I’ve been lifting again for about 4 months and have developed pain in my left shoulder, around the ac joint. I have a feeling it’s from benching and am wondering if it’s from to much shoulder involvement? If so what can I do to correct it? As of now it’s very very minor and doesn’t effect my lifts at all and if I was younger I’d just ignore it but being older I thought I’d ask around.
I had the same thing happen. I switched to dumbbell bench presses and added rotator cuff exercises. I also had an imbalance between the front delts and the middle and rear, so I added some extra overhead presses and rear laterals to bring them up. Seems to have helped.
http://www.T-Nation.com/readArticle.do?id=1053531
That article should help. There’s a section on benching form as well as links to a couple of other articles.
Thanks. What do you think about dips attributing to the problem instead of benching? I don’t even notice it while benching but I do have some pain while going deep with dips. I guess 1st I’ll cut out dips and see if that helps then go from there.
[quote]Rapt said:
Thanks. What do you think about dips attributing to the problem instead of benching? I don’t even notice it while benching but I do have some pain while going deep with dips. I guess 1st I’ll cut out dips and see if that helps then go from there.[/quote]
Dips are very hard on the shoulders especially if you’re not flexible.
BTW, if you don’t do overhead presses and rows, that would cause muscle imbalances.
Are you sure it’s not too little shoulder work instead of too much bench work?
Yeah I do overhead presses, I’m doing riptoe to ease back into lifting again. I’m really hoping it’s the dips, I’ve never really had pain while lifting in the past and I’ve been getting some while doing dips. I just ignored it because I knew it was due to flexibility and figured it would take care of itself. On another note though I feel I’m using more shoulder while benching rather than chest.
So, you’re saying, your whole shoulder routine is – overhead presses?
Umm, your problem is your weak shoulders bro. Easy on the bench, up your shoulders… I hate 'em too (with a passion) but you gotta do them. – That or your bench form… Sucks.
I’d bet its your weak shoulders though.
My routine is as follows
mon. Squat,standing mil press, pendaly rows, pull ups
tues. squat, bench, deads, dips
fri. squat,standing mil press, etc.
So the only direct exercise is mil press. for shoulders and it’s actually one of my better/favorite lifts. I’m pretty sure it’s a flexibility issue rather than strength if that is the problem. Like I said I’ll cut out dips and see if it pops up again.
the only time I ever got pain from doing dips was when I did them with little or no warmup, or waaaaay back when my triceps development was piss poor. I guess the tendency was to overcompensate and put too much stress on the shoulders/pecs cuz my triceps basically sucked.
I’m just the opposite of you rt now though…I can’t bench heavy without some terrible shoulder pain. I basically ignored any kind of horizonal pull movements for several months, focusing on chins/pull ups.
Now my shoulders are all out of whack…just genius on my part really 
anyways, I guess you could cut out the dips and stick to close-grip benches for awhile