Incline Bench Press Question

[MaDmaN]

For the past 6-8 months I have been only doing incline bench presses and my right shoulder is spent,it pops and the pain is horrible..I took a week off and it's a little better,my question is if I went to regular flat bench would that put less stress on my shoulder ?

[dlew308]

bb or db's?

[MaDmaN]

bb or db's?

Barbell, Olympic bar

[dlew308]

Do you get the same pain if you do them with db's?

[MaDmaN]

On the incline even using DB i still get the pain.

[MakaveliThaDon]

Incline involves ALOT of front delts along with chest. And in my experience, its' made even worse because of the fact that about 75 percent of incline benches arent angled on a decline enough, and are too high, thus putting EVEN MORE stress on your front delts.

My personal best recommendation, because it has worked for me, is to see if your gym has just a regular bench that can be moved around in the gym that is adjustable so that you can set how much of an incline or decline you want yourself. And then take that and angle it just a little above flat. I'd give you a recommendation in degrees, but my rememberance of geometry is failing me right now.

I know that this works so much better for me personally, it allows the stress to be put on my upper chest where it belongs as opposed to my front delts.

[SoMdHunter]

This was the subject of intense conversation on another board last year.

It is generally agreed that the bench press will eventually do the damage described above. The reason for the damage is the front delts are the smaller of the muscles, take the brunt of the load when working chest and are the quickest to tire. As they tire, they become prone to injury.

For the most part, this can be avoided by using DB's in your routine. You can't lift the same amount of weight (even when divided in half and split between the 2 DBs), and you can adjust the width even during the pressing movement.

You can also work the chest by adding in fly's as well. The pecs are used to bring the arms together in front of the chest, so fly's will help pre-exhaust the pecs before the front delts tire too much. As for incline degrees, 30 is about the max you want to go. Any incline greater than that, and you start to work the shoulders (front and middle delts) more than the pecs.

Hope this is of some help.

[lennoxchi]

i had the same issue 3 mths ago....so i took the bench to the first adjustment which i something like 20 degrees or whatever and did that for a while then went back to 30 degrees as SMH spoke on....now no problems, don't know if that helped strengthen those delt muscles or not but the pain and discomfort is gone....just what worked for me...

[MaDmaN]

Good stuff you guys thanks, im gonna try flat bench pre exhaust and supersetting with lighter weight on Thursday.
anyone else care to chime in please do so..I will post result on Friday

[MaDmaN]

Well I did Flat bench last night with no real problems..
I only went up to 205 for reps of 15 but it felt real good.
There is still some pain but not as bad plus im on bulk Cissus
which I think is helping...