Hey wondering if anybody could give me some advice with this. Past couple of weeks my shoulders have been aching after some of my workouts, mostly when I clean (when I catch the bar) or after I do some heavy pressing. It isn’t a sharp pain, rather a dull ache which is a bit more eminent in my left shoulder than my right. An example was last week after doing doubles on the flat bench then trying to bent over row and ouch it was a bitch. I do an even amount of pulling with pushing, so I know it isn’t an imbalance with that.
Today after I lifted I did some rotator cuff work and noticed that I felt it more in my left shoulder than my right. Should continuing this work help me or am I just completely missing the picture here. Any comments are greatly appreciated, if any more detail is needed please let me know and I will gladly post it. Thanks again!
I am prone to develop shoulder tenderness myself. The only lift that I actually actively feel it during is benching.
However, if I let it go a bit long, then simply raising my arms (when standing) will generate a twinge as my hands rise above my head. I notice that if I focus on pulling my shoulders back and down, the feeling is not generally there during these arm movements. That’s a big clue.
This leads me to believe that I have some imbalances around the shoulder, as well as a postural component, though I have put in a lot of rowing and pulling.
I don’t know if your issue is similar, but do some searches for the shoulder articles and the posture articles on here. Personally, I need to back off and get in some external rotation work in for a while as well as work to counter any rounding going on. Range of motion on some lifts and choice of lift variants can have an impact also.
Finally, something like FLAMEOUT may help alleviate swelling, if that is part of your pain, but you certainly want to work on the underlying causes too if you can figure them out.
Seeking competent professional help is always a good idea as well.
[quote]MisterAmazing wrote:
Hey wondering if anybody could give me some advice with this. Past couple of weeks my shoulders have been aching after some of my workouts, mostly when I clean (when I catch the bar) or after I do some heavy pressing. It isn’t a sharp pain, rather a dull ache which is a bit more eminent in my left shoulder than my right. An example was last week after doing doubles on the flat bench then trying to bent over row and ouch it was a bitch. I do an even amount of pulling with pushing, so I know it isn’t an imbalance with that.
Today after I lifted I did some rotator cuff work and noticed that I felt it more in my left shoulder than my right. Should continuing this work help me or am I just completely missing the picture here. Any comments are greatly appreciated, if any more detail is needed please let me know and I will gladly post it. Thanks again![/quote]
[quote]vroom wrote:
I am prone to develop shoulder tenderness myself. The only lift that I actually actively feel it during is benching.
However, if I let it go a bit long, then simply raising my arms (when standing) will generate a twinge as my hands rise above my head. I notice that if I focus on pulling my shoulders back and down, the feeling is not generally there during these arm movements. That’s a big clue.
This leads me to believe that I have some imbalances around the shoulder, as well as a postural component, though I have put in a lot of rowing and pulling.
I don’t know if your issue is similar, but do some searches for the shoulder articles and the posture articles on here. Personally, I need to back off and get in some external rotation work in for a while as well as work to counter any rounding going on. Range of motion on some lifts and choice of lift variants can have an impact also.
Finally, something like FLAMEOUT may help alleviate swelling, if that is part of your pain, but you certainly want to work on the underlying causes too if you can figure them out.
Seeking competent professional help is always a good idea as well.[/quote]
The twinge as you raise your hands sounds almost exactly how my shoulder felt after the acute pain in my shoulder left. I think I had an imbalance/overuse injury waiting to happen that was pushed over the edge by a week of O-lifting. I’m almost totally better now after a little over a month. I’ve started benching again, but am sticking to hypertrophy range stuff.
I’ve been doing boatloads of seated rows, external rotations, band pull aparts, behind the neck ban pulldowns and scap push ups.
I think if you throw in some stuff it’ll shape up pretty quickly. I think within the next month I’ll be back 100%.
My shoulders don’t hurt while doing shoulder work – they hurt doing rows and pull-ups. Am I the only one? Shoulder work is what initially aggravates them, but it feels like my arms are about to rip out of the sockets when I do pulling movements.
also, what area of the shoulder is the dull pain in? Front or back?
If its in the back, then I suggest doing some reverse flys either on the pec deck or bent over seated with some light DB’s. I had/have this and that is the program that my doctor told me to give a shot and it has been working wonders.
Thanks to everybody for their input! I don’t do a lot of trap work, I power clean once a week usually for 6x3, no shrugs or anything that compeltely isolates them though I will definitely keep that in mind.
The pain is definitely more on the top/front than the back, although I porbably should be doing reverse flyes more often (most likely lying prone an incline bench or something). I did some rotator cuff work yesterday for the first time in a while and today I can feel it is a bit sore, so I’d bet it was most likely that which needed the work. I spoke with my cousin who is a nurse and she said it was nothing serious and what I was doing was probably a good idea, but that if it kept persisiting after a couple more weeks to see my doctor about it.
I was considering doing more overhead pressing as I have been negelcting it, do you guys think this would help or hinder my recovery given the present scenario?
Tons of warmups. That’s what helped my shoulders. I warm up for every single exercise, and for benching I never add more than 50 lbs to the bar before each set. And I warm up for each exercise, not just a single warm up at the beginning. It takes time, but my shoulder pain has dissapeared.
The warming up more solution has been brought up frequently, I will definitely start to that with every exercise of my training. I do warm up but not nearly as much as I probably should, so I would not be surprised to learn that this is the potential cause of my shoulder pains. Once again, thanks for the suggestions!
I found ending the upper body day with some external rotations (t-search it… i remember them from an article where the writer helps a hockey player get his 225 reps WAY up) worked a miracle. Shoulder pain? What’s that?