Bicep Pain During Squat and Benching

Bigger Stronger Leaner Injuries and Rehab
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Hi, please advise from some of the more experienced lifters. I’ve been doing heavier banded squats and bench, and I’ve been getting distracting bicep pain that’s made me miss a couple lifts. On the bench, I typically start to feel it on my decent on the way down, in the middle of my elbow joint, but the pain mostly goes away on the press up. When working up in weight, it seems to get worse; wrapping the elbow joint seems to alleviate it a bit, but it’s still a distracting pain. When squatting with a straight bar, banded, I feel pain when torquing down on the bar into my straps and when trying to tighten up my upper back. Once I start my decent, it seems to reduce a bit, but whenever I’m trying to crank the bar down into my traps, it comes back again. It’s only on the right side.

When doing isolated preacher curls, I feel no bicep pain, but I have felt pain during hammer curls.

Any suggested way to rehab this? I have dropped and reduced all bicep work, limited to back and pulling movements, and have started to use straps to keep both hands supine when deadlifting.

Thank you for your time and advice.

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Anyone? Please help?

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Hey Carlos, I had bicep tendonitis from compression in the shoulder joint which caused pain in my shoulders while squatting. If you can dig into your pec where it meets the shoulder and it’s tender (and not so much on the good side), this could be your issue. At no point did I ever have pain while doing actual biceps exercises but it started to impact first my incline benching, then overhead press, and finally bench press. I went to the orthopedist for fear of a rotator cuff injury but a cortisone shot reduced the inflammation and I was back in business.

Like an idiot I did not do the physical therapy prescribed which may have improved the cause of the compression. Shot wore off, inflammation came back, and I eventually underwent an acromioplasty and bicep tenodesis surgery. I’m back to about 90-95% after 6 months post surgery now but I wish I would’ve done a better job trying to improve the space in the joint w/range of motion exercises prescribed. Hope that helps.

1 Like
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Hey man, which exercises did they recommend to improve space in the shoulder joint?