4 Fixes for Bench Press Shoulder Pain, According to Experts

Safeguard yourself from injury with these alternative exercises and approaches.

THERE’S NO EXERCISE guys love more to anchor their chest day workouts than the classic barbell bench press. It has most of the characteristics a good chest exercise needs: you’ll place a ton of stimulus on the muscle group and it can be progressively overloaded. Do it wrong, however, and you might begin to experience some shoulder pain while bench pressing.

“No matter what kind of lifter you are, there’s a very good chance that you either have dealt with shoulder pain, or you will deal with shoulder pain at some point from this lift,” says Ebenezer Samuel, C.S.C.S., MH fitness director. “That can lead to little issues or more serious issues, depending on how you train and how you deal with that shoulder pain when it arrives.”

Below, Samuel discusses what causes shoulder pain while benching, and four fixes you can implement stop pain in its tracks.

If you’re already dealing with shoulder pain, there are a few things you can do so you can continue to pursue chest gains while bettering your mechanics to fix the pain you’re dealing with.

We know it’s hard to put down one of your favorite lifts. If you take a break by choice and focus on shoring up your weak points, you’ll only have to press pause, rather than ruining the barbell bench for the rest of your lifting career. There’s plenty of other equipment and exercises you can use to get those gains until that happens. Here are a few options.

The dumbbell bench press still allows for pressing heavy, without the extra stress of the closed chain of the barbell press. It allows you more mobility to un-shrug your shoulders and get your elbows into a proper position.