Shoulder Pain From Bench Press

Here is a step by step framework to help you finally overcome your shoulder pain.

Shoulder pain from bench press. Emphasizing exercises that strengthen your shoulder blade muscles and stretch out the muscles in the front of the joint can provide relief from bench press shoulder pain. A proper warm up is key for preventing shoulder pain during the bench press. The rotator cuff labrum and ac joint. The bench press and shoulder press are the two exercises most likely to cause shoulder pain.

These four muscles are the supraspinatus infraspinatus teres minor and subscapularis. The reasons why benching hurts your shoulders is a topic for another article but suffice it to say that shoulder pain usually isn t so much the fault of benching itself but rather the misuse and overuse of the exercise. One of the most common bench press form mistakes people make is touching the bar too high on their chest at the bottom position. Since they are also two of the most popular exercises it s no surprise that shoulder pain is common.

If you feel like you ve tried everything from foam rolling to stretching and mobility without any permanent success you re in luck. While bench pressing you may experience some rotator or shoulder pain during part of the movement. Only after your pain subsides should you gradually reintroduce the. This is a common injury with heavy benchers because all the body weight and bar weight is resting on the upper back.

A frequent cause of bench press shoulder pain is an imbalance between the primary movers chest shoulders and triceps and the rotator cuff a group of four smaller muscles responsible for stabilizing the shoulder joint. Shoulder pain during the bench press can be tricky to manage especially if it s been going on for a while. This is likely due to weak muscles in this area. Properly implementing the above three step process to your bench press form will drastically improve the shoulder pain you experience when benching.

During this time it s best to limit or completely stop bench pressing to allow your symptoms to subside. Bench press t4 syndrome. The infraspinatus and teres minor. Perhaps the most common issue especially for men is shoulder pain stemming from the flat barbell bench press.

Weak muscles are often but not always the cause of rotator cuff impingement syndrome and associated rotator cuff tears. Anatomic causes of shoulder pain with bench press. While simple exercises such as scapular retractions push ups and external rotation work are all great tools to utilize i ve found that performing soft tissue work directly prior to bench pressing can also be of great benefit. Well there are three main sites of injury.