How much is too much after an injury?

[crunchyhippo]

I recently tore a pec muscle/tendon while doing heavy benchpresses. It was at the area where the pec and deltoid meet on the front. Thank God, it didn't seem to be too serious. It's been three weeks now, and I have full range of motion with that arm, and I can do most every exercise in the gym now *except* significant chest exercises. But then, I'm being sooo careful about it. I'm not pushing myself hard with chest stuff, and I'm only using nautilus machines. Like using the pec-deck machine and the one where you're sitting upright and you grasp a handle with each hand and push forward - kind of like an upright benchpress, but on a machine. I can control the weight better and go lower in poundage. I'm only doing about 60 lbs. with each one, and there's no pain. However, I don't want to "push it" and re-tear the pec. But there's no way of knowing how much is too much until I hurt myself again, right? Now I'm certainly gun-shy of the benchpresses, as well as my favorite - bent-arm flies with dumbbells. I was doing 250 lbs. for five reps on the bench before, but now I'm leery of going much over just the weight of the bar. What a long road back. I hate to see my pecs atrophy from lack of significant exercise, but I don't think I have any other choice.

Any suggestions or ideas?

[Power-Quest]

I know a few well experianced people recommend not doing flat bench free wieghts at all just for that reason , your the third person in a month that i have heard about tearing/pulling there pec , and i bet you did it on flat bench?

This doesn't answer question , but it might help prevent it fro,m happening again in the future.

Info from another source.....

DC always told me to avoid it and do it in the smith machine, but I never felt it really working the pecs in the smith and my ego didn´t allow me to do it on the smith.

So , today I was doing 130kg in the bench press all alone, and it wasn´t all that heavy , and i decided to not aks my friend to help me and did it alone without no one spotting me. I did 8 reps clean, and when i was going to put the bar , when i did my last rep , i felt a pain in my right pec area next to the shoulders and thanks god i could lock the bar .

Then i removed all the weight from the bar and just tried to pull the bar to make sure if i was ****ed or if it was just some small pain. And just to move the bar empty with no wieght i felt a pain in my pec. I can move it, squeeze , but i feel this pain. A friend of mine who tore his pec before told me he thinks it´s partial, there is also no black mark on it or no signal at all (at least not today). I put some ice and will go to the doctor tomorrow to see what´s up.