 Rick Kaselj |
Rick Kaselj is a personal trainer that focuses on helping clients overcome their injuries. Rick’s specialization is the shoulder and did his Masters’ degree project on designing effective exercises for the rotator cuff. He shares with rotator cuff injury suffers and fitness professionals what he has learned in school and from his clients and has put it all into the Shoulder Pain Solved Program.
If You Don’t Want Shoulder Pain When You Lift, Do This
Thanks for all the feedback and voting in the last post.
Now I got a better idea of how I can help you.
Lets get to what you can do to get rid of shoulder pain during your lifts.
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Work Those Little Muscles
I know you want to work those big muscle but the little ones are the ones that stabilize things so you can work the big ones hard.
These small muscles keep things stable so your large muscles can lift heavy weights. An example is your car. If the bolts of the car are the small muscles and the frame is the large muscles, when the bolts were lose, the frame would wobble all over the place and the car won’t go fast but if they are tight and strong the car will go fast.
Take some time to work the scapular stabilizing muscles. These are the muscles around the shoulder blades that turn on and give you a solid base to push when doing the bench press and other pressing exercises.
I will talk more about them in a future post because they are that important.
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Don’t Touch That Rotator Cuff
If you do not have a rotator cuff issue, do not work the rotator cuff. Even if you do have a rotator cuff issue, do not over do it when it comes to training the rotator cuff.
If you fatigue out the rotator cuff, then the rotator cuff cannot do its job and it puts you at greater risk of injuring your shoulder.
It is important to keep the load light and doing 12 repetitions when focusing on the rotator cuff.
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Create Some Muscle Pain
Now this is going to hurt.
Go get a tennis or a round dog ball.
Head over to a wall and press the ball into your pec area and massage it around.
Roll the ball around for 5 to 10 times.
It hurts doesn’t it?
There is a good chance your chest is full of trigger points and you need to do some self massage to loosen up the muscle and get rid of the trigger points.
This will put your shoulder in a better position so it is a less risk of injury and push more weight.
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Get Off the Bench
I know we all want to go to the bench and blast it.
In order to get rid of that shoulder pain, get off the bench.
Keep doing the bench but do the dumbbell bench press. This is easier on your shoulder and works those smaller muscles in the shoulder.
When I say easier, I mean it does not put as much stress and pain on your shoulders.
If you want, bring in the bench press with the bar, once a week but the rest of the week, do the dumbbell bench press.
Final Words on Getting Rid of Shoulder Pain when Lifting
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I know these four things will help you lift without shoulder pain.
So do them.
Just like the last blog post, make sure you vote on what you would like me to talk about and leave me a comment with your questions.
Rick Kaselj, MS
To learn some interesting facts about shoulder pressing, go read Pressing Movements for Shoulder Injuries, another post by Rick. It might change the way you perform the military press.
If you want all of Rick’s best advice at your fingertips, click here to order Rick’s Effective Rotator Cuff Exercise Program.
For a slightly cheaper and simpler read, click here to order Rick’s Shoulder Pain Solved Program.
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Tags: exercise, fitness, health, injuries, injury, injury prevention, knees, mobility, pain, prevent, rotator cuff, shoulders, stability
Thanks for this great info! I experienced hurting my shoulder while lifting heavy weights and it took weeks before I was able to lift weights again. We should learn to do our workouts the right way to avoid injuries. This article is very helpful!
I agree with Rex. Checking to make sure that you're benching with proper form is the first place I'd start. Lowering the bar to high, or bouncing it off your chest are definitely habits that can start to cause you some pain. Rick Kaselj proved to be an excellent resource when I was healing from my shoulder issues, and I'm thankful as heck for that. The mental and emotional pain of being "disabled" is as killer for me as the physical pain.
I would add two things. First, warm up. In my experience, a majority of injuries can be prevented by sufficiently warming up. Secondly, and this is a big one, if you're shoulders are aggravated when you bench press, before you go running to dumbbell presses, take a step back and look at your barbell bench press form. If you've moved your grip in to a close position, then you're encouraging a greater shoulder rotation than if you were to take a wider grip.
If you have consistent problems with pain, the first thing you should do in my experience is to make sure you're doing what you're doing correctly before looking to alternative exercises. Active recovery is great, but if you're training in a way that is conducive to injury in the first place, then you're going to be greatly limiting your progress.
Thank god all my injuries are in my lower legs, pain in the shoulders sounds not fun.
That tennis ball in the muscle trick friggin' hurts. That's probably the one place that a foam roller on the floor doesn't do a good job of hitting.
Thanks for sharing. Rick Kaselj always has quality information.