Shoulder pain

[Gmonkey]

I was wondering what exercises I can do to help minimize shoulder pain?  I have pain when I do front raises with my palms facing the ground, my chest tends to pull my shoulders front.  I cannot do Barbell presses as it hurts too much, I am only using dumbbells. 

I plan on getting some of that some joint renew from Ultimate nutrition as I took this before and it helped.   I was looking for a long term solution to this problem, through exercises.

[sage]

you gots to strength the rotator cuff (esp. the supraspinatus) which assist with injuries and gives strength to an area which takes part of numerous overhead, pressing, and lateral movements. Here's a link to a thread. Sage

http://www.anabolicminds.com/forum/s...hlight=rotator

[crazypete]

you also have to work on your flexibility and muscle balance as well as address the cause of the pain. this is a rehab so use weigth training as a part of the strategy. sage is right in saying you should strengthen your rotator cuffs, particularlly the external rotators, but you also have to strengthen other muscle groups that are weak. you state that your chest pulls your shoulders forward. this means that your upper back is also out of balance with your chest. to keep the upper back in balance, you have to do a similar volume of horizontal rowing as your chest exercises, if it is out of balance, then you have to do more for the weak part and give it priority, ie: do it first in the workout, do it first in the week, do more volume than the strong part, etc. the same goes for the balance between shoulders and vertical back exercises, there must be a balance.

so what can be done to help the situation in the weight room? well first off the external rotators most likely need work. do them first in any upper body workout. second, stretch the chest and work the upper back, both with rows and shrugs. also when you deadlift, keep your shoulder blades pulled together and down from the bottom all the way up. quite obviously you will not be able to lift as much weight as this will not hold out at your normal weight. it is a weak point which must be overcome. you may find that if you ease up on chest work and concentrate on weak points, they will develop quickly and then you will be able to hit them hard again to get to the next level.

the concept of muscle groups balancing each other and having good flexibility are beneficial to all of us, whether we are bodybuilders or other athletes who use weight training to improve performance or even those of us who workout just to keep in shape. incidently, the concepts in this post are taken from articles i got from louie simmons of westside barbell fame from the elitefitness web site:

www.elitefts.com

hopefully this satisfies YJ since they are not from t-rag or trash mag or whatever he calls it, although ian king has similar ideas (JUST KIDDING YJ ).

cheers, pete

PS: hey gmonkey, if you give us a little more detail, we can give better perscriptions for dealing with the problem

[crazypete]

score! i just accidentally found out how to put those damn faces into my post. y'all better watch out now :> !

[crazypete]

crap, that one didn't work!

[Sir Foxx]

Ok, I have a question. On what do would you do the rotator cuff exercises? My split is this:

Day 1: Chest, Tris, Abs
Day 2: Back, Bis, Abs
Day 3: Legs, Shoulders, Calves
Off
Repeat, then take day off in between workouts, then back to 3 day in a row.

Would I do the rotator cuff exercises on Chest day a the end of chest, or on day 2, after workout, to give chest time heal a little.

[crazypete]

looking at your routine, i would put it in before chest day and before leg day, although this is a poor solution. you work your body around the shoulder every day you lift and this creates a lot of stress around the shoulder and the stabilizers, so perhaps after those workouts is best

[C-bizzle]

Damn, shoulder injuries are one of the worst.

I ****ed my left shoulder up a while back, still don't know how, just woke up and it was excrutiating. It was like that for a week, constant pain then it stopped thankfully.

But, their was a huge difference on the strength of each arm from then on, I couldn't evenlift half of what I could with my right.

That said, don't do anything that would cause more damage then you'd be pretty much ****ed :/

[Sheesh]

Originally posted by crazypete
crap, that one didn't work!

Click the "Post Reply" button and the top and bottom of each thread, then you can pick which smiley you want from a box....

[locoangmo]

I delt with shoulder pain for about a year. It made benching hell and got bad enough to shoot pain down my arms. I fixed it with rotator cuff work on an adjustable cable crossover machine. I prefer this over barbells as I can work both internal and external rotation quickly. You can also use surgical tubing tied to a door knob or whatever. I started light with high reps and worked my way up to medium rep ranges with more weight and even to failure (which probably isn't recommended but this is how I work the rest of my muscles, why not?).
I also don't perform any isolation exercises for anterior delts as they get hammered benching. I always work post delts isolation and rotator cuff on shoulder day. I stay away from upright rows and military press only deep enough to get upper arms parallel (dumbell).
Depending on your build you may or may not be able to lower the barbell completly to your chest during bench press without putting your shoulders at risk, especially if you have a wide grip like mine. Dumbbell flys can also be a shoulder killer if taken too deep. Also given a choice I think dumbell bench is the better way to go anyway.
Work on stretching your pecs, especially after workout and like said above ensure you are doing as much rowing work as pressing.
Good Luck, Loco

[crazypete]

loco:
recommeded by who? most professinals don't know their ass from a hole in the ground. in my opinion you did exactly the right thing: light to heavy and work around problem areas. i don't know how bad your problem was, but ideally you would like to get to the point where you can lower the weight all the way. i realize that for some injuries this will never be possible.

cheers, pete

[locoangmo]

Pete,
Professionals as in physical therepists. Although I didn't see one for my shoulder problem I did research it. I doubt therepists or doctors will ever recommend heavy lifting for anything. I am just happy I fixed the problem before I forced a tear and ended up under the knife.
As far as the range of motion goes for bench pressing, this is somewhat debated. The upper arm geometry for someone with long arms and a shallow chest will be much different then someone with a barrell chest and short arms with bar fully lowered. For the long armed person this puts lots of stress on the shoulder joint as it has to give because the scapula cannot. For the non-power lifter this can be avoided by taking the bar down to upper arms parallel to the floor or just beyond or by taking a narrower grip and keeping the upper arms close to the lats (power lifter form?). The second solution isn't a good one in my opinion for body builders as it reduces the stress on the pecs and increases the stress on the ant delts and tris because the motion moves from horizontal plane to sagittal plane. I bench for chest development so I want the stress on the pecs.
So...Instead of calling a full range of motion for bench simply "touching the bar on the chest" it is more universal to use upper arm geometry as the limiting factor for bar depth. This would be not be applicable to those training for strength sports as the rules of the sport will govern ther range of motion. Of course this is just my opinion as I understand it.
Loco

[crazypete]

of course they won't recomend heavy lifting, most of them deal with symptoms, and not the root cause. however, if you do your own research, you can do just as effective rehab yourself, of course its nice to have the background i do education wise, but anyone can learn (i heard something about having to do stuff yourself if you want it done right ). as for the heavy lifting, if the injury has been healed properly and rehabbed, i think part of the rehab should continue and strengthen the area even further and pay attention to other issues such as flexibility which is often lacking and part of the injury to begin. as for lowering the bar to the position of such and such as chest, behind the neck and so on, i think the the injuries for the most part occur due to lack of flexibility, lack of muscle balance, and lack of muscular control. the last one is very important and can not occur if the first two factors are not present. we know that most people who train are not flexible and have muscle imbalances, so how can they have the proper muscular control to do the lift in a perfectly anatomical position? now if the lift is not done with perfect precision anatomically, the muscle recruitment patterns will be incorrect and reinforce patterns that lead to muscle imbalances which leads to lack of flexibility. so if you want to avoid injury and get the most of your gains possible, then when you go the gym work the weak areas and the inflexible ones, don't worry, your strong muscles won't get any weaker for a few weeks and the weak ones will grow like mad. also, stretch the inflexible areas after your workout, this will lead to flexibility gains. now you will be able to attack all muscle groups and grow more. see how this works.

yes its true some people don't have the range of motion, but there is no reason why they shouldn't work at it.

cheers, pete