I do bodybuilding and a lot of volume, and I pushed it hard on the upper body lifts for a week or two going to failure on heavy lifts. Before that, for a month or so, my left shoulder already felt a bit iffy when doing dumbbell lateral raises, cable facebulls and, to a degree, cable flys. Not painful but it felt like all the stress on the left side was going in the shoulder/upper arm more than anything. After a particularly gnarly chest session with a lot of heavy wide grip benching and dips and flys, my left shoulder felt pretty horrible the next day. As in something felt wrong, not just muscle soreness. Like pinching in the tendon. I’ve done a light week now and the pain has gone down a ton, but it’s still there. It’s not something I notice in everyday life, but when I’m chilling out at night on the couch I’ll definitely notice it when lying down and raising my arm up from my body - I get a painful, pinching sensation in the shoulder. Not super uncomfortable but enough so I know that somethings messed up. I can make flare up by lying down on my back and pushing my arm up against something - like raising the left arm up from the body, resting the right arm on top of it and then pushing the left arm against it producing force. This will have the pain in the left shoulder flare up.
However, I just had a light gym session where I benched at RPE 7 and did high rep cable flys as well as dumbbell incline bench around RPE 6. And none of it really aggravted the pain. I did not feel any pain at any point during the lift. On the bench I felt like it might sort of possibly come around if I flared my elbows slighly more. So I didn’t. I also benched with a slightly more narrow grip. And on the flys I tried to position myself in a way that would put the least amount of stress on my shoulders.
I’m just wondering what sort of issue this sounds like to you but most importantly: is it OK to just continue onwards do you think? And would you guess that this was caused by too much intenisty and volume for too long?
Hey, sorry to hear about your shoulder issue. We need a consultation with you to provide individual advice and recommendations. If you are interested, please complete our intake paperwork here: Pain & Rehab Consultation
Also, for general recommendations on adjusting training during these experiences, please see this article: Pain in Training: What To Do?