I’ve recently started Olympic Weightlifting (about 5 months), and around 1 month ago, I’ve developed a sharp pain in my right shoulder while performing jerks. The pain is in the back of my right shoulder and goes up the side of my neck. I’ve done strict overheard pressing as well, but the jerk is the only movement that aggravates it. I wasn’t sure if it had anything to do with how explosive the jerk is. The pain occurs with any weight, including the empty barbell.
I work a desk job and my neck can be very tight on some days. I’ve been doing static stretches throughout the workday but haven’t noticed any changes to how tight it is (bringing my ear to my shoulder and holding it, turning my head to the right and bringing my chin to my shoulder). I’ve also started doing TRX rows, scapular pushups and bottoms up kettlebell presses to work on my shoulder stability before my workouts (4 days a week). I’ve been doing this routine for a few weeks now and have taken a rest from performing jerks, but every now and then I’ll pick up the empty barbell to see how it feels but I’m still getting the same pain.
Any idea what’s going on and what I can do for my shoulder? Thanks in advance for all the work you put into the forum!
It might be helpful if we go through your training history (frequency, sets, reps, progressions building into jerk).
Are you doing a push-jerk or split jerk?
Given you recently began progressing weight lifting movements, I’d caution against searching for specific exercises or drills to “fix” anything. Out of curiosity, why was shoulder stability identified as the issue necessitating improvement?
If we want to improve the jerk (push or split) then we need to train that specific movement. Granted we can do it at lower intensity while dosing in lower technical movements with higher intensity like the strict press.
Thanks for the reply! I do split jerks, and before I started my break from split jerks, my typical week of training this movement was 2 times per week of clean and jerks. I was doing 3 sets of 3 at around 70% of my 1 RM with a couple sets before that building up to 70%.
Someone that I lift with is going for his DPT, and he recommended I incorporate some shoulder stability work into my warm-up. He had me put both arms behind my back and saw that my right shoulder had way less internal rotation compared to my left shoulder. He also mentioned that I had some slight scapular winging going on. The little bit I’ve looked into scapular winging, it doesn’t seem like there’s good evidence to support that it would cause pain, but please correct me if I’m wrong.
One other thing that may have been important to mention is that I do have some pain in my shoulder throughout my day when picking up things in a certain way (almost like if I pick something up like an upright row). Another thing that aggravates my injury is when I’m doing bird dogs. When my left arm and right leg is in the air (lot of weight on right arm), and I go to switch to bring my right arm in the air, that is when I feel pain in the back of my right shoulder.
Ok, thanks for the information. I’d shy away from those narratives your friend provided as we don’t have good quality evidence for those “issues” and they are overall not meaningful as it relates to your situation. It’s highly unlikely you have scapular winging unless there’s an underlying neurological deficit such as damage to the long thoracic nerve. If you are experiencing symptoms throughout the day and in addition to training then its likely you are sensitized and modifications needs to be made.