Chest Workout with Shoulder Issues

[lucidblue]

A few suggestions


5) find out what is wrong with shoulder on overhead movement, if it hurt on pressing overhead you have a problem if not then you might need to use a rope instead to allow more freedom in the shoulde joint

It definitely hurt while pressing.

 

[Lord_Suston]

There a few thing that can be wrong
1)your rotator muscle can be real weak or torn,or not firing right
2) Rear delt are too weak to keep shoulder tight in socket
3)AC joint had some damage to it and should ahave it looked at
4) need to drop weight and reassess your form
5)tricept long head can be torn or really weak

My best advice would be work the RC muscles and lighten the weight on Incline and military and French press a lot and see if your shoulder still hurts. If it doesn't then slowly add weight over time (5lbs every other week) and monitor progress and form. Make sure form is perfect, not good but perfect. If your shoulder hurts when light or no weight is present then go see a doc on the should whether is be a chiro or ortho.

 

[JT Iron]

My friend has shoulder problems but is able to do reverse band press without pain.

 

[WalkingBeast]

I've gotten most of my new workout nailed down. I'm going to give WalkingBeast's training a shot with lower weight like he suggested. Originally, I was going to do chest/triceps same day. I gave this a try yesterday as Day 1 of my workout. Since I've started working out more actively, I've had a high school shoulder injury flare up. I've been doing rotator rehab exercises and haven't had much of a problem is several months. However, I've had to keep my shoulder and chest workouts light. My chest is extremely weak compared to the rest of my body because of this. The plan for my new workout was do the following on chest/triceps day:

Incline DB Bench 6x12
Decline Bench 6x12 (switching up from flat bench, b/c I've been doing that for awhile).

Close Grip Bench 3x12
Overhead Extensions 3x12
Tricep Pushdowns w/ Vbar 3x12

This didn't work too well for me. I had to make the weight extremely light on the DB inclines, to do the 6 sets, but I felt fine. I tried the decline bench for the first time and couldn't even do the bar. So, I tried assisted dips instead and could do them, but wasn't really feeling it in my chest that much. Within a couple sets my shoulder was irritating me.

Close grip bench has never been a problem for me, so that worked well. Then I tried overhead extensions.... well, that really bugged my shoulder. Should that be bothering the shoulder? My original shoulder injury was on an overhead shot in tennis, so I'm wondering if that is why overhead extensions irritated it last night (I may just go back to skull crushers). Finally, I moved on to tricep pushdowns (always a part of my workout) and my damn shoulder starts popping. It never does that with pushdowns.

I'm definitely going to separate chest and triceps into different days. Might put triceps with back and biceps with chest....

BIG QUESTION:
What lifts can I do to really get my chest stronger without this shoulder irritation?

Apologize for long story, but wanted to give background.

Im glad you decided to incorporate some of my routine into your training. I think youll like the outcome. For now, Id say to lay off the exercises that cause pain in your shoulder and try to work around the injury, give it time to heal. Its difficult to strengthen the chest without some type of press however. Do you have hammer strength machines at your gym, or some quality pin loaded chest machines? Sometimes the angle of a machine, or certain exercise wont irritate your shoulder as much. Might want to experiment with that and see what feels comfortable. Best of luck with the routine and contact me if you have any questions at all.

 

[d3track]

i was reading ls's suggestion of the barbell, i may get flamed, but would a smith machine be an ok alternative to db as well?

 

[lucidblue]

Thanks everyone! All of the feedback has been really helpful. I will give some of the suggestions a shot next week and see if I notice any differences.