Shoulder injury messes with my chest workout

[SenorSan]

I've been lifting for over a year. About 2-3 months ago I injured my shoulder. Doctors couldn't even tell me if it was in the muscle or rotator cuff. They gave me little excersizes and anti inflamitory medicine. I didn't start working out again till about a month ago, and I didn't do any shoulder excersizes, mostly isolated excersizes for everything else.

So I finally did a heavy lifting shoulder excersize the other day! Success, went great and I could lift hard without pain - just the normal soreness. So they have had more than enough time to recover, so yesterday I try a full chest workout. Bench press went fine, so I go to incline press. I couldn't do it for ****. My shoulder couldn't lift the weight up. I ended up having to lower the weight, but then I only felt my injured shoulder getting the workout, couldn't feel anything in my chest or other shoulder.

I made an old thread a while ago where I said my delts burned out on my incline press before my chest got a full workout on it, and I think this may have been how I injured my shoulder orignially. Now I dunno what to do, because I think incline press is really important for the development of my chest. I dunno if I should take it out, or just do it low weight even though it works one of my shoulders only? No idea what to do. Yesterday after my chest workout I did a small shoulder workout since I figured they were weak and warmed up a little too, I was thinking about doing two shoulder workouts a week for a while, one alone and one with my chest workouts (like monday and friday). Bad idea? Help please, thanks.

[dexterium]

Man, if something is messing with you, take it out for a while (at least) or completely eliminate it. Perfect example is triceps dips. It can really mess with your AC joint for some people but others can do it. As far as your shoulder problem, you could try USPlabs Super Cissus RX as it has shown to help with many joint problems in many people, including shoulders. It actually helps to heal ligaments and tendons.

[spirit3530]

I don't see a problem. It takes a while for the body to adjust to volume and frequency. Heavy shoulder presses use the a lot of the same muscle groups to generate power. Relax take it easy and use less weight. Eventually your body will take care of it and get stronger/have more endurance.

[JeepCreeper]

I've been lifting for over a year. About 2-3 months ago I injured my shoulder. Doctors couldn't even tell me if it was in the muscle or rotator cuff.

What muscle are you referring to? I ask because the "Rotator Cuff" is a group of four muscles that surround the shoulder joint : supraspinatus, infraspinatus, teres minor, and subscapularis. Do you mean the Deltoid?

[SenorSan]

What muscle are you referring to? I ask because the "Rotator Cuff" is a group of four muscles that surround the shoulder joint : supraspinatus, infraspinatus, teres minor, and subscapularis. Do you mean the Deltoid?

Well one doctor I visited told me I had some sort of muscle strain in my deltoid. A different one told me it was my rotator cuff. One of them made me get xrays to check out my bones, but that showed nothing. I guess they couldn't figure it out, it feels better now but my shoulders are just really weak.

Should I stop doing incline bench for a while?

[dexterium]

Yes, stop doing incline bench if you can't do it. What I suggest is, use dumbbells and GRADUALLY and SLOWLY build up. Even if it means starting with lil stuff. Check up on your form too, make sure your elbows are not pointed 100% out from your body, you will want to keep your elbows in some. With pointing your elbows out all the way, you are stretching your shoulders a way they shouldn't stretched. This is IMO.

[solidwon]

We must have the same problem. Incline makes me feel like screaming with barely more than the bar. However, I am using a narrower grip, pretty much shoulder width, as well as keeping my elbows tucked in. A little more stress to the tri's but I can do 225 for reps without discomfort. Don't let the bar touch your chest either, it is possible that extreme range of motion could have caused this terrible problem.

[solidwon]

Just as a side note, I stopped training my front delts and focused on my rear delts and that has helped my shoulder tremendously. My front delts were obviously built up to the point where is seriously overshadowed my rear delts. This kind of imbalance is known to cause painful shoulders.

[JeepCreeper]

If you feel your shoulders are weak you might benefit from doing some rotator cuff re-hab exercises. Do a google search and you should find some.

[Sick Puppy]

SenorSan, did you go straight from isolation work to a heavy chest day & heavy shoulder day? Did you have any pain with the exercise? Any pain now? What were the little exercises, and did you perform them? I ask this since I made a mistake 6 years ago when I did my RC in- just rested it, no rehab worth a damn and a physio who didn't know what she was doing. Yup, still got it now (fixing it myself now though)...

As Solidwon asks, any imbalances in the shoulders, and have you had your incline press technique checked out? (Don't get me wrong, but it's been three months since you last did an incline press you would have felt was a decent one- you can get rusty y'know! ).

Doesn't hurt to check RC out, but I've said this so often in the last week that I suppose I'm looking at RC rehab exercises as a hammer, and all shoulder injuries as a nail...!