Tag: FITNESS

How to Bench Without Shoulder Pain

How to Bench Without Shoulder Pain
The bench press. It goes without saying that it’s among the most popular exercises you’ll see in the gym. And with it’s popularity comes a myriad of issues. The most common being shoulder pain.
But rather than training smarter, the typical strategy is to “fight through the pain” and hope it subsides. And more typically than not, this strategy fails.

So instead of benching in pain, here are some suggestions to make your bench press more “shoulder friendly”.

General Guidelines When Benching with Shoulder Pain

Refer out. The longer you ignore pain, the longer you’ll hurt. Get a second opinion from a professional. Because at the end of the day, you’re (probably) not a doctor or a therapist.
If it hurts, stop. Pain is your body telling you something’s off. Your body is smarter than you. Learn how to listen to it.
Do more push-ups. Ah, push-ups. They ain’t as easy as you might think. Do them right and your chest will blow up. And from a shoulder-health perspective, they take the cake over benching. Push-ups are a closed chain exercise, allowing more freedom of movement in the scapulae (shoulder blades). As opposed to benching, which is an open chain exercise where your shoulder blades “hug” the bench. Yes, you need to maintain scapular stability and contact with the bench during the bench press for maximal strength output. That said, overtime this may cause shoulder issues for some lifters if they neglect exercises that allow greater movement in the scapulae.
Train around it. There’s always something you can do. There’s more than one way to bench, and there’s more than one way to build your chest and triceps. Find what works for you.
Always warm up. This is non-negotiable. Think of some of your favourite bodybuilders or athletes. All of them warm up. Every single session. There’s no reason you shouldn’t do the same.
Do more upper back work. Your upper back is the “shelf” the bar sits on during the bench press. A strong upper back maximizes your strength output and minimizes your risk of injury. When it comes to benching, you’ll be able to press more weight while keeping your shoulders happy.
Do more horizontal rows. More often than not, horizontal rows are the missing ingredient in the plethora of programs out there. The general prescription is a 2:1 rowing to pressing ratio. Personally, I don’t think that’s realistic for most people. If you do 8 sets on the bench, do you really think you’re going to do 16 sets of rows? Alternatively, you can just do an extra set of rows vs. presses. For example, if you do 5 sets of bench press, do 6 sets of rows. That’s already more than most people do anyway.
Do more mobility work. Mobility is your joints’ ability to actively travel through their intended ranges of motion. When you can’t get into an optimal position, you compensate your form and your joints suffer. So when it comes to the bench press, mobility work for your shoulders and thoracic spine (upper back) isn’t just recommended, it’s required.

Bench Press Variations to AVOID with Shoulder Pain

Flat barbell bench press and wide grip bench press. The fixed position of the straight barbell on the flat bench press can cause shoulder pain for many lifters. When most people bench, their elbows are “flared” out with about 90 degree flexion. This is generally referred to as the “impingement zone”, which can cause issues if there’s already pre-existing pain/limited mobility in the glenohumeral (shoulder) joint. Generally speaking, dumbbells or the Swiss bar are better options for your shoulders.
Inclined bench press. The greater the incline angle, the more emphasis is put on the shoulders during the bench press. If you’re experiencing shoulder pain when you bench, it’s usually recommended to reduce the incline as much as possible. This way, you minimize the stress placed on your shoulders and emphasize the pecs and triceps instead.
Chest fly variations. No, this isn’t a bench press variation but it’s still commonly seen in the gym and notorious for causing shoulder pain. While chest fly’s are a great way to build a bigger chest, they’re not the only way. Remember…if it causes pain, stop. You’ve got plenty of other options.

How to Reduce/Eliminate Shoulder Pain When Benching

Reduce the range of motion. Most people don’t have the mobility required to do a full range of motion bench press without putting their shoulders in a vulnerable position. Reducing the range of motion will reduce the amount of shoulder mobility needed to perform the press. Some ways you can reduce the range of motion in the bench press include:

Floor press: Same as the bench press, but you’re laying on the floor instead of a bench. You can use dumbbells or a barbell.
Pin press: Place the barbell on a couple of pins in the squat rack and perform presses. This is a great way to not only reduce the amount of shoulder involvement in the press, but to also overload the lockout of your bench. Pin presses allow you to load more weight, increasing your triceps/lockout strength in the bench. So when you go back to regular benching, you’ll be stronger as you lockout your arms.
Board press: This is a powerlifting staple. Have a friend hold a board on your chest and bring the barbell down to the board each rep. Similar to pin presses, this reduces the range of motion in the bench press and increases your lockout strength/triceps engagement.

Use a narrow grip. The closer your elbows are “tucked” into your sides, the less stress is placed on your shoulders. This is typically a harder press variation given the lack of pec involvement and increased emphasis on the triceps. Minimal abduction of the shoulder is generally a safe idea when benching with shoulder pain.
Use a neutral grip. Most people have internally rotated shoulders and a rounded posture. If you’re benching and want to eliminate (or at least greatly reduce) shoulder pain, try using a neutral (palms in) grip. This externally rotates the shoulders at the top of the press, which is generally a “friendlier” position for the shoulders.

Shoulder-Friendly Bench Press Variations

Floor Press Variations

Swiss Bar Floor Press
Dumbbell Floor Press

Close Grip Press
Neutral Grip Press

Flat Bench Dumbbell Press (with External Rotation)
Dumbbell Floor Press (Palms In)

Slight Decline Bench Press

Summary
Shoulder pain sucks, but it doesn’t mean you can’t train around it. Warm up, do more mobility work, train your upper back, try these shoulder-friendly press variations, and see a professional if you need more help.

Dan North is a personal trainer and strength-and-conditioning specialist in Toronto. He writes for several fitness publications and keeps up with his own blog.

The Not So Sexy Truth About Training To Failure

The Not So Sexy Truth About Training To Failure
Coaches and athletes love arguing about everything training and nutrition, from low carb/high carb, to calories/hormones, to squats/hip thrusts. Most of these arguments have nuanced answers despite the human desire for concrete black and white answers. The question: “Should you train to failure?” Is no different.
Training to failure is one tool among many. Understanding the components of muscle growth helps direct the use of failure training. A combination of mechanical tension, volume, metabolic stress(think pump), and muscle damage all drive muscle growth. They’re all interrelated though metabolic stress and muscle damage being more concurrent effects of a lot of mechanical tension and volume, than themselves being primary causes of muscle growth.

You’re also managing training volume and intensity against the fatigue you accumulate across your daily and weekly training. You aim to maximize muscle growth from your training within what you can recover from.

Taking every set to failure and beyond rapidly accumulates more fatigue than training effect. You’ll look brutal and hardcore for social media but your results suffer. Not only are you more fatigued across the rest of your workout, you add injury risk disproportionate to the rewards of your training. Greater fatigue often means pushing through less than perfect form.
You might get away with this on smaller isolations but you can expect to eventually suffer if form breaks down under fatigue on big technical barbell compounds. Going to failure on every set of squats, bench press, and deadlifts would crush you with fatigue, unnecessarily risk injury, and just be outright unpleasant to do every training day.
What does the research say?
People love to ignore research by saying “Arnold never waited for the studies, he just figured it out”. This made sense in the 1970’s when we didn’t have as much evidence to go on. We no longer have excuses to hold onto outdated methods, long debunked by good research. This research has validated much of what Arnold and his contemporaries figured out on the gym floor.
With failure training, the research aligns with our best intuition. You optimize your training and muscle growth by maximizing the volume of “tough sets”. Tough sets means taking your sets within a few reps of failure. Consistently hammering against failure doesn’t have an advantage over consistently getting close.
This isn’t an argument against ever going to failure. It’s an argument for sustaining the greatest intensity you can recover from in your training. Too much failure and your fatigue interferes with effective training volume. Too little failure and you don’t develop the stamina and mental toughness to achieve greatness with your physique.
There’s a sweet spot for enough “tough sets” to optimize progress before more sets becomes time and recovery prohibitive. There are limits to how much time most people even have to train in a day and across a week. There’s also a limit to how much you can recover from.
Dr. Mike Israetel calls this maximum recoverable volume, or MRV. Your MRV will grow as you adapt to higher volumes of training and stamina improves. The answer can’t be distilled down to a one size fits all formula, but to help find your sweet spot, track your work and adjust repeatedly until you find a volume and intensity you’re making your best progress from.
Another important reason to consistently train within a few reps of failure is to recruit the largest motor units. As we lift and perform motor tasks, the smaller slow twitch fibers engage first. The larger fast twitch fibers only kick in when needed, requiring significant load or training stimulus to activate. Those large fibers won’t get out of bed for anything shy of hard training near failure. Though we also want to maximize growth of smaller slow twitch muscle fibers, it’s essential to bring the large fast twitch fibers to the party to maximize muscle gain.
8 time Mr. Olympia Lee Haney famously said “Stimulate don’t annihilate.” Lee continues to look great and train in his 60’s, so he was onto something in being the best in the world for nearly a decade while sustaining longevity and health. Dorian Yates once uttered this hardcore mantra: “You must be willing to surrender what you have, train harder than others dare, to sweat with blood and guts for what you could become.” Dorian approached his training with legendary brutality leading to 6 Mr. Olympia titles and a reputation for excessive post failure training. Dorian like Lee is still in the game today as a coach.
Despite the outward appearance of taking everything to failure, Dorian was strategic and surgical in his approach to failure. Dorian took his working sets past failure with a series of post failure strategies. The collective effect was still a lot of tough training volume, and taking the sets that mattered to and beyond failure. Dorian wasn’t doing 25 sets per body part per week all to failure the way some modern lifters imagine they need to. Dorian applied his training effort, stamina, and recovery to maximize his results.

Are You Really Training To True Failure?
In theory true failure isn’t when you can’t do another rep of your set of 300 lbs. True failure would be dropping the weight and continuing until you could no longer bend over and pick up an empty bar. This is clearly an absurd notion, but illustrates that failure doesn’t actually occur when you can’t do another rep of your working weight. You can drop the resistance or take a short rest and continue to do more reps.
Whether by drop sets, forced reps with a spotter’s help, rest pausing before cranking out a few more reps, or any other tactic to “go past strict failure”, technically we can push past our strict notion of failure. This was how Dorian Yates and his mentors Mike and Ray Mentzer attacked their training.
Despite Yates and the Mentzer brothers’ success with this approach. The legion of successful bodybuilders who trained higher volume more akin to Lee Haney is strong evidence aggressive post failure training isn’t the only or optimal way to train, especially for the non-elite bodybuilders among us.
Instead look for the tactics consistent across the board among successful bodybuilders. Nail your sleep, nutrition, recovery, training intensity, work ethic, volume, and most of all consistency. Not to mention genetics, which you can’t influence, and the assortment of over and under the counter supplements synonymous with high level bodybuilding. Then strategically layer in more advanced tactics like targeted training to failure. Failure training fails when it supersedes or interferes with more basic training and recovery principles.
Are You Actually Training Hard Enough?
Should you even be worried about whether or not you should train to failure? Most beginners and intermediate lifters have no concept of what training to failure feels like. Your mind wants to quit long before your body hits the wall. Often we give in when this mental governor says to shut it down. This is partly why we see to few truly great physiques walking around. Few people are willing to do the hard work day in day out, like Haney, Dorian, Arnold, Flex Lewis, and Big Ramy did.

People want shortcuts, magic potions, and biohacks. Anything to avoid doing the actual work or confronting the reality that if you want to build a truly standout physique, you need to show up and do incredibly hard work each day. You need to consistently train near failure, then maximize your recovery.
The goal of your training is to live on the bleeding edge of optimal training. Step over that edge and get hurt and you lose serious time in the gym, the greatest thief of training progress in our world. Failure pushes you closer to, but often over this bleeding edge. You might feel like you’re crushing your workouts, but you may instead by crushing your progress. Training to failure is like the perfect seasoning on a steak, not the steak itself. Too much and the outcome suffers.

References

Scientific Principles of Hypertrophy Training. Dr. Mike Israetel, et al
Carroll, et al, “Divergent Performance Outcomes Following Resistance Training Using Repetition Maximums or Relative Intensity,” Int J Sports Physiol Perform, 2018
Carroll, et al, “Skeletal Muscle Fiber Adaptations Following Resistance Training Using Repetition Maximums or Relative Intensity,” MDPI, 2019
Sundstrup, et al. “Muscular Activation Strategies During Strength Training With Heavy Loading vs. Repetitions to Failure,” J. Strength Cond, 2012
Moran-Navarro, et al. “Time Course of Recovery Following Resistance Training Leading or Not to Failure,” Our. J. Appl. Physiol, 2017