I’m Luca, 28M from Italy, who started SSLP 4 years ago. I notice SS lacked upper-body programming, thus after the end of the SS, I started to do more bench press, e.g. frequency and volume. I have weak upper body strength overall, however, my BP increased from 40kg to 50kg steadily during this period. During Covid and now I have been training with a stall on upper body performance and training: I started to feel growing pain with more volume/intensity when doing upper body exercise, namely Bench Press, Strict Over Hand Press and Dips. I notice the pain was asymmetric around my forearm sometimes and then on my shoulder. I started digging down the rabbit hole reading about Shoulder Pain Syndrome (your article) and common issues, e.g. elbow flaring leading long-term to shoulder pain etc. I notice after making videos that my BP is uneven (not a few cms, but more) and that if I force the scapular retraction setup in the bench I feel slight pain as if the friction on my scapular touches nerves. I saw online videos of people with crooked bench presses, with a winged scapula, they look like me.
The problem is that I can not progress nor lift more on the Bench Press or associated upper body exercises involving the shoulder without discomfort/acute pain. My bodyweight increases from less than 50kg to a steady 70kg now. Lower body force increased too, and my physique adapted too to some extent.
I was willing to try, once again, to take in hand this problem and try to fix it. I was thinking of actively focusing during the bench press to:
- tuck in the elbows constantly
- enforce great stability of the upper body through learning how to breathe better
- build a better scapula retraction setup
- try the thumbless grip to have better flexibility on the external shoulder rotation
- (maybe) buy a slingshot to help me re-brain the current technique and bar path.