What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.
Today I'm going to start a series that I think is going to be one of the most helpful for
you.
That is, we know that there are certain combinations of joints, and exercises that don't really
go that well together.
Feel free to cringe along.
If you've got bad knees and you're doing leg day.
Not usually a good combination.
Or if you've got bad shoulders and you're training your chest, or your shoulders.
Or maybe a bad back on leg day, or a bad back on back day.
We're going to get to all these, but today I wanted to start with training your chest.
More specifically, we're going to go exercise by exercise.
Training your bench-press when you've got a bad shoulder.
Now I'm going to tell you this.
One of the worst things you could do is not exercise at all.
As a matter of fact, because of the cycle of breakdown, and how our tissues operate,
and repair themselves, usually doing nothing is going to lead to more weakness, which is
going to make you more vulnerable, to even additional breakdown, and then that cycle
starts and you're never able to get out of it.
So I want to show you how to identify – among the various things that could go wrong in
your shoulder – what's going on in your shoulder.
Then, more importantly, what you can still do, and how you can attack this exercise,
and still benefit from it.
If you haven't noticed already, I'm holding the muscle markers, I'm standing next to Raymond,
we're breaking out all the big guns to make sure that you understand this, okay?
So let's get started.
Okay, so we need to first identify 'what are some of the things that are going on?'
I'll list them out for you right now.
You've probably heard them before.
You can have biceps tendonitis, usually happening with a labrum, or a labrum tear.
Next, you can have an impingement.
That could be from bursitis, it could be from a rotator cuff tendon – the supraspinatus
– that gets inflamed, or it could be, if it gets worse, you can get an actual tear
of the rotator cuff tendon.
Or we could have C-joint problem, or we can actually have an SC-joint problem, which is
both ends here of the clavicle.
But let's start pointing them all out.
If I take out one of the muscle markers here, let's start with the labrum.
The labrum is something I've actually had to deal with.
If I could, I'd like to stab myself right in here, and go as far as I could deep because
this pain is going to be deep, inside the joint.
But what you do feel a lot of times is, because of the location here, the longhead of the
bicep comes up, and attaches right to where the labrum is.
I'll show you here on Raymond in a second.
That is going to actually tend to get involved because it's pulling right in the same spot.
So the labrum is inside the ball and socket, it lines this to provide more of a suction,
and to provide more stability, which is key.
In a second I'll tell you more about that.
But it provides more stability for the shoulder.
So when you do bench-press you're going to need that.
Then the longhead of the bicep tendon is attaching here too, up top.
So the fact is, your pain – you're going to feel a lot times when you cross your arms,
or cross your body – you're going to feel pain, and clicking when you use that arm,
and lift that arm, and move it.
And you're going to feel instability a lot of times when you have an injury there.
That's the first thing.
The next one is that bursitis.
Some of that impingement stuff.
Things that are getting pinched inside the joint, here.
What we have is this subacromial space here, underneath this bone, and you want to have
as much room as you can in there so all the structures, when the arm and everything is
moving inside here, you want to be able to move all that without getting things pinches
into each other.
So the bursae sits up here, first, about where my finger is, and then underneath that is
the rotator cuff tendon, which is the supraspinatus, which goes underneath the bursae.
So depending upon how long you've ignored this problem, you either have bursitis that's
inflamed and causing some pain – again, lots of different things can hurt.
Putting your arm behind your back like this can hurt it.
Anything that will pinch it.
Raising your arm up, over your head, or inside an arc like this can cause a pinch at a certain
range because you're running out of space here.
So we want to make sure our shoulders are in a good position when we're benching, to
try and help us with these problems.
If you ignore it longer it can actually go down into the supraspinatus tendon, which
gets inflamed, and then if you ignore it even longer than that it starts to become a tear.
So that's all occurring right at the end here, right at the end of the bone that you can
feel yourself.
You can feel right where that ends.
And all this stuff is going to be happening right in this area, here.
Again, if I let it go for too long it might actually turn into a tear of the rotator cuff
tendon where we start to get radiating pain down here, into the delt.
A lot of people thing they've strained their delt when in actuality, they've probably got
a rotator cuff issue going on that's sending pain down the arm.
Then finally, we have the AC joint.
Now you can actually see and feel – it's this bump, right here.
Where your clavicle meets your acromion.
Right at this joint here.
We have the SC joint where the clavicle meets your sternum.
So you've got the two spots.
In here, and more importantly, out here which is a little bit higher.
Here again, when you have a problem, when you raise your arm up and you get all kinds
of crunching, and popping, when you do bring your arm across your body you're feeling it
here.
You're not feeling it like the labrum, deep inside.
Really, if I go back, behind my body and I do this, and I try to raise my arm up, behind,
I really feel discomfort and pain.
Again, locally that spot there.
So if you go through some of the motions yourself and you can identify where some of your pain
is that's going to be a really big help.
But if not, it's going to probably reveal itself as we get to the bench-press.
So now, let's get to the bench-press and see what it is that's causing your problem, and
more importantly, what you can do to work around it.
All right, guys.
Now that we're on the bench-press, let's start.
We'll pick one right off that bat.
Well go with the AC joint because it's the most obvious.
As I've said, you can look at it, you can see the difference here.
My past injury is still prominent, whereas over here I never had one.
So what we want to do is understand why it's happening.
This is actually the one that can happen, and occur on a single rep of a bench-press
because what matters here most is the targeting of the bar, and the depth of the bar.
So we've been told that – and I told you the other day – how when we press, we actually
move at a natural pressing arc.
We come down, and forward.
We go up, and back.
Down, and forward.
Up, and back.
Just like this.
What people will also tell you is you'll want to target your chest.
Some people tell you about targeting the bottom of your chest.
Others say to target your nipple line.
Well, especially if you're handling a weight that you're not that comfortable with, the
more I target down – the lower on my chest – you see what happens here?
My shoulders – my forearms start to fall inward.
Down, toward my feet.
That, exaggerated there, is what will pop an AC joint, just like that.
That force, that internal rotation force, will pop the AC joint.
So we know that if we already have that problem we want to avoid that.
So you need to fix your depth, you need to fix your targeting.
So first of all, don’t target the lower chest.
Try to target a little bit more in the mid-chest.
Here's a way we can do it.
I always tell you how you want to get your shoulders back, and arch your chest.
You can do that by sticking your chest out – that Superman, right?
Pull it out, here, shoulders back, down, arch.
Now what we've done is, I've brought my chest up so now when the bar has to hit here, what
I'm going to do is – the depth has been fixed.
I don’t have to go as low because I brought my chest up.
Instead of bringing my hands and having my hands chase my ribcage – if it stays down,
where my depth has to go now, put my shoulder in this bad position – I actually have the
ribcage come up to meet my hands so the depth is actually taken care of, and the targeting
is taken care of.
So if you do that you'll find that it's a lot easier to get this right without putting
that AC joint in danger.
Now the next thing.
Let's go with another one that's fairly easy to at least explain what's going on.
The labrum, which is something I've dealt with.
It's not going to get better, guys.
Once you tear it – especially how I have a slap tear, which is a pretty significant,
or long tear – the only thing you can do is get a little bit smarter about how you
train.
But what is compromised here is stability.
The reason why a bench-press can often times cause some discomfort for you is you've lost
the stability.
So if I go back down here – remember, this is the one deep down, inside that you're going
to feel.
When I'm here, and I'm benching, what I've got is, I've got the back of my shoulder here,
on the bench, and that is pushing up, creating support for the back of my shoulder here,
on the bench.
Basically, pushing up in this direction.
My arms has the weight in it.
My hand has the weight in it.
That's going back in this direction.
So what we're getting is this anterior dislocation force.
It's a very uncomfortable thing.
It feels like it could pop out.
Especially if you feel the pain at the bottom of your rep.
Down here, at its extreme range.
If this is where you feel the most discomfort, especially coming out of there, then you're
going to find that's a problem.
This is also because of the extension here of our arm behind our body, back, extending,
where you feel and put the most pressure on the bicep tendon.
So for both of those reasons, in a labrum issue – labrum/bicep tendon involvement
– you're going to feel it the most at the bottom here.
Well, there's a solution for that.
If I came out of this rack here, and I came right down to the floor, we could floor press
because we don’t have that differential anymore with the arms going this way, and
the bench is pushing up this way.
Now the floor is proving all the support evenly from my arm as I press off of it.
You can use dumbbells.
It's controlling my depth.
If I'm sticking my chest up, and out I'm not sacrificing that much in the depth by doing
the floor press.
But what we want to do is, when we dump the weight we don’t want to do this, from what
we just learned.
If I have the dumbbells and I'm done with the floor press, and I go like this to dump
them I just did exactly what I told you not to do, which is causing that quick, forceful,
internal rotation, which could cause the AC joint.
So what we do is, when we're down here we just un-hammer curl them.
Just let them come out, drop to the floor, and be done with it.
So that would be our solution there.
Again, is this ideal for training?
Doing floor presses versus a regular bench-press, or a dumbbell bench-press?
Maybe not, but the key was, in the beginning I told you that you need to continue to train,
and find ways that you can train around it.
At least while it's healing and starting to feel better.
Remember, you're never going to completely heal that situation, but you're going to get
to the point where you don't feel pain anymore when you're bench-pressing.
That's the key.
So now, the other group.
This group over here.
The one where we start with the bursitis, which maybe goes to a rotator cuff tendonitis,
which could go to a rotator cuff tear if we continue to fray, and fray, and fray away.
We're fraying because we've got pinching going on inside there.
If you don’t listen to the pinching, and you don’t adapt to the pinching, and do
something about it you're going to continue to have problems.
You have to look at 'what is the relationship of the elbows to the torso' because we've
got to create as much space as we can.
So if we lift our elbows all the way up, and now I'm working with my arm up here, I've
used up a lot of space here.
There's not much left.
What I need to do is, I need to get my elbows down a little bit so I've got more space to
move my arm and my body.
That's the first thing.
You've heard people tell you – you've heard me tell you – to get your elbows down at
this closer angle to your body when you're going to bench.
The same thing here applies to the bench-press.
The next thing you want to do is, you want to do what I call the 'master tip'.
You want to get your shoulders depressed here.
What we happen to do, we're trap over activated people.
Our traps will go all the way up here just from stress, from always doing stuff in front
of us, texting; you want to get the traps out because when the traps are up you've just
inadvertently shrugged, and created less room in your shoulders.
So you want to get the traps down, depress them from here, and then with your shoulders
down here – when I say 'down and back' it's down that way, and back – now you've pressed,
and you've created a lot more room in that joint, and it feels a hell of a lot better.
Especially for those that are already dealing with impingement issues.
Then finally, you want to talk about – if it's that bad and you can't do anything here,
remember internal rotation with elevation is the problem.
That's going to cause even less space in there.
So you might want to switch from getting off here, to a dumbbell.
With a dumbbell we can change our grip.
So if we go from this position here, internally rotated to bench, we can actually go to a
neutral grip.
But when we neutral grip we're getting external rotation here at the shoulder.
The more external rotation, the more space inside that joint, the more pain free that
press is going to become for you, to the point where we can go all the way over, underhand,
and we can do an underhand bench-press.
Again, you might feel safer doing it with dumbbells because you can dump them that way
more safely than you could with a bar, but you can actually do an underhand bench-press
there with the bar, as long as you're holding on properly, and do that to create more space
in here, and give you an option.
Again, guys, these are all options.
The key is this: I wanted to give you a video that broke down this exercise in particular
as in depth as I could, so really get something out of it, that's going to allow you to continue
to train.
Again, you do not want to stop training if you've got this injury.
You want to see things.
There's a way you can continue to train so you can intervene, and stop that cycle of
pain, and get yourself back on track, getting stronger again, so you can resume your normal
workouts.
Guys, I'm going to break this down for all the other exercises here for the chest, and
I'm going to do all the other muscle groups, too.
And the other exercises that I know cause pain in those 'bad combinations' like I referenced
in the beginning of the video.
In the meantime, if you've found this video helpful leave your comments and thumbs up
below.
Let me know what else you want me to cover here.
Again, as a physical therapist this all matters to me.
It’s not just doing a bench-press to get a big chest.
The fact of the matter is, you'd better be able to do it safely, or you're not going
to be doing it for long.
That's what matters most.
If you're looking for a program that does care about all of it then head to ATHLEANX.com.
Pick any of our programs because I write them all with that in mind.
You can find them using the program selector with the link below this video.
In the meantime, again, let me know if you've found this helpful and I'll do more of them.
All right, guys.
I'll see you back here again soon.