at it, but it sucked having to resort to that. at 43 i thought i was DONE, thinking about what my deceased father had told me "once you hit 40, its all down hill".
fortunately i'd stumbled into electromedicine back when the net was brand new and had built a few Rife devices and a microcurrent stimulation devices (probably Jaffa is the only guy here that know's what the hell i'm talking about but you can research it on your own). anyways, the g.d. dr.'s killed my old man with a drug cocktail of statins and blood thinners, all due to an irregular heat beat (he'd had all his life), he developed fast progressing alzheimer's (statins leach good cholesterol out of the brain) and then parkinson's. he kept complaining to the heart specialist at Columbia univ medical in NYC about the pain in his joints that he experienced nearly immediately (now widely known statin side effect) and after them diagnosing him with spinal stenosis (which was utter bull) the most important muscle in his body (his heart) failed. that's not the end of it, but was enough to piss me off bad enough (anger's a helluva motivator) that i shelved the law degree and got to work researching.
anyways, to make a long story a little shorter, i discovered the PEMF (pulsed electromagnetic field) device i came up with had a distinct sleep inducing (relaxing) effect and so just screwing around with it when it was new i decided i'd see what happened if i used it all night as my sleep was fitful due to the ringing pain in my shoulder. well with no intention whatsoever but sleeping deeper, i woke up on day 3 and the ringing pain running down the inside of my elbow into the left hand was gone. i'm thinking wow, that's pretty cool. and by week three i'm feeling so good i want to go to the gym because i'd not gone in months. i grab the light dumbells to warm up the bad shoulder and i'm like i don't need this... i go to my starting set and find that i'm banging out 20% more reps than i had 4 months before at same resistance levels. that was 2002. i'm 56 now, still surfing a short board,...sessions as long when time permits as when i was 25 pre-injury. no pain the day after. all the sports injuries from high school (knee mostly, ankle, hip from same pole vaulting mishap) resolved. no more joint formula, replaced by organic sulfur that is pretty cheap and readily available on the net (this is not MSM!!).
oh, your breath under load will go a lot further. good for you guys pushing it in big surf. this U.S. swim team member in 2006 came to me after he'd slid from #1 & #3 in the world to 16th and off the charts in the 50 and 100m events. he increased his static breath hold 19% to just over 3 minutes and his underwater swim from 50M to 75M after about 6 weeks. in other words under load the oxygen metabolism is improved more than at rest. in 2007 he added the 200M and went undefeated in all three distances during the FiNA world cup against the best in the world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_FINA_ ... Backstroke i hope you've found this enlightening. good luck with your rehab. at the very least do the organic sulfur and stretching. cheers.
). 
