Arnold Press/rotator cuff

The other week I re-injured a former rotator cuff injury (I suspect tendinitis but haven't been able to get an official diagnosis), so OHP has basically become impossible. I've been doing some home-rehab which includes a light-weight Arnold press, so I tried replacing my usual OHP (dumbbells) with AP at about 80% of the working weight and experienced no problems. If I press overhead with a strictly pronated grip, my shoulder starts to hurt about half-way up; as I rotate my grip from supinated at around the same height for AP, there's no pain. Why might that be?

So needless to say I'm going to replace OHP with AP for the time being. In doing so, am I at risk for losing shoulder mass in any of the 3 heads? I imagine that AP doesn't hit rears quite as well?

It probably hits the rear delt better. The thing about the Arnold press, if done correctly, increases time under tension considerably vs an OHP which is supposed to have a quick concentric part of the lift.

Hence, you can get more out of them with lighter weights. Moral of the story, heavy OHP is overrated for shoulder hypertrophy.

Depending on your shoulder injury, it may limit your ability to do certain movements, and some shoulders are finicky with different types of presses. For instance, I had a torn supraspinatus MUSCLE that healed, but a TENDON wouldn’t heal on its own. So get whatever you got going on confirmed.

Hmm so would you recommend that I switch to Arnolds for hypertrophy even after my shoulder feels better? I guess it makes sense for re-injury prevention too. I don't necessarily do heavy OHP though, I work within the 6-9 rep range with DBs. Messing around with stuff, I think that the recent agitation may have been due more to introducing pullovers recently, close-grip pull ups, or both in combination with a larger jump in weight with OHP than I'm used to. I'll have to find alternatives for all of the overhead movements that I'm doing. I. haven't been able to see a PT recently due to COVID and transportation issues, so as it is, I'm just carefully feeling things out.

Pullovers can agitate your shoulder if form isn’t observed, it is real easy to mess those up. That, or if your shoulder doesn’t agree with the movement.

I prefer machine pullovers to dumbbells. And Arnold presses to heavy OHP for TUT.

I don’t need to do pullovers necessarily, but I was looking for an alternative to straight-arm pulldowns that don’t involve a machine since I’m doing upper body stuff at home with DBs. I was using an adjustable DB for weighted ab wheel rollouts vertically against a wall, which seemed to work until (aside from leaving dents in the wall) adding weight made them more awkward and hard on my bad shoulder. Right now I’m doing lat floor sides using a backpack for added weight, and they don’t seem to be causing any issues. Though the range of motion is relatively small as the point at which my collarbone meets my hands is as far as I can safely go.