What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.
So, the dumbbell bench press is by far one of the most important, foundational exercises
that you can do.
It's one of those that you know you should do.
But what happens is when you try to do it and your shoulder kills you when you do it,
it's one of those where you start saying "Should I continue to do this because it's hurting
me so bad?"
I'll tell you that if the root of your problem is a bicep tendonitis – which a lot of times
it is – I'm going to show you a way that you can instantly fix that today by changing
the positioning of your arms during the movement.
I'll tell you why that actually works.
Now, there are a lot of people that will say that a bicep tendon is not, of course, the
only reason why your shoulder will hurt during a bench press.
A lot of times it could be from an instability of infers verdeaus, or other rotator cuff
muscles that are providing you with an imbalance and a lack of stability when you go to press.
We know that stability, or stable surface, when you try to press off of it is extremely
important.
It's like going to do a vertical jump test from a pillow.
You wouldn't do it.
So what we do is, we want to change the positioning here of our elbows during the bench press.
So, typical bench press is done this way.
Here, elbows about 45 degrees from out here, and tucked into our body.
So right about here, then we're going to press up, and together, okay?
Now, what I feel, especially now because I have a labrum issue, which is intimately involved
with the bicep's tendon because it basically attaches to the point of my labrum that's
torn.
So, any tension through the bicep is going to pull on my torn labrum.
But you could just have an isolated bicep tendon inflammation.
What we have is, we've got to start trying to figure out how we can shut down the bicep's
tendon a little bit during the press.
So all we have to do is sort of push the bottoms of the dumbbells here, up toward the ceiling.
Okay?
So what I did was I took them from this level position to a bottoms ups, or pinky up, positioning.
What it does is two things.
First of all, it takes my arm and it goes from here to here.
So I've just dropped my arm in front of it a little bit, created a little more space,
a little more of a neutral position inside the shoulder, and also almost the equivalent
of doing a shoulder press, how we usually do it over here.
I tell you how the landmine setup actually helps to alleviate a lot of the pain.
We're doing the same thing there, but more importantly, what it's doing is, by going
pinkies up, I'm actually getting a little more tricep here during the press.
Immediately, the pain that I feel in my shoulder when I press from here is gone.
You try it yourself and you're going to feel it yourself.
You'll have pain free bench-pressing for the first time in a long time and it's because
what we've done is, yeah, we're increasing the activation of the triceps just a little
bit because we've got a little bit more elbow flexion going on here than we did when we
were like this, okay?
Then you could hardly see it from there, but the idea is, the elbows are bending more so
there's more tricep activation, which will in turn inhibit the muscle on the other side
of the joint.
So if we can activate the triceps we will turn off the biceps in turn.
That will take some of the tension off of this, and in my case it won't pull so much
on the torn labrum, or in your case, if you have this biceps tendonitis or inflammation,
it will activate it to a lesser degree so it won't be kicking in trying to stabilize
as much.
That pain that you get associated with that will go away.
So if you're going to start doing your bench presses, remember you have two options in
the beginning.
You could have ditched doing the bench press altogether because you can't handle the pain,
or you have to lighten the weight substantially.
In this case you'll be able to still stick with the heavier weights and you'll still
be able to stick with the exercise.
If you've found this video helpful, guys, make sure you leave your comments and thumbs
up below.
I know it's a little bit wordy at times in terms of the PT side of it, but we're trying
to put the science back in strength so you're not just learning the fix, but you're knowing
why the fix works.
That's going to make it stick for a lot longer and make sense to you.
If you're looking for a program that puts the science back in strength for 90 straight
days – literally, it takes you by the hand rep by rep, workout by workout, and meal by
meal – head to ATHLEANX.com and get our ATHLEANX training system.
If you've found this video helpful make sure and leave your comments and thumbs up below
and let me know whatever else you want to see.
I'll do my best to bring them to you in the days and weeks ahead.
I'll see you later.