G’day from sunny Western Australia, doctors. For context, I’m a 40 y.o. who’s been training about two years (spent too long doing StrongLifts and SS NLP, responded very well to The Bridge 1.0, and have continued to make productive use of BBM programs). During a recent run through the Hypertrophy template, I developed a persistent niggle in my left shoulder that was mainly exacerbated during OHP. It never got to the point where I’d class it as “painful”, but it was definitely affecting my form and progress. In the process of watching many of your videos, I eventually self-managed the issue by deloading on OHP (and BP to a lesser extent), mixing in some high bar squat, and writing copious notes after each session about what seemed to “work” (i.e. allowed training without discomfort). At the time of writing, the issue seems to be resolving by itself (albeit a little slower than I’d wish).
My question actually relates to supplementary exercises related to shoulder fitness over the long term. I can find endless online articles with suggestions for the “4 Essential Rotator Cuff Exercises Every Athlete Should Be Doing!”, but are there any movements or supplementary exercises that you recommend to maintain shoulder mobility and health (especially in the older trainee)? Thanks in advance, and apologies if you’ve covered this elsewhere - y’all have quite the corpus of work out there now.
Hi there!
Very glad to hear you’ve done well with the templates, AND have managed to use our material to fix your own shoulder issue!
Your question carries the implication that the issue your experienced (or pain / injury in general) result from some sort of strength deficiency / “imbalance” needing specific direct training to correct. We would dispute this assertion and, as usual, argue that pain and injury are far more complex and multifactorial than this oversimplified internet-guru-idea.
Your rotator cuff muscles are receiving plenty of training stress between benching, pressing, pulling, rows, etc. What is far more likely is a load management issue - in particular, some “dose” combination of intensity, volume, and technical execution that may have been a bit higher than the threshold of tolerability for the tissues of your shoulder. So when dealing with this sort of thing we often check technique first (not because “poor technique” causes pain, but because it can repeatedly distribute stress across the tissues in a way they are unadapted to), then consider whether any programming changes are indicated (i.e., a temporary reduction / adjustment in volume and/or intensity, with a gradual re-increase to generate the necessary tissue adaptations to facilitate continued training.
So, in short … we don’t think our programs are deficient in “pre-hab” work, or that “pre-hab” work is necessary in the context of a well-designed strength program - because the strength program is the “pre-hab”.
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Thanks for the thorough reply. My own suspicion for the cause (which I didn’t want to state before) was that I tried pushing OHP higher than I should have while doing the Hypertrophy template and hurt something. In hindsight, that program only has OHP once/week and I probably let the ego take over a bit. My takeaway is that I need to be less squeamish about posting video form checks of my pressing here and elsewhere.
Thanks again!