Bench Press Pain Solution (ONE SIMPLE DRILL!)

Build muscle and fix your joints at the same time…

What’s up, guys? Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX. com. If you have pain when bench pressing then this is an absolute must watch video for you. As somebody that actually deals with lots of pain when I bench press in my right shoulder due to a torn labrum, I can vouch for the fact that this technique that I’m going to show you here will work.

The good thing is, it’s going to work right away. What we’re going to do is show you something you can do right before the next time you bench press that’s going to substantially decrease the level of discomfort you feel on the exercise, help put your shoulder back in the position it should be in when you do the exercise, and now allow you to start getting some benefits from it. So, what do we do? You take a band and you wrap it around a pull up bar above your bench press. So even if you’re training at home, position your bar right near a doorway if you have to, hook it over your doorway pull up bar.

What you’re going to do is you’re going to do these three drills that I’m showing you here. Really, two drills. You’re going to start with an underhand grip, thumbs out, pinkies in to externally rotate the arms this way. Why do we externally rotate the arms? Because we want to clear the space inside the shoulder joint.

All the issues that we deal with – predominately most of the issues that we deal with as average guys – is we either have impingement where we’re not creating enough space inside that joint, or we have things like I have; my shoulder instability issues due to a torn labrum. What I can tell you is that even the bicep tendon could get inflamed in that scenario because it’s not provided with enough space inside that joint and it’s getting pinched because of all the instability. But we have a lot of help, we just never use it. The help is coming in the form of our shoulder’s stabilizers. So back here to the exercise, when I externally rotate my arms out I actually get activation of some of the muscles in our back that will actually help to stabilize the scapula.

More than that, now I go and I perform a reverse row, or pull down, or whatever you want to call it here. What we’re doing here is we’re retracting the scapula and getting the muscles in between the shoulder blades to actually engage. Pinch them back, help even more to pull our shoulders into the right position. So here’s the position that a lot of us will try to bench from: the shoulders off the bench, rounded forward, probably a result of a lot of our popular bad habits. But it’s creating a nightmare scenario for anybody that either already has impingement, or is on their way to impingement because you’re simply not creating enough room for your shoulders to operate safely.

You can see that with this quick little fix, by engaging the shoulder blades, look at the position. Look how much better my shoulders sit in their relative joints so that I could actually push with some power. That’s the key, too. It’s not just about positioning in the right way, but it’s also provided a strong platform for me to push off of. If nothing is stable, how are you ever going to push off of that surface?

You need to be rock hard so you can push back in the opposite way. So, we go back to this position with the shoulders now activated, and after we do about 20 repetitions, in a nice, slow, controlled manner with our hands underhand, now we got to overhand grip and we try to simulate the grip width that we normally have with the bench press bar. For me, I like to go a little bit more narrow because I like to have a little bit more of that already pre-adduction of the arms so you have the chest activated a little bit more. If I were to go a little bit wider I don’t feel like I get as much of a contraction in the chest. But whatever you feel comfortable with, or whatever you normally bench press, that’s where you’d want to do the overhand grip pull downs now.

The same thing is applying here. Shoulder blade is engaged, have the shoulders pulled back and down and do your 20 repetitions here. So after 40 reps, now go grab those dumbbells and go – or do the barbell, whatever the hell was causing you pain before – I will guarantee you that 90% of it is gone. It’s not magic, it’s just actually applying some physiology here and allowing those muscles that want to do the job so bad to stabilize your shoulders that you’re not allowing it to. If you just activate them just a little bit with these two drills you’re going to see that they’re on alert, they’re at attention, and they’re ready to do what they’re supposed to do.

Now, in order to keep that there you want to incorporate a little bit of this into your regular routine. Now, a lot of this, guys, is already built into our ATHLEANX training system. I understand the pit falls of where we fall apart, and understand what things we need to do to keep our shoulders healthy. It’s not just about getting big and strong and faster and quicker, and all the things that athletes really want to become. It’s about doing it safely and doing it for the long term.

If you’re looking for a program that puts the science back in strength, then head to ATHLEANX. com and get your training program. In the meantime, if you’ve found this video helpful, try this out. I promise you, if you are a shoulder pain sufferer with bench press it’s going to help you. I guarantee it.

All right, I’ll be back here again in just a couple days.