I have a very narrow(small?) chest and relatively long arm, and terrible at making an arch.
So every time I bench my elbow go way over the point parallel to the bench and that caused me a rotator cuff injury.
Now I think my shoulder is fine and ready to do some bench but I’m still can’t make a big arch and I’m worried that I may be injured again.
I would be grateful if you can give me some advice about how to go back to bench pressing without screw my shoulder again.
A lot of people’s elbows go past parallel and do just fine. Additionally, there’s no indication evidence-wise , that this ROM increases incidence of shoulder pain.
I would bench press in a progressively overloaded manner such that your acute work load doesn’t ramp up too quickly. This should help prevent injury.
Alternatively, consultation with Dr. Miles or Ray on getting you back up to speed may be helpful if you’re concerned.
Sorry to hear about this.
We would disagree that having long arms or allowing your upper arm to drop below “the point parallel to the bench” causes rotator cuff injury.
You don’t need a big arch or “back mobility” to bench safely. You need to manage training loads (volumes, intensities, and frequencies) intelligently and get stronger.
I understand that having a long arm and poor back mobility doesn’t casue issues to everyone. (Even in my case i don’t have any problem on my right shoulder)
But isn’t it also true that flat back narrow grip bench put more stress on shoulder than big arched, wide grip bench? I mean at least for the folks who has shoulder issue
I am also rather narrow when it comes to my shoulders and chest and apart from that I have a weird anthropometry where my upper arms are rather short but the forearms are quite long. This makes my elbows also go down very low when benching. That being said I never had any chronic shoulder issues from bench pressing whatsoever.
I did notice something interesting though that most people probably wouldn’t think about: Some benches in those crappy gyms are super wide and only god knows why. On those benches my triceps actually touch the bench on the way down and this somehow creates a lever onto the shoulder. My shoulders start hurting me within a few sets on those stupid benches. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people’s shoulder issues are caused by being built kinda narrow and benching on those wide benches.
What I do is take one of those standalone benches, which are usually narrower, and put them in a power rack and avoid the wide ones except when I know I’m just doing some lighter bench variations.
No, this is not true.