AC joint and surrounding shoulder pain

Pain & Rehab Forum [Moderated]
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Hi guys, thanks for everything you are doing. Basic background: 45 year old male, 5-10 170 lbs, I’ve been training not like an idiot for about 5 years, probably an intermediate in the sense that I make progress hopefully every week or two (when not injured). Squat in the low 300s for 5, deadlift in the low 400s for 5, pressing movements are harder to pin down, which is the topic of the post.

I sprained my left AC joint 8 years ago diving for a softball in a beer league (stupid). Pain comes and goes, I can’t sleep on my left side ever, and I sometimes feel it when benching over the years.

About a month or two ago, I came off of a diet and started to ramp up training volume (an extra set or two of bench and seated press each session, plus some lateral raises). This really pissed off the AC joint. Oops. I’ve tred to work through and around it. For bench, I dropped the weight, reduced, range of motion using a pad on the bar, started with very light weights to ramp up, etc, but nothing has worked and the other day even the bar and 65 lbs caused major discomfort at the bottom of the bench, even with a pad to keep it a few inches above my chest. Seated press feel better but still hurts, again at the bottom of the movement. Standing strict press feels best and has minimal pain, so I am going with that every workout (3x per week) and not benching for a bit. I am progressing well with 2 sets of 6 reps with press and the weight is going up. Is this a good idea? When should I try bench again?

Related, other areas in the left shoulder are now pissed off. My left pec hurts at the bottom of a chin up and start of a deadlift. It doesn’t impact deadlift, but with chin ups I find it causes me to get pulled to the side a little. And now the top of my lat, basically in the back of my left arm, is super sore and hurts a lot during chins. I powered through and did a set of weighted chins the other day, but now just doing a body weight chin is pretty uncomfortable. Maybe just compensation for the AC issue. I’m hoping by sticking to press for a bit, the other areas calm down.

Any other suggestions or advice to handle this? I assume continuing to train press is a good idea since it’s basically pain free. What about lateral raises, face pulls, etc? Wort doing or just likely to irritate and prolong the issue?

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Hey there!

Thanks for joining the forum and for posting your question, though I wish it were under better circumstances.

Sounds like you need a more gentle exposure to the “bottom position” of the presses. I suspect machines, cables, and dumbbells would be useful here, provided you couldn’t tolerate a 12-rep set of ~ 3-0-3 tempo board or spoto press with minimal pain. So, to answer your question, I’m sure you could bench something today, though I think the entire program would likely benefit from being changed given the other symptoms you describe.

Seems like a training load thing given the onset, which is likely related to your programming. What program are you/were you running?

Moving forward, I would consider swapping low bar for high bar/SSB/Front squats, weighted chins and pull ups for lat pull down/high row, and making other changes to directly load the area of concern.

We do have a shoulder rehab template available, as well as a full staff of rehab professionals who would be able to get you on the right track. You can email us at support@barbellmedicine.com and we’ll get you started.

-Jordan

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Wow, thanks for the quick reply.

I lift at home in a gym I built, so I have a barbell and full rack, but no machines or cables. My program was an alternating A/B structure, 3 days per week. A: squat/press/weighted chins, B: deadlift/bench/seal rows. Generally 2-3 sets each in the 4-8 rep range. I throw some curls and lateral raises in at the end if time. I did get a SSB, which really helped the shoulder a lot.

I definitely could bench something. I was doing around 205x6 and linearly progressing when it started to act up. Most recently I did 185x8 and that was brutal.

I’ve dealt with the AC joint itself huring before, and usually rest was enough for it to calm down. I’ve never had the associated pain in the pec and lat. Anyway, I might go to band assisted chins for a bit, stay with just standing press, avoid benching, etc and see if things calm down. I’m plowing through your podcasts and trying to figure out the right balance between over and under doing it. It’s hard.

Thanks again for the reply, I’ll take a look at the links you sent too.

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