Chest exercises with shoulder injury

[mjswss57]

Back in november while doing bench press I tore my rotator cuff and sprained my AC joint. I finally went to the dr a couple weeks ago and got an mri and have been treating it accordingly. I have been very limited as far as my chest workouts have gone since this all happened and have lost obvious size and definition in my chest. I still am not able to do incline press or flat bench. Some days i am able to do declince and actually go quite heavy on it if i keep a really wide grip. Does anyone have any recommendations to workout to help get size and strength back while my shoulder is recovering?

 

[Zaneseed]

im not sure if this will help but ill put it out there just in case. i hurt my shoulder benching, not as badly as you did however, and found that if i went a little lighter with DBs and angled the grip of them towards each other a little bit i could press without problems. im not a doctor though so take what i say with a large grain of salt. good luck

 

[mjswss57]

Tried it at the gym today. Did chest painfree for the first time in months. appreciate it man. thanks

 

[kingk0ng]

It sounds like you have protracted shoulders, which occurs when there is a significant imbalance in the internal and external shoulder rotators.

When the chest, anterior deltoids, and serratus anterior becomes tight and the posterior deltoids, trapeziums, and rhomboids are weak in comparison the shoulder pulls forward and damages the sufficiency of the rotator cuff.

Solution: stretch the internal rotators (lats, chest) and focus on retracting and depressing the scapular through the external rotators (rhomboids, traps, teres minor, infraspinatus).

Perform two horizontal pulls for every horizontal push 2:1 BB Row: Bench; 1:1 vertical push for every vertical pull, 1:1, Press: Pullup, and depress the scapular through reverse shrugs on a dip station.

You can begin utilizing other accessories like face pulls, rear delt lateral raises, cuban rotations, and poor mans shoulder horn. Focus on the retraction during barbell rows and face pulls and your shoulders should be in proper health in no time.

Stretch your internal rotators with the doorway stretch.