Hi I am new to 531 and I wanted to do BBB less boring 3 days per week. The problem is i get bad pain from my shoulder impingement doing military pressing. No problem benching though. What would you say is a good substitute for military pressing, incline benching also seems to bother me.
There is no substitute for the military press. Just make this day an upper body assistance day until you can press again.
Can you do DB overhead press with your palms facing in? DBs would NOT be good for the 5/3/1 sets, but you could always do some volume work for them on this day. If you can’t do DB presses, just do whatever shoulder work you can get away with plus plenty of rows, chins, and/or pulldowns.
Like Jim says, train what is trainable.
I had an issue with my shoulder recently.
Joe DeFranco has an article on here called the Shoulder Shocker. I would check that out.
You can always just do 2 bench workouts a week as well. It’s not like benching doesn’t train the shoulder at all.
You may also want to look into why it’s impinged and correct things so it doesn’t happen again. It may be something as simple as a form tweak, or it may be a more involved process to readjust the way the joints all line up. More upper back work is probably needed either way.
so you guys wouldn’t recommend replacing it with close grip bench?
[quote]jimcros wrote:
so you guys wouldn’t recommend replacing it with close grip bench?[/quote]
Why not bench twice a week, and follow that with some close grip as assistance?
Toss in some lateral raises, and back work (lats, face pulls, rear delts, etc) and call it a day my man.
It could very well be a technique issue.
I also had impegement on my shoulders when I was doing my presses with a “wider” grip. Since I switched to a really close grip and learned to get under the bar as soon as the bar passed my head like shown in starting strength my shoulders are feeling great.
Actually the press done this way is one of the few pressing exercises that doesn’t beat my shoulders.
Once again, I recommend any full range barbell movement.