Coach Thibaudeau, I would like to thank you again for your articles on overhead pressing. My shoulders feel better than they have in years. My problem is overhead pressing is now causing serious elbow pain. Any opinions on what could be causing this and how to avoid it i.e. shorter range of motion(I press from the chest) are greatly appreciated. I don’t want to give up overhead pressing again after finally being able to do it again after several years, thanks to your aricles.
[quote]getbigger66 wrote:
Coach Thibaudeau, I would like to thank you again for your articles on overhead pressing. My shoulders feel better than they have in years. My problem is overhead pressing is now causing serious elbow pain. Any opinions on what could be causing this and how to avoid it i.e. shorter range of motion(I press from the chest) are greatly appreciated. I don’t want to give up overhead pressing again after finally being able to do it again after several years, thanks to your aricles. [/quote]
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Where at the elbow?
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At which point in the range of motion does it hurt
I’m interested in your responses to CTs questions. In the meantime, I’ll mention that pressing has caused me elbow pain for about 10 years and the #1 thing I did to help was to stop all direct tricep work. Skull crushers, kickbacks etc had basically given me tennis elbow. Besides, dips and CG bench are probably better options anyways. If you’re doing trip extensions of any kind, but especially skull crushers, lay off them for a couple weeks and see how you feel…
- Mostly on the inside tendon and the bony end of the elbow.
- It doesn’t hurt so much during the movement, more so in the days following doing it. When it does hurt during, it is around when the bar gets to chin level. Also, I am six foot six with relatively long arms. Don’t know if this makes a difference. The only other time I get the pain is during direct grip work.
I also faced the same problem with my right elbow, it used to pain at the inside bony part after doing shoulder presses and farmers walks also hurt afterwards. What looked strange to me was that only overhead press hurted me and my slight incline bench doesn’t have any effect on it. I didn’t do anything special for it and kept playing with my grip and range of motion and kept pushing until I found a medium where pain wasn’t too distracting.
I kept doing it then BAMMM… my right shoulder started to hurt. Now overhead pressing was very uncomfortable but I still can perform the incline bench. But my favorite exercise Snatch grip high pull was really out of action which really pissed me. Now I really started looking into what was happening to me and found a compromised internal rotation of shoulders.
Next I started working on it with some banded traction work on my shoulders and thoracic mobility and started to feel good immediately. I’m still recovering and not doing Snatch grip high pull but now I can overhead press some significant weight. I have found from this episode that shoulder mobility and scapular control are the things to be taken care of at the earliest, otherwise you’ll be seriously displeased by it biting in your ass.