Shoulder/Rotator Cuff Pain

Bigger Stronger Leaner Injuries and Rehab
1

On Wednesday I was going for a max on floor presses and screwed up my shoulder. I haven’t had any problems with the distance in the last few weeks but on Wednesday I guess it was an inch too high or something and I had to bring my shoulders forward to get the weight off the pins. Well I completed the rep but from the very beginning I could tell my shoulder was screwed up. Well it’s been hurting since then but I figured it had healed up somewhat so I started benching today and by my 2nd warm up set I could feel some pain/discomfort already, so rather than being a dumbass and trying to push through actual pain (rather than muscular pain) I did a different workout. Rack chins felt a little uncomfortable but I got through it.

Any suggestions? I workout bench/pushing exercises twice a week with today being my lighter day but obviously I couldn’t even do that. My next day involving benching was planned to be for Wednesday going pretty heavy but I don’t want to hurt myself and be out of this for weeks/months.

  1. Does this seem like a rotator cuff injury? I’ve had some shoulder pain for a few years now when I sleep on it or pitch (I remember in my senior year of high school I couldn’t even play dodgeball anymore) but it’s never hurt during lifting until this happened.

  2. If I should take time off, do you guys who have dealt with this or know more about it have any suggestions for what to do in the meantime? It’s sort of ironic because this is the one time in my lifting career I’ve really focused on my bench over just increasing size all over (which I still am, but also doing this) and now it gets screwed up. I figured if I have to stop then until it heals I would stick with a few isolation exercises for tri’s, shoulders, and maybe any chest movements I can do that don’t involve pressing.

Thanks for the help

2

If you have been prioritizing your bench a lot recently your shoulders could very well just be beat up and that floor press was the straw that broke the camel’s back. If it was hurting today during your warmups I’d take that as a signal that you need to take some time off (i.e. more than 3 days). It does not sound like a really serious injury, and you want to keep it that way, so err on the side of caution now and just let it rest. As for working around it, I guess you will have to just let pain be your guide. I would not recommend overhand rack chins or pullups though, as these put a lot of stress on your shoulders. You said the rack chins hurt as well, and even if the pain is not that bad, the fact that it hurts at all means you’re irritating it to some degree, which will only make it take longer to heal. You may find underhand or neutral grip pullups or pulldowns feel better.

I also wouldn’t do any direct shoulder or chest exercises right now. There may be some stuff you can do that doesn’t hurt, but it’s not worth risking it just for a few bs isolation exercises. You aren’t going to lose anything in a week or two anyway. I’m sure you can do stuff like pushdowns for triceps if you want to do something. I think most rows should be ok too, as long as the form is controlled and you don’t jerk the weights. Again, no one can really tell you for sure what is ok so you’ll have to try it out, but err on the side of caution. Minor tweaks usually don’t long to go away if you’re smart about it, but if you push it too much it will just nag.

Hope it feels better.

3

[quote]bruno082985 wrote:
If you have been prioritizing your bench a lot recently your shoulders could very well just be beat up and that floor press was the straw that broke the camel’s back. If it was hurting today during your warmups I’d take that as a signal that you need to take some time off (i.e. more than 3 days).

It does not sound like a really serious injury, and you want to keep it that way, so err on the side of caution now and just let it rest. As for working around it, I guess you will have to just let pain be your guide. I would not recommend overhand rack chins or pullups though, as these put a lot of stress on your shoulders.

You said the rack chins hurt as well, and even if the pain is not that bad, the fact that it hurts at all means you’re irritating it to some degree, which will only make it take longer to heal. You may find underhand or neutral grip pullups or pulldowns feel better.

I also wouldn’t do any direct shoulder or chest exercises right now. There may be some stuff you can do that doesn’t hurt, but it’s not worth risking it just for a few bs isolation exercises. You aren’t going to lose anything in a week or two anyway. I’m sure you can do stuff like pushdowns for triceps if you want to do something.

I think most rows should be ok too, as long as the form is controlled and you don’t jerk the weights. Again, no one can really tell you for sure what is ok so you’ll have to try it out, but err on the side of caution. Minor tweaks usually don’t long to go away if you’re smart about it, but if you push it too much it will just nag.

Hope it feels better. [/quote]

Thanks. I did heavy DB rows the next day and it hurt to support with my right arm but the rowing motion was fine so I did it against a rack and that went well, Yates rows today well as well. If it’s still hurting next week I’ll give the pronated chins a try as you mentioned.

I would say it’s definitely worse for benching because as mentioned even warm ups hurt, but some light shoulder pressing actually felt fine. I guess I’ll have to go by feel, just want to make sure something that feels fine doesn’t just suddenly screw me up.

4

You can try icing it a couple times a day, too. Also, find one of the shoulder rehab protocol or just do an external rotation, scapular depression, and scapular retraction on as your warmups on upper body days, then just do them as rehab on other days.

Good luck.

5

By the way Bruno or anyone else familiar with it, do you think the DC shoulder rehab would be helpful in this case? DC Training Shoulder Stretch - YouTube

I’ve been doing it the last 3 days, not sure if it’s helping though or if this is even the type of problem it’s designed to fix.

6

Pumped340- I am not trying to dodge the question about the DC stretch but it would be irresponsible for me to say if it’s going to help you or not without knowing what’s wrong with your shoulder. for some problems, the stretch works great, but for others, it could do more damage.

If it doesn’t hurt to do it, then it probably isn’t doing harm, but I cannot say for sure. I will tell you that I partially tore my labrum last March and for the first month or so, that stretch hurt, but in time it felt better, and I do it every single day, for about 20-30 reps, sometimes several times a day.

For me though, when I first hurt my shoulder, I really couldn’t do any pressing (chest or shoulder) without pain. I still can’t do a lot of barbell pressing (especially flat but incline to a degree) without pain. Even if light shoulder pressing is not causing pain, I still wouldn’t do it for at least a week or two.

Think of it this way: Do you really think you are going to make any gains doing some light shoulder presses? Probably not. But is the possibilty that you could reinjure the shoulder and make it take longer to get better? Most definitely.

Taking a week or two ain’t gonna do anything to your size or strength, and if you’ve been doing a lot of benching recently, the break would probably do you some good.

When you do decide to return to pressing, I definitely wouldn’t start doing the flat bench. Here is a progression I followed, just by trial and error, of things that didn’t hurt as much for me.

Dumbell floor presses with neutral grip
Squeeze presses
Dumbell presses with neutral grip
Dumbell Floor presses with regular grip
Dumbell presses with regular grip
Inclines

This is just the freeweight stuff because I was in a gym with no real chest machines. Machines may feel better for you and if you have them to use you might want to try that. Still though, I think you should just rest it for the time being until the pain is gone. I took around 1-2 weeks off any chest, shoulders, and triceps and then started back up slow.

I actually didn’t do any pullups either for about 2 months because they killed my shoulder. I stuck to rows for back because they didn’t hurt as much.

7

What’d you do to injure your shoulder?

I guess it makes sense that the DC rehab could make it worse, it hasn’t been hurting me at all though. I just tried the “Neer test” and “Hawkins test” ( http://www.aafp.org/afp/20000515/3079.html ) and had no real pain so that’s good. You’re right about the week off though, I might as well not do any pressing and just wait to see how it feels next Saturday. In the meantime I’ll probably add a little extra volume to legs and back.

8

I hurt my shoulder in a freak thing. I was warming up to do a PJR pullover, the dumbell was not centered in my hands, and when I went back overhead to dumbell slid to one side with my arms straight out and my shoulder just crunched.

9

[quote]bruno082985 wrote:
I hurt my shoulder in a freak thing. I was warming up to do a PJR pullover, the dumbell was not centered in my hands, and when I went back overhead to dumbell slid to one side with my arms straight out and my shoulder just crunched. [/quote]

As in the dumbbell fell on your shoulder, or trying to support it with the 1 arm was too much? I actually figured PJR pullover would be a good exercise to try since I can’t do presses…but maybe I’ll pass lol.

10

Where does your shoulder hurt?

11

[quote]Shadowzz4 wrote:
Where does your shoulder hurt?[/quote]

Roughly between the anterior and medial delt muscles. Feels like it’s kind of behind the muscle at the joint.

12

Having been through many shoulder problems myself i can safely say its very hard to figure what exactly is wrong inside the shoulder during the time of the injury. Its up to you to figure out now what you can and cant do for it.

that being said, here is my advice based off my experiences,

STOP any excersizes that cause pain to the area

Take anti-inflammatories, Fish oil, circumin, IB profen will help for sure, just don’t go nuts with NSAIDS

Take the time to apply heat and Ice, when you’re in the shower turn on the heat as high as you can stand and let it hit your bad shoulder for about 3-5 minutes. find time during the day to ice it as well.

If you can do the “DC Shoulder strecth” without any pain then start doing that right now, it will mostly likely help out a lot

youtube search Diesel crew shoulder rehab and start doing that, provided none of the excersizes cause pain
for the rest of you’re life do the two minute shoulder warmup also by Diesel crew.

-Recheck your form, gotta be on top of this constantly, im assuming you already know how to perform pressing excercizes properly though

13

also look at the articles by Eric Cressey. “Cracking the Rotator Cuff Conundrum” is a great article regarding shoulder issues.

14

[quote]GrindOverMatter wrote:
Having been through many shoulder problems myself i can safely say its very hard to figure what exactly is wrong inside the shoulder during the time of the injury. Its up to you to figure out now what you can and cant do for it.

that being said, here is my advice based off my experiences,

STOP any excersizes that cause pain to the area

Take anti-inflammatories, Fish oil, circumin, IB profen will help for sure, just don’t go nuts with NSAIDS

Take the time to apply heat and Ice, when you’re in the shower turn on the heat as high as you can stand and let it hit your bad shoulder for about 3-5 minutes. find time during the day to ice it as well.

If you can do the “DC Shoulder strecth” without any pain then start doing that right now, it will mostly likely help out a lot

youtube search Diesel crew shoulder rehab and start doing that, provided none of the excersizes cause pain
for the rest of you’re life do the two minute shoulder warmup also by Diesel crew.

-Recheck your form, gotta be on top of this constantly, im assuming you already know how to perform pressing excercizes properly though

[/quote]

Thanks. I take fishoil but none of the other things you mentioned. I got through my workout with almost no discomfort, the only thing that kind of hurt was pushdowns which I stopped in exchange for overhead extensions which didn’t really cause any issue. I guess I’ll go back to the DC rehab, just hoping it doesn’t cause any negative effects. I did the diesel crew YTWL method today, I’ll stick with that for awhile. I’m not even going to attempt pressing on Wednesday, but hopefully it will be OK for Saturday.

15

wtf? does no one realize that “dc rehab” is complete bs? this is honestly sad, plus he said he just wont take ibuprofen or anything else? obviously this shoulder injury int that bad.

16

[quote]olympianiac wrote:
wtf? does no one realize that “dc rehab” is complete bs? this is honestly sad, plus he said he just wont take ibuprofen or anything else? obviously this shoulder injury int that bad. [/quote]

What do you mean by saying that “dc rehab” is bs?

This stuff has helped me a bunch:

17

[quote]olympianiac wrote:
wtf? does no one realize that “dc rehab” is complete bs? this is honestly sad, plus he said he just wont take ibuprofen or anything else? obviously this shoulder injury int that bad. [/quote]

I’ve found the dc rehab works quite well unless the problem is hypermobility (which is rare in my experience)

18

Had a similar pain at the tail end of last year, tried working round for it a month.

Didn’t get much better, and I was getting increasingly frustrated in the gym. Found the best local physio took about 4 weeks and I was 99% happy with the shoulder again.

She said the RC was causing impingement, had me doing external rotations and lower scap work at the end of every session focusing on speed to work through the impingement and try and up the weight which doubled in the 4 weeks. Also she had me pull out YTLWs from my mobility work at the start of my workout.

Stretchin and ice after every workout and massage. Obviously I’m not a student so could afford this.

Good luck.

19

I’ve worked through a case of severe rotator cuff tendonitis the last 4 months. An article I found in January has helped (much of which I had already started). Google Marc McDougal “Corrective Methods for Common Postural Deviations, The Shoulder”.

Additionally, sets of rotator cuff work (except internals - see article) for 2 sets of 35-50 reps. Gets blood flow into area to help heal.

I’ve progressed from No Pressing to normal volume with only occasional protest from shoulders. I hope this helps.

20

Thanks for the Vids!