Bilat Anterior Shoulder Pain with Bench Press, Right biceps pain with bench press

Pain & Rehab Forum [Moderated]
1

Hi Barbell Medicine Team,

I have been working through the LP for about 6 weeks now. I am having bilateral anterior shoulder pain on my bench press and right biceps area pain as well. It occurs as I move up to work sets and is a 2/10. It seems to ache more for 1-2 days after a day including benching. I have worked with an SSC in person and reviewed my videos so I don’t think there are any gross form errors.

My last bench session was:

45 5,5
60 5
75 3
90 2
101 5x3 (3 sets of 5) at an RPE of about 8

I watched Austin’s video “4 steps for managing pain” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdwj5ORPmX0 and am going to experiment with decreasing the load next session.

Any recommendations for how much to decrease by? Any particular percentages that seem to work well? Are there any other variables I should examine?

Thank you all very much!

2

Definitely sounds like a loading and recovery issue. I tend to go conservative in these scenarios and add in tempo (3.0.3) with high volume and low intensity (3x15) then slowly inverse the two variables as weeks progress and symptoms improve.

3

Michael thanks for your reply. For that rep/set scheme and tempo work what %RM would I start with? Or what RPE should I aim for on these work sets?

4

If you are using a slow tempo, then you can let that dictate RPE and go fairly high (8+). Also, symptoms will be a part of the process which will also regulate RPE.

5

Thanks so much! Oddly the pain has gone away so I am back to benching “normally” now. Thank you again!

1 Like
6

Glad to hear the issue is resolving. Keep us posted!