Shoulder injury from safety bar squat

Last Thursday, I was doing 3 x 5 box squats with the safety bar squat (ssb). After finishing, I noticed discomfort in my left shoulder (minor pain), but was still able to bench 3 x 6 at RPE 6 with relatively little pain. Fast forward to today (Monday), and I can do a set of 5 back squats at RPE 7 easily, but I cannot even bench 100lbs (normally I’d be benching close to 2x this number).

Here are my symptoms (I have read the barbell medicine article on pain):

  1. The bone above my acromion is painful to touch. Did I seriously fuck up with the ssb?

How can you injure your shoulder using the ssb? I think as the sets got heavier I was subconsciously pushing upwards with my left shoulder which caused this. I’m asking
about this because my coach suggested using the ssb while I’m rehabbing my shoulder injury - but it was the ssb that “caused” this in the first place!

  1. The Hawkins test produces pain (I learned of this test from another thread on here where Austin Baraki mentioned rotator cuff syndrome).

It is also “generally” uncomfortable to move my shoulder up and down (sometimes there’s even clicking).

  1. The pain when barbell benching is right at the top of the range of motion. I can lower the barbell about 2 inches before feeling pain.

What I’m doing at the moment:

  1. For all pushing movements, I will switch to the swiss bar (neutral grip). I could bench 100lbs today with the swiss bar without pain, which is good news.

It does not surprise me that switching to a neutral grip is more friendly than a usual barbell in light of the Hawkins test, simply because the neutral grip
somewhat removes the internal rotation component of the bench press.

  1. I will do all the usual variations of banded/cable external rotation exercises.

  2. For the back squat, this has to be the most confusing. The ssb is often touted as a variation of the squat for those with shoulder injuries. I guess I could try to

ssb squat without using my left hand?

Thanks.