We talked about this a while back and I’ll be honest, we’ll eventually talk about it again. For those that didn’t read my first post I have a long history of shoulder issues that predate me ever stepping foot in a gym. I’ve came a long way just to get “functional” but am now in the middle of a tendonitis flare up.

Good news before the bad

I can handle low volumes of intense work and I seem to be adding some of my strength back weekly. The best description of my current state is that I could 100% compete in a powerlifting even and get a decent bench in if I needed to. It just isn’t going to be a PR lift and I’m certainly going to be sore in the following days. While not full recovered, this is improvement.

Bad news time

I still can’t handle volume of any type of intense pressing and my elbow is still flaring up if I push it too hard. Also, the shoulder sometimes “locks” on me in the process of benching and I’ll fail lifts I have no place failing.

With all that being said, I was able to work to 355 on top, 310 on the bottom of a reverse band bench yesterday. Not a PR, but I was able to stabilize 355 on the top portion which I don’t think I could have done two weeks ago.

My next steps

I’ve added in a lot of rotator cuff work and additional stability work with the barbell (I hang kettlebells off bands and do controlled reps) which all seems to be working, I have however came to the realization that I may need to alter dynamic effort (speed work) work for the time being.

You may ask why I’m altering the light version of my day and not the heavy. In short, even though dynamic effort is lighter, you should always push the bar with maximal intention. The act of pushing as hard as I can with low resistance has been leaving my shoulder more beat up that the max effort work.

What will I replace it with? I’m thinking a good old fashioned linear progression starting really light. If I were to start at 185 doing 3 sets of 10, and adding 10lbs a week, I’d have 6 or so weeks before I really started having a hard time. By then my shoulder should be healed and I can go back to normal work. I just need to keep doing all of the other recovery work in the meantime.

My goal is for you to see a “BENCH PR” post by my birthday in July. I have 2 months, lets see what I can do!