I’ve recently had a minor injury on the shoulder while doing triceps extensions with dumbbells.
The thing here is that I’ve noted that I’m now totally restricted to do any kind of pushes: Military press is plain impossible, it hurts bad, but I have other shoulder options.
The big problem here are chest presses. I cannot do any of the chest press variants, nor fly press. And basically these were my 3 exercises with dumbbells/barbells (home gym). So basically I feel I’m totally cooked on chest rn.
I’ve been doing some pushups, that doesn’t hurt that much, but I’ve heard that doing a pushup you are only lifting around 60% of your bodyweight (so it’s 110lbs). I’m currently doing a bunch of pushups per set (like 30 or so) to not lose too much, I was around 200lb 1RM).
The pain has gone a little over a period of 3 weeks, but still I can feel it and when I go bench press with anything over 140lb i notice it big time. I’ve also been trying to introduce some barbbells and doing half way down 90 degrees at most but the pain is there.
I’ve found something like this (Left) Shoulder Injury
But it feels more promo than anything else.
Does incline or decline feel any different than flat? Are you in a situation where you could reverse band your presses? Any idea what the actual injury is? Are you doing anything to rehab?
Pushups → no pain
Inclined or regular press → pain
I have not tried reverse band press (no equipment, I might consider). I assume that you do this with a bar without any weight, and with high tension bands, so the effort comes from the drop not from the raise, right?
Not doing any special rehab yet. I’m planning on adding some shoulder rotations with a band, and maybe some other exercises to do regularly to strengthen the shoulders, have not researched a lot yet, simply stopped doing presses or any other exercises that was painful for the last 3 weeks.
So this is all hard to tell without actually seeing you in person and watching you lift, or knowing where the specific pain is located, but the fact that you have little pain when doing push ups leads me to believe your front delt/pec minor is probably where you’re having pain? When you do a pushup your body naturally engages your upper back to stabilize the movement better than it does for pressing from a bench or overhead .
My prescription is lots of upper back work. Stop pressing for a couple weeks, let that stuff heal and in the meantime do lots of rows, reverse flys and facepulls.
I had this exact same issue with flat bench, no shoulder pain with incline dumbell press though. Then i saw this video by squat university. This has more to do with weak rear delts. I followed their protocol for rear delts and the pain disappeared.
I see that in most recommendations, elbows should go tucked in
In reality, tucking in elbows during triceps skullcrusher with dumbbells (after this I noticed I was doing the exercise completely wrong may because I saw the wrong video with an example, the 5th exercise in the list).
My prescription is lots of upper back work. Stop pressing for a couple weeks, let that stuff heal and in the meantime do lots of rows, reverse flys and facepulls.
Yes I’m adding more upper back. I wanted to see if there were any chest exercises that were not so dirty on the shoulder pain.
Today for example, I’ve been doing 4 series of 25-30 reps in pushups because the pain is negligible.
My guess is you have an impingement. Basically this is when you are in certain ranges of motion the nerve gets pinched and causes pain. I recommend twice daily shoulder / rotator cuff exercises with bands. Once healed eliminate barbell work that locks you into an unhealthy range of motion and stick with dumbbells.
Damn, these threads remind me exactly why I very rarely visit this forum anymore. Bro says “my shoulder hurts on pressing” without even specifying where in the shoulder or the quality of the pain. Yet there’s diagnoses and corrective exercises getting thrown out.
I mean, “lots of facepulls” or twice daily rotator cuff exercises could be good, but they could also royally fuck you to the point you can barely lift your arm if you have a minor tear in your infraspinatus for example. I’m not suggesting you do, btw. Just saying we need more info and you need a full eval. Could be dozens of different things that all require different rehab approaches.
The dude asked a vague question, he gets vague answers based on collective experience. I’d hope if his arm were ready to explode he wouldn’t be looking for answers on an internet forum and would be seeking medical advice from at least a PT.
He asked a vague question and got specific answers…that was my whole point! I literally called out two specific (i.e. opposite of vague) bits of advice given to him despite minimal information. I also made the point to mention he needs to provide more information.
Shoulder pain with pressing could be coming from a million different sources. The best way to identify the source is to get in touch with a good physiotherapist who has experience managing lifters & athletes. The typical physiotherapist is not experienced to manage you effectively, and will likely get you to do a zillion dinky band exercises until you’re ready to kill yourself from boredom.
Imaging is not necessary at this stage, nor is surgery/orthopaedic medical review. Physiotherapist first
Try reverse gripping your barbell bench and see how that feels. It also won’t hurt to start increasing your training volume for your upper back and rear delt
No shit. He’s going on an Internet forum asking guys what it could be vs going to a a physio. Call it out dated or whatever you want it’s still a term used. You’re correct I shouldn’t have said pinched nerve that’s what your getting at.
Yup correct which is what I stated. It fixed my “non impingement” twice. Now I do them every warm up and no longer have issues.
and just for grins … I hate it by the way… I asked AI most common causes of pressing pain since you say I’m incorrect in clearly and obvious non medical guess to his situation.
Overuse and injury
Rotator cuff tendinitis: Inflammation of the rotator cuff tendons, which can result from repetitive pressing movements.
Bursitis: Inflammation of the bursa, the fluid-filled sac that cushions the joint. This can be caused by repetitive motions, leading to pain and swelling.
Impingement syndrome: A condition where the rotator cuff tendons get pinched between the bones of the shoulder, causing irritation and pain. This is often an overuse injury.
Yep, basically my arm hurts a little bit only. I’m just seeking for chest exercises that could replace temporarily my regular presses.
I don’t want to overestimulate the pain. Generally as soon as I feel a little pain I take it as a signal of something is wrong. I’m not forcing myself to dread.
