| Your bench press has been moving great.
The weights are flying. You are feeling strong. You are starting to think I am going to hit 225 for reps like it’s the damn combine!
Then one day, during warm-ups, you feel that sharp little pinch in the front of your shoulder when the bar gets close to your chest.
Now, every time you bench press, you experience shoulder pain and tightness.
You think, “I guess my shoulder is just f’d”
GOOD NEWS! It is not.
Most of the time, shoulder pain during benching is not an orthopedic pathological condition. Usually, that pain is caused by one of these things:
- Your setup is putting the shoulder in a bad position.
- Your training volume or intensity has outpaced your recovery.
- The tissues around the shoulder are irritated and not tolerating load well.
- Your technique is forcing the wrong structures to do too much work.
- A combination of these things
This is all good news, because these are all things that can be fixed by coming to see your friends at ASR and the even better news is that you CAN STILL keep benching without jacking up your shoulder by implementing these five modifications:
#1: Shorten the range of motion a bit
If pain is worst at the bottom, temporarily reduce how deep you go.
A floor press is a great example. Because the elbows do not travel as far behind the body, it reduces shoulder extension demands and often feels dramatically better for lifters with front-of-shoulder pain. That is one of the main substitutions highlighted in the source article.
| #2: Switch To Dumbbells
Dumbbells let you adjust wrist position, elbow angle, and pressing path more naturally. For many people, that freedom makes it easier to find a pain-free groove while still training hard. The source article also recommends dumbbell benching for exactly that reason.
#3: Fix Your Push-Pull Balance
If you are benching a lot and doing little quality rowing, rear delt work, cuff work, or scapular control work, your shoulder may be paying the price.
No, band pull-aparts are not magic.
But yes, your upper back probably needs to be part of the plan.
#4: Stop Trying To Build On A Cracked Foundation
This is a big one.
If your shoulder is irritated, now is probably not the time to hit heavy singles, grind out reps, or “build to a heavy set” every session. Do more work at 75-80% of your max and don’t go to failure; you still get stronger without damaging that shoulder anymore. If your shoulder is causing pain you can’t fix it by lifting heavy.
| #5 Start Self-Treating With These Soft Tissue & Joint Mobilizations
These will help reduce tightness, increase blood flow (angiogenesis), and improve your shoulder’s function.
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| If you have persistent shoulder pain during any lift, you should come to ASR.
In our sessions we look at:
- How you set up
- How you move under load
- What your weekly training volume looks like
- Whether your shoulder is dealing with cuff irritation, front-of-shoulder overload, AC joint irritation, or instability
- Give you pressing variations that you can use right now to keep making progress.
Then we calm the shoulder down. fix the root issue, bulletproof you!
Because most lifters do not need less training. They need better and healthier training.
Book a session here: https://asr.noterro.com/ |
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