Shoulder Impingement

Training Q&A [Moderated]
1

Dr. Baraki and Dr. Feigenbaum,

I am a 21 year old (5’11" and 200 lbs) who has been experiencing shoulder pain in my right shoulder when bench pressing over 105 pounds and pain in both shoulders when reaching behind my back. For context, my previous one rep max on any given day was 205 lbs. I went to the sports medicine doctor at my university who told me to do rotator cuff and upper back strengthening exercises. My Olympic lifting coach at the time (who was also a physical therapist) suggested that I had a shoulder impingement and that I should do as my doctor suggested.

That was about a year ago. I am still experiencing the same pain after doing those exercises for 6 months consistently. A month ago, I began following Dr. Baraki’s advice on pain and injuries. I have been doing my best to move my shoulders around without getting to an intolerable pain. For the past month, I have thrown out the low weight rotator cuff exercises and have been pressing with no problem using the Starting Strength technique. I have also been bench pressing at weights that I can tolerate (3x5 @ 85) with no improvement on my shoulder pain. I have extensively searched the internet but have found no solutions to my problem. I know this is a tough issue to fix without being in person, but do you have any suggestions? Thank you for taking the time to read my post.

https://youtu.be/9eLP6c2A4aw - This is a video of bench pressing 185 lbs with pain in December.
https://youtu.be/n5Fg8HZJKxg - This is a video of bench pressing 215 lbs with no pain 3 years ago.

2

So you’re currently able to press overhead without any issues?

3

No issues with pressing overhead. My right shoulder makes a cracking noise on some reps, but I do not experience any pain.

4

This would be unusual for an impingement-related rotator cuff syndrome. So I don’t actually know what’s going on with your shoulder on the bench press or when you try to internally rotate (reaching behind your back). All I can say for now is that I’d continue to train the press as much as possible, and see if you can find a 1) weight, 2) ROM, or 3) variation of the bench press that your shoulder can tolerate, and work up from there.