Chest Training and Shoulder Pain: Three Quick Tweaks

In the quest to get stronger, better, faster, more Kanye-er (if it’s not a word yet, maybe it should be) prior to a big and muchly needed vacation, I’ve been hitting the weights a little extra hard lately. Part of that routine has involved copious amounts of weight on a deadlift bar, the odd front squat and even a few back squats, chinups, rows, core exercises, and a few other little ditties of my own creation. Let’s just say, the results are coming through.

Now one big downside is that a few years ago I managed to get a partial tear (2/3’s thickness based on MRI results) to my left rotator cuff during a bench press contest in university. It was so weird: I lowered the bar (365 at the time, thank you very much!!), and felt something odd in the shoulder that seemed like bad news. I manged to press the weight back up and said that would be it for the day. After it felt like there was water running down the inside of my arm, such a creepy feeling. The next day I couldn’t raise my arm without pain.

So for the next 10 years, I kept trying to get back into pressing, but never had the oomph to get it done. In the last three years, I’ve been able to feel like I can get under the bar again and actually see a training benefit, but occasionally I will still get the little bit of cramping in my shoulder that tells me to take it easy.

So short of not training the chest (not an option), I’ve had to come up with a few alternatives to allow me to work on pressing strength without subjecting my shoulder to unnecessary wear and tear. To start with, each workout involves a pull to press ration of 2:1 and sometimes even 3:1 depending on how heavy I’m planning to go. This means that when I do a series of bench press, I will then go through chinups, bent over rows, or some other combo of back exercises before I move onto decline pushups or a dumbell bench press, or whatever I’m feeling that day.

Next I had to change my approach to performing the movements. I like doing bench press, and regardless of how “functional” it may be, you’re not going to see the same appreciable increase in chest size, density or definition by performing a standing cable press or any off-balance exercise. To build a solid base, you need copoius amounts of weight, which means heavy-ass benching, and accessory work after that.

When I previously performed bench press, I would grip the bar like it was a Homer-to-Bart strangle gag on the Simpsons, and as a result my elbows would flare out, my feet would kick, and I would look like a complete loser. I changed my grip by placing my thumb on the same side of the bar as my other fingers, and then setting the bar further down my hand towards my wrist, essentially right above my forearm in my hand. The dangers here are that if I decide to straighten out my wrist, it’s a long fall for the bar onto my chest or throat, but it help to keep my elbows in tighter to my body, and doesn’t strain my wrist. Next, I started gripping closer together on the bar, to again reduce the elbow kick-out. More tricep? Sure, but the pecs still get a good crushing!!

Next up, instead of performing pushups off the floor, which can produce some wrist angles that are less than favorable, I started using handles. Also, to increase the loading, I began to use decline pushups by elevating my feet bove the level of my hands.

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Pausing at the bottom to ensure I touch my nose to the floor ensures I’m controlled and that I get a good short pause at the bottom during the full stretch which eliminates almost all momentum and ensures I’m working hard through the set. Plus, it just looks bad ass.

Third, with dumbell chest presses, the same kinds of problems can crop up as in the barbell bench press. The benefits to dumbells are that you can rotate your hands to push in a different position, as well as the required stability of controlling weights through three planes of motion.

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By using a grip where my palms face each other, I’m reducing the contact of the acromion with the humerus, which reduces any kind of impingement of the supraspinatus tendon, but I’m also reducing the stretch and tension through the long head of the biceps tendon, which reduces the tension in the shoulder capsule as well. I’m still getting a lot of pec activation, as evident from the fact that getting out of bed the following day brought back some good memories of the workout the day before.

I’ve used adjustments like these with other clients, some with shoulder pain and some who had no obvious problems, and in both cases there was an absence of pain during an after exercise as well as strength gains through the duration of the program, which is double thumbs up in my books. Are there other ways to tweak a chest training routine without damaging the shoulder? Of course, but these are the top three that I use and that seem to work really well, especially in the case of old rotator cuffs like mine.

Also, for anyone keeping track, the contest is still going strong. If you want to participate, check out the rules and the goodies involved HERE and jump on in!!!