shoulder pain

[wannagrow]

hey guys, just got home from my chest workout and during my third and 4th sets of benching i get sharp pain in my right shoulder. this has happened before and i stopped benching for a while to let it heal. then started using less weight and higher reps and all was fine, untill the last two weeks when i had slowly crept up to that same weight again and wammo, the pain came back. i had in the past experimented with changing my grip to both wider and narrower to see if anythim helped. i ended up going ever so slightly wider. has anyone come across possible solutions as i really wanna bench as much as i can. as chest is a real week point and i cant reall lift much weight. for it.
I'm pretty sure that my form is good, but any suggestions for fine points of technique will be much appreciated

[LORDBLiTZ]

You warming up?

[wannagrow]

i'll do a warmup set with about half of my max weight, then a set of 10, set of 8 set of 6. the pain occurs on the se of 8 but is usually fine on the last set.

[LORDBLiTZ]

Ok, i've had the same problem. I found by warming up my rotator cuffs before every workout stopped the pain. Even if ur not doing chest that day, warm the Rotators up and see if that helps.

[wannagrow]

thanks, i'll give it a go.

Do you mean warming up rotator cuffs using elastic or using light dumbells.

[LORDBLiTZ]

I use the adj. cable columns with the real weights.

[bornbad71]

i'll do a warmup set with about half of my max weight, then a set of 10, set of 8 set of 6. the pain occurs on the se of 8 but is usually fine on the last set.

It takes me 3 sets to warm up on bench press....I had shoulder pain for about 6-7 months( to stupid to lay off and let it heal) I started warming my shoulders up alittle before I would do flat or incline bench....another thing I did was limit my range of motion during this time...instead of going all the way down I would stop my press @1-1 1/2" above my chest...this helped me alot.....I also did more db work during this since it didn't seem to bother my shoulder....this worked for me so I figured I would share it with u.....if it's a sharp pain then u might want to let a doc exam it.

[wannagrow]

Thanks for the advice, i guess i'll have to try warming up more.
I have been to the doctor before (and to the physio) but they do an examination and find nothing wrong. then just write me referal and send me off to a "specialist".

[wannagrow]

The last two workouts i did a hell of alot more warming up, using first just the bar for a few sets, then 110lbs, then 165lb, then getting into work sets, seemed to help.

I also noticed that i only get pain when doing flat bench, incline is fine. I tried doing incline with as i said with a fair bit of warmups, then just going heavy on flat but using db press instead of barbell, and this seemed to give me no problems at all, thanks for the advice on trying that instead.

I thought i strange that incline doesn't cause any problem but flat does, anybody know of any reason why that might be?

[bornbad71]

That seem to be the way mine was....incline didn't hurt, but flat was like a pain at the bottom of each set....then decline just felt like a friggin knife in my shoulder(haven't done them since...replaced them with dips). Never hurt to do delt exercises either and I don't know why

[cb25]

...another thing I did was limit my range of motion during this time...instead of going all the way down I would stop my press @1-1 1/2" above my chest...

I'd definitely agree...i had some of the same problems. Don't let your arms go below parallel - stop at 90degrees. Below this and you're actually putting too much uneccesary stress on the shoulder joint. It's a good idea to start mixing it up with DBs as well. See what works best for you.