Pain in my Anterior and Middle Deltoid Whilst Benching

My problem with this movement started around September of 2010 but faded away again. It has recently come back and is not going away as it previously did leading me to believe there is a bigger problem than once thought. As of Friday the 7th of January I have finished a three week smolov junior bench cycle.

The pain comes at the very bottom of the range of motion and is mainly in my right anterior and middle deltoid however the left side is affected to a certain degree. This past week of smolov I resorted to using a one inch board, this helped and my pain almost instantly disappeared. However I know that this did not fix the problem it only masked it and was hoping for some advice on how to solve the issue.

I also had a small tear in my right rotator cuff two years ago however other than that I canâ??t say much more about it although if more information is needed I could contact my physio and get the notes off of him which will hopefully be more in depth.

Are you pulling to balance all the pushing you’re doing? Anything else irritate it besides bench? Any scap stability work?

i try to do a pulling movement on every bench day however during smolov since you are only ment to do one assistance movement i did a pullin movement every second training day. my normal training cycle is a westside max effort dynamic effort set up with using a 5/3/1 loading pattern.

The only other thing that irritates it are all specific sholder movements like overhead press and laterral raises etc however these dont cause as much pain as bench does.

The only scpa work i do is scapular push ups before every bench work out and thats it.

Read Cressey’s Neanderthal No More series to start. You’re neglecting your posterior shoulder complex and I wouldn’t doubt if you’re working yourself towards an impingement. I could go into a lot more depth, but that will get you started. At the very least, you’re exceeding your recovery capacity, and not allowing yourself to supracompensate (get stronger via recovery). There could be a variety of reasons behind that, anything from diet to sleep to simply your volume of chest work, but likely a combo.

Thanks alot i shall look into all of that.