So it's like this - a couple months back now I did some heavy (for me at least) pressing with a kettlebell and things haven't been the same since. During the workout in question I was strict pressing a 40kg bell, I got this funny feeling so I ended the session a little early. Since then, I haven't been able to press nearly as much weight. I'd say I've hardly done any strict pressing but I can still push press. In the push press the path of the bell is quite vertical but in the strict press the part where the bell travels out and away from the mid-line that just doesn't work for me anymore. Maybe you know that stretch where you place the fingertips and palm of one hand on the spine between the shoulder blades and with the other hand pull the upward pointed elbow across? In the army I think we called it the shoulder stretch but I've also done quite a few in martial arts and even a few recreationaly. I hadn't really done that stretch in a years or three, I don't know what purpose it really served, but trying that now is painfully tight. If I lay wrong, or put my hands back behind my head too fast, or any number of other things that I'm discovering more of every week I'm met with some intense shooting "pain" coming vaguely from what an anatomy chart might label the teres major. I put pain in quotes because it's not exactly pain sometimes, though other times it definitely is. It feels more like a super intense stretch than outright pain, like some muscles have shortened a few inches.
So going back to the idea of the shoulder stretch - I've read (maybe it was by some crackpot) that muscles too flexible tend to not be as strong and can cause problems down stream. Could it be that doing some PR pressing with a kettlebell half my bodyweight did cause some shortening of those muscles? What should I be working on to get my old pressing numbers back? Anybody else ever experience something like this?