Possible Pec Strain/Tear

Bigger Stronger Leaner Injuries and Rehab
1

Hey so I thought I’d start with a timeline of how this injury happened

  1. Had been pause benching about 2 times p/w. Had my form observed by my friend who is a competitive powerlifter who assured me I was benching correctly. As I did my warmup sets I always warmed up my rotator cuffs between sets. Anyway I was having nothing more than something I would call a ‘tight feeling’ in my chest (mainly right pec) so I thought It would be a good time to deload as I had recently set PRs in my main lifts

  2. Deload day, on my push workout I did a few sets. I went for sets of 50%,60%,70%, 80% 1RM but literally only did about 3 reps when I could have done 10-12 at the 80% set and on the other sets did around 5-7 reps. No pain was experienced during the lifts but my pecs felt tight. So what I did was (and in hindsight this seemed like a pretty stupid idea) to stretch my pecs A LOT. Pulling a resistance band around a vertical pole and stepping away in a sort of cable crossover formation and letting the band stretch my pecs. I also did it in an upward fashion (sort of like incline cable flies). I then did some doorway stretches.

  3. The next day I woke up with mind blowing DOMS and my right pec was experiencing little ‘electric shocks’

  4. Took about 2-3 days off chest training. Went into the gym and trained pull and did about 2 sets on a hammer strength chest machine at around 40%1RM. No pain

5)Came back to my first push workout. Lifted 70%1RM but couldn’t do nearly as much weight as usual. No pain but the weight felt heavier than usual. Then did some incline dumbell at about 75% with no pain and some flyes.

So if I have no pain, why would I suspect a pec tear? Its’s just that since the last workout I still get these nervous sensations on my right pec. Also I’m more sore than I would usually be. I’m just very worried because I see these videos of guys having pec tears mentioning that in the weeks leading up to the injury they experienced problems and ignored them. Maybe I just overstretched my pecs on that deload day as I wasn’t experiencing any real issues before. Not sure how to tell if a few of the fibers are torn and how long I should lay off or whether I just need to stop flat benching (all my injuries in the past all seem to come from this movement). Thanks