I have two soft tissue tears in both of my shoulders - a torn supraspinatus tendon and possible labral tear. I have been doing exercises prescribed by my PT, but think some of the exercises may be hurting more than helping, or that what helps with one tear is damaging the other worse. The pain I feel the most is when I try to exercise my external rotators with a theraband - I can do the internal rotation exercises without any pain, but when I try to exercise the external, it's quite painful. This hasn't seemed to improve over several months, it's as painful now as it was then. If I feel pain, should I stop immediately? My concern is that if I don't exercise them they will get weak and that's bad, too. What type of tear is responsible for this pain? Is there anything I should or shouldn't do or anything that will help? I'm also not a fan of the pendulum exercise which I do with a 3lb ball, it just doesn't feel right at all, the shoulder definitely feels unstable. Also, does anyone know of a good sleep position you can get into if both of your shoulders have rotator cuff problems? I have yet to find one, though I suspect sleeping position makes it all worse. Thanks.

Also, you mention that you have a complete tear, not the partial that seemed to appear on the MRI. What did your complete tear feel like? Were you limited in range of motion or was there some way you could personally tell the difference between the feeling of partial versus complete tear? I would imagine you'd be somehow restricted if you had a complete tear...

Just jumping in - there is no way to know for sure whether the tear is full or partial without actually seeing it live and in person. I don't know how a partial feels, but a full traumatic one is extremely painful and restrictive. The most I could do for forward flexion was 80 - ha, after 4 surgeries, it is now a whopping 90.