I’ve been dealing with some AC joint pain for about two months now. I am not sure what if anything led to the pain. It does seem to be more noticeable during and after benching, and to a lesser degree while pressing. Also, I took a camping trip and noticed it was substantially worse after chopping firewood.
Anyway, I have been trying to train around it by lightening the load, doing tempo work and doing much less benching and more pressing. The symptoms have been manageable, but I have not been able to do anything close to my prior benching. Regarding programming, I have been following the bridge.
Going on two months now and with these modifications, I have not really noticed any progress. I am still trying to address what I might be doing that is pissing those tendons off. Is it possible that it could be related to my low-bar squat? I use a thumbs over grip and have never had any wrist or elbow discomfort, although it did take me a few weeks to adjust to how the low-bar squat felt with regard to my shoulder girdle, but that was 16 months ago.
Sorry to hear about the AC issue. Have you had any recent traumas to the area? How old are you? How does bench press and overhead press feel when you are completing the movements?
If you’ve been making modifications to programming and loading for two months with little improvement, then a consult would likely be beneficial: Contact Us | Barbell Medicine.
Thanks for the reply. I am 35 years old, no trauma to the area. Sometimes when I am pressing I don’t notice anything, but I haven’t been able to detect a predictable reason why. When I bench, I notice pressure from the shoulder seemingly pushing onto the tip of the clavicle. It also seems to flare up after chin-ups. I should specify, the shoulder in question is my right shoulder, which is my more dominant one. I notice pain outside of training when I turn the steering wheel to the if my hand is at the top of the wheel, or similar range-of-motion movements. Most of the time, it is more of an irritant than anything else. On a scale of 1-10 the pain has never seemed more than a 4 or 5. Mostly it is discouraging, as I would like to make progress on my lifts, but continue to have frustrating sessions as I attempt to manage this thing.
Gotcha. If you are noticing symptoms throughout the day during unloaded movements, then odds are some major changes need to be made to your training. Typically I recommend decreasing load and working through a tolerable range of motion (not pain free) and then trying to titrate intensity back up. If an exercise is aggravating you consistently through the bench press full range of motion even with an empty barbell and you’ve tried lighter barbells (training bar and/or women’s bar), then I’d try dumbbells at lower load than barbell weight. For chin-ups you can try altering your grip to pronated or sub in lat-pull downs and see if you can tolerate loads lighter than bodyweight. The good news, if you’ve not had an acute trauma then it’s likely this is a load management issue and you are experiencing a sore shoulder but things should improve with appropriate training modifications.
Thanks for the feedback Michael. It gave me a bit of hope. I’m going to continue to be patient at managing the loading. Two days ago I did some full range of motion 5-0-3 tempo bench press with the empty bar, 65, and 85. On the first set with the empty bar I noticed that if I flared out my elbows more, that I had almost no discomfort during the movement–like I didn’t feel the pressure that had been there before, and the next day, in normal living my shoulder felt significantly better. I did some chins and noticed no issues afterwards. What’s puzzling is that I hadn’t been doing much if any bench for a while, so I’m not even sure that that was what was aggravating it during the period without that benching.