Modifying my work out. Need some help.

[BLaaR]

Well, the left shoulder at the AC joint is giving me problems. Even though the pain isn't unbearable, I still prefer to work around it. I decided to modify my routines a bit, but I am not sure what I am doing the right thing is to do.

First off I am ditching the standing over head press. I tried using the machine but getting the weight up in to position causes too much pain, even more than doing standing o/h presses. Also lowering the bar lower than my fore head causes much pain. I really do not want to do "half reps" by lowering the bar to my head and then back up. Just doesn't feel right. I saw this article at T-Nation :

http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_...oulder_shocker

and gave it a go last night. Initially I thought how can such light weight do anything. I was wrong. Very wrong. Since the weight used is relatively light compared to what I was using for the o/h press it does not cause much problems and the shoulder press part doesn't require you to lower the weight much but only have you do partials. Must say my shoulders felt tired afterwards but no where near in pain when I was doing the o/h press.

Oddly flat dumbbell presses doesn't cause much pain, and currently I am not doing declines since I struggle to get the dumbbells into position and I cannot use the barbell since it causes problems in the AC joint. That leaves me with the incline bench. But here I do have problems lowering the weight to far and once again the AC joint does not like it. I did find that "squeezing" the dumbbells together in a hammer grip and then doing the incline bench takes a lot of the pain away from the AC joint and the movement becomes pain free. Only problem is I am not sure if the movement done this way will work out the chest since I feel it more in the triceps done that way.

Lastly doing shrugs is also a problem for the joint. So I switched to farmers walks. ( I was already doing dead lifts ). I just want to do a form check for the farmers walks.

1. Shoulder position ?
Shoulder I flex my traps and pull the shoulders up and back.
2. The elbow ?
Should it be locked while squeezing the bar and I can feel the triceps flex.

Well that's it.
Any thoughts / tips ?

Thanks.