02/18/2026
A brand new study published in JAMA Internal Medicine found that 99% of adults over age 40 had rotator cuff abnormalities on MRI.
Let that sink in.
Nearly everyone had “damage”… even without pain.
This means something incredibly important for athletes dealing with shoulder pain that doesn’t have an acute mechanism of injury:
Your MRI findings do NOT automatically explain your pain.
Most structural changes are normal adaptations to loading and aging—not injuries that require stopping training.
Pain is influenced more by:
• Training load
• Recovery
• Strength capacity
• Fatigue
• Stress
NOT just imaging.
This is why blindly chasing MRI findings leads to unnecessary injections, surgeries, and lost training time.
The solution isn’t avoiding training.
The solution is intelligent training.
If shoulder pain is limiting your performance, I can help.
Comment SHOULDER or message me.