Upper chest, collarbone pain

[evgeny1991]

Hey, guys!

I have searched the internet and this website thoroughly, but just can't find anything on this phenomenon, hence my new post about it here.

When I start doing incline chest press, whether with barbell or dumbbells, I will over some weeks of training get this strange discomfort in the upper chest and collarbone area, which if continued to be aggravated turns to pain. It's like a pulling on the collarbone by tendons or whatever is located under/around it. When this is aggravated enough then lifting my arm above my head and lowering it in front of me will give a pluck at the collarbone as the arm passes a certain elevation down and this pluck/twinge hurts a bit.

So in the past and till now I had to stop doing any incline chest pressing because of this. I remember that starting with light weights doing incline chest press there was no problem, but having reached something like 20kg on each dumbbell, I got the discomfort after the session. This with later sessions turned to pain as described above. This then healed completely in about 2 - 3 weeks after I stopped incline pressing completely.

Now, recently I got this doing reverse flies (for the rear deltoids / back) and I can feel the collarbone area discomfort when I do a lat stretch with the arm slightly in front of me and pulled above my head. Specifically, the point of complaint is the center of sternum collarbone joint, not the shoulder one.

My coach explained that my pectoralis major on that side is tight, needs thorough stretching. I am stretching it a lot, however it doesn't help the issue. Should I return to incline pressing with moderate weights, I know this will flare up again.

Note that this never happens on rows for the back and flat chest press or shoulder press. Only happens on incline and reverse flies. Also note that if I stretch the lat ensuring to keep my arm strictly above my head (not slightly in front of me), then no problem at all. It hence seems like it is when the upper arm moves above chest-level, but below shoulder-press level at that incline angle, that this happens.

Strangely, I found very little information about anything like this, and even that information wasn't on point with my phenomenon, it was other stuff.

So did anybody ever get this? If so, do you know what it is, and how did you solve this? I have not trained upper chest only because of this problem.

Thanks a lot in advance!

[Garage Rat]

See a chiropractor or physical therapist that works with athletes.
People here will only speculate on what your issue is and are not medical professionals.
Good luck.

[evgeny1991]

You are solidly correct in that. Yet, I still want to hear what you guys have to say even with it being speculation. Because surely somebody else, somewhen and sometime also had this problem.