Hello, before I ask my question I would just like to say thank you for spreading your knowledge on strength training. A few months ago, I would read online “Just do heavy sets of 3-5 and you will get stronger” and I then proceeded to grind out a bunch of crap sets with too heavy of a weight and then get nowhere. Zero progress in months. Being frustrated I sat down and started digesting as much as I could about training and came across you guys from Alan Thrall’s channel. Since then I incorporated some of your training methods (Single at 8, estimating 1RM from single, not grinding reps constantly) for only a couple weeks and immediate got results, and got stronger in a matter of weeks. I was sold on your training philosophy and picked up the 12 Week Press Template a couple weeks ago.
Now, I injured my pec from bench pressing. There is pain in my right pec on the muscle belly near the tendon that happened a couple days ago while benching (comp bench, 1 count pause, week one). This has happened to me before in the past resulting in me avoiding the bench, and only using close grip variations as they didn’t seem to worsen the pain or make it flare up again. Also, none of the other exercises worsen the pain. My question is, would it be acceptable to avoid heavy benching for a few weeks and work on rehab? I plan on doing something similar to the Starr Rehab technique. So, I was thinking that I run the program as written minus the bench work, and after training the heavy movements, work on bench with light weights and high reps and gradually increase weight until I get back to normal function pain-free. Bench strength is not my goal, so I don’t mind not making as much progress in the lift. Would this be acceptable in the context of the program?