Bench Press Shoulder Pain (INSTANT RELIEF!)
ATHLEAN-X™Tue, June 14, 2016 1:28am URL:
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Feeling shoulder pain during a dumbbell bench press is actually an all too common thing. Some say that this comes from an imbalance in the rotator cuff in your shoulder (which it can be) or in many cases, inflammation of the biceps tendon. In this video, I’m going to show you an tweak you can make to your bench press grip to gain immediate relief of your shoulder pain during the dumbbell press.
Bench press pain in the shoulder can come from many different things. When the source is biceps tendonitis (or a torn labrum for that matter), you are getting an over activation of the biceps tendon as it develops tension to try and support your shoulder during the press. This tension pulls on the biceps or the attachment at the superior labrum and this can lead to immediate pain.
You can combat this discomfort however by changing the way you perform the db bench press. Instead of gripping the dumbbells so that they are parallel to the ceiling and floor, tip the pinkies up toward the ceiling (or the bottom of the dumbbell) throughout the entire movement. The positioning of the dumbbell this way will slightly increase the activation of the triceps.
Through reciprocal inhibition, you are going to decrease some over the tension in the already inflamed biceps tendon. This should lead to an immediate relief of the discomfort felt in the shoulder during the bench press. While some would think that this shift of the load to the triceps would diminish the benefits to the chest, that is actually not the case. In many cases, people who have shoulder pain during bench press have to forgo bench pressing all together.
If this is the case you would miss out on any of the benefits of lifting heavier weights for your chest on an exercise that gives you the best opportunity to do so. So even though you are shifting some of the load away from the chest you are at least still giving your chest a good portion of the work. Some will have to decrease the weight used as an alternative. Again, with this tweak you will see that you can immediately resume lifting heavier weights during the bench press without having to skip the exercise all together.
Try this technique the next time you try and bench press with pain. You should notice that your pain decreases immediately and you are able to perform the exercise once again.
For a complete program that not only trains you like a professional athlete but puts the science back in strength along the way to ensure that you stay healthy while doing so, head to http://athleanx.com and get the ATHLEAN-X Training System. See how training smarter can get you training harder without having to miss time in the gym because of pain or discomfort.
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