Shoulder Pain from Benching - AC Joint

I’ve recently ran into some AC joint pain while running the bridge and I’m hoping someone might be able to point me in a good direction.

A little background on the tweak; After the Friday of week 5, I finished all sets on bench and experienced no pain during or after the workout. When I woke up Saturday it was irritated and I experienced slight sharp pains. I took it easy the rest of the weekend and benched again on Monday. My shoulder was totally fine throughout warm-ups and through the first 3 working sets. After the 4th set it was pissed and it hurt to raise it out in front of me. I continued on to my paused DL’s and it was a little painful, but bearable so I just powered through it, not a solid choice. Pulling didn’t seem to irritate it, but using my lats to anchor down my shoulders/scaps really made the pain flare up.

After that workout my AC joint was sore to touch, sleeping on it was uncomfortable, and the majority of movements caused sharp pains. I did the 800mg/4x a day for 4 days and didn’t work out the remainder of the week, it definitely felt better but was still causing some sharp pains and sore to the touch.

Today I did my pin squats with no pain, worked up to a 115X5X5 press focusing on very strict form and there was no pain during the lifts. After the pressing I followed up with 25X5X2 weighted chins and then a couple BW sets for 5 and 8 reps.

The pain now is probably about what it was prior to the workout today, and It hasn’t appeared to be inflamed at all during the past couple weeks… Just curious as to what the best approach to moving forward would be.

Thanks in advance,
Nick

Sounds like you’ve found the right approach, almost by accident.

I helped Alan Thrall work through a similar AC joint injury earlier in the year that prevented him from benching for several weeks. We found he was able to start out by pin pressing from forehead height without pain, so we started there. Then lowered the pins and increased the weight until he was able to strict press from the shoulders. We worked that strict press up and then introduced some light tempo bench work. Then worked the tempo benches up, eventually got rid of the tempo, and he was back to normal.

Right on, today my shoulder was feeling pretty good so I decided to go ahead and try deadlifts. I was able to work up to a single at 365 with no pain, and then loaded 395 and when I squeezed into position before my pull it irritated the hell out of my shoulder.

Am I better off not pulling for a bit, or should I just keep the intensity way down and volume up?

So there are, in fact, weights that you can deadlift without pain… and you’re asking if you’re better off not pulling at all since you can’t pull certain arbitrary weights?

I think you know the answer to that :slight_smile:

Lol the stupid questions always come back to bite you in the ass… Thanks for your help Austin

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