Ex-Competitive Lifter Who's Lost All His Confidence. Need Advice

Lay off the juice until you’ve had a good year under the bar. This will enable your connective tissues to gain some strength.

TLDR: Highly individual. Listen to your body. Volume and/or intensity/weight could need tweaking because either could be driving your issues.

Sounds like periodising a bit, slowing progression (5kg or less) or decreasing average volume would keep you making gains and smash your joints a bit less. Many programs periodise to continue to stimulate gains while optimising recovery e.g. a really simple but tried and true method is alternating heavy and light sessions.

Some guys can bench 4x heavy-ish a week and be fine other guys bench heavy every other workout. Progression is likewise dependent on strength levels. Linear progression, going up each week or sesh, could be 5kg or for stronger benchers like 20kg +

More is better if you can recover from it muscles or joint/connective tissues wise. If you ain’t recovering then less will be more. More rowing is for seperate issues or prevention of certain issues. It won’t fix too much benching.

If you’re having shoulder issues already then Smolov for squat and bench is guaranteed to make it much worse. You would be better off just quitting everything right now, save yourself the pain and suffering.

You sound like the sort of person who needs a coach, seeing as you seem to lack decision-making skills.

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Coaches won’t know as much as he does. He’s an ex-competitive lifter.

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Quit everything? While I’m ahead and making solid progress? Expert-level advice…
That’s the kinda crybaby attitude I’m tryna avoid, not reinforce

Okay thanks sounds like a good idea if it’s a known method to alternate heavy/light days. Would it decrease risk of shoulder injury on a ‘Heavy’ day if I were to use less impactful press exercises? For example maybe skipping the Barbell Press and substituting with dumbbells with a more neutral (or shoulder friendlier) grip? Or mix match loads of diff exercises like bodybuilders do- it does seem a lot of tricep related movements always have either shoulder or elbow risk though.

With my current progression my muscles can handle 4x a week, bones/tendons/rotator I’m unsure of- I still must have some tolerance there from lifting ages ago as I was pushing similar weight but I’m unsure of IF, how and when anything could potentially ‘pop’. Do bones/joints also have ‘memory’ of what weight it can handle, how fast does this degrade?:face_with_monocle:

I’ve always been told to row/pull as much as you press in the same direction (vertical/horizontal). Never understood the reasoning behind it, but I’ve always had a lagging back and a trouble keeping my upper back straight during rows/deadlifts, upper back is always the first to break form and round doing heavy DLs and even rows.

Can poor scapular retraction/weak upper back translate into shoulder issues for bench press? What kind of preventive measures??

If anyone knows thanks!

Yes…?

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Do you have any speciality bars? I’m finding squatting with the giant camber bar is really helping my shoulders. I won’t recommend smolov as it seems most lifters get injured doing it.

Once again these things a highly individual. Implementing a smart change, observe effects and then decide where to go from there whether that means making it permanent, ditching or something different.

Switching to more shoulder friendly variations would likely be beneficial. As per above not sure if it would be necessary. Exercise selection is probably less important than controlling volume and intensity for your injury prevention needs.

For someone such as yourself who has a history of shoulder issues and tends to push when they shouldn’t I’d recommend always going the safer route and being conservative.

TBH not super sure on the specifics of this one. I know different tissues adapt and de train at differing rates. I know the rate of connective tissues adaption is slower than muscular. That’s about it. Therefore either do some research or play it safe in general.

In general is solid advice for health. Some guys like 1:1 some more either way. Pulling doesn’t balance/cancel out the joint stress of your pressing movements though.

Good technique is non negotiable. I’d start there. Less likely to be about your upper back not being strong enough and needing more work.

Learn to set your upper back tight and just as important not to lose that position and tightness afterwards. Look up drills on YouTube there’s lots.

You’re missing the point. What you are doing is fucking stupid. You are making progress, but you had to take drugs to make that progress, your numbers still suck, and your shoulders and back are fucked up. Now you think that doing a high frequency high volume program for 2 lifts at the same time is a smart way to go. It’s not.

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