Sounds like it might be a pec insertion problem. Have you been doing benches off the pins in the rack, or any other partials from a dead stop at the bottom?
Hey all.
First commenting so sorry if my formatting is bad.
I'm a 38 year old man
Numbers are
198lbs bodyweight
496lbs squat
529lbs deadlift
176lbs press
And last and least 264lbs bench
My issue arises when I bench, warm ups are fine but soon as I get to around 190-200lbs I start getting pains in and around my front delts with radiating aches down my bicep (zero tricep pain) but when I hit 240 for my 5s the pain becomes too much and I loss focus on the movement. I can muddle through as the pain subsides after a few minutes but reemerges during every set.
I've bee training years and this hasnt really been an issue before outside of silly mistakes and tweaks but it's never lasted this long or been this consistent.
I've been doing starting strength since Ireland came out of it's last lockdown so probably 6-8 months now on NLP.
Sounds like it might be a pec insertion problem. Have you been doing benches off the pins in the rack, or any other partials from a dead stop at the bottom?
I do a "pause" at the bottom during warm up with them but other then that no.
I've zero issues when I use dumbbells for the press but I twist the dumbbell so my palm is closer to my body rather the parallel, bringing my elbows in closer to the body too. The issue there is, the heaviest dumbbells available at 110lbs and I'm able to rep them for my 3x5 without a major struggle near the end.
I can try and set up in a rack this week coming and test from a dead stop at the bottom.
If you bench from a dead stop and you have a pec insertion problem, it will aggravate it. That's why I asked. But go ahead and do them if you want to.
I'll give them a go and see if it aggravates it. At least then I'll know whether it is that or something else. At least it's somewhere to start.
Thanks for the advise!