Pec Strain

[jleavitt348]

A little history on me, I was a college discus thrower and was 215 lbs at 6'1". I was benching sets of 5 at about 295 lbs. At one point I strained my right pec and took a couple light weeks (135) and some stretching and got back at it. A couple months later, we were maxing out and I ruptured the the pec tendon on my left side. I was 19 at the time and I have lifted on and off since then but never consistent beyond 6 months at a time. I'm 38 now. Doing my NLP and have been adding 5 lbs each workout to my bench. I have not missed a rep yet but last night I was pushing 260 and on the 4th rep of my 3rd set, I felt my right pec strain again and I'm sore as hell this morning. I was able to finish the rep so I'm not worried about a major injury but I can't help feeling my impending doom approaching like it did in college. What advice do you guys have to avoid these types of injuries? I've worked on form, even narrowed my grip to correct a bad habit of flaring my elbows and to involve my triceps a little more. If you have anything at all, I would appreciate it.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Stop benching. With your injury history, you're going to hurt yourself and end up in surgery. Just press 3x/week.

[Cole Gorton]

i probably would not completely abandon benching as mark advised unless its actively giving you more problems than it is value. but i would emphasize press over bench, and do something like an HLM for your pressing where H day is press triples/doubles/singles rotated weekly, L day is close grip bench (to take a little stress off the pec insertion and more attention on triceps which will carryover well for press) where you do NO MORE than 3 sets of 5 at moderate weight while your not experiencing "impending doom". M day would be press 5's. just what i would do.

[jleavitt348]

When you say "stop benching", are you meaning for a certain amount of time, extended amount of time, forever?

[bucket .]

Interested 3rd party, in a case like this: Does it make any sense to bench once per week or once every 2 weeks at a weight that is manageable (ie 225)? What are the effects of eliminating bench all together?

[Mark Rippetoe]

If you can stand to bench light once every two weeks, and it makes you feel better about yourself, go ahead. But with this medical history, the bench press is not going to PR without significant risk of surgical repair.

[jleavitt348]

Question for Mark, is there any value to building my bench back up slowly (I’m thinking maybe start at 135 and go up 2.5 per week unless you recommend something else) to 250 or so and just leaving it there and doing enough to maintain it and just learn to be content with that? If there’s not I get it but I guess what I’m asking is if my press will suffer without a decent baseline bench

[Mark Rippetoe]

It doesn't matter if your press suffers, because if you hurt yourself to the extent that you have to have surgery, it won't matter what your bench or press are.

[jleavitt348]

Fair enough

[Griffin727]

Never had a pec tendon repair, but why not just get it fixed if it's stopping one from lifting heavy? Ik a guy around my age in his late 20s who got his done in Durham and he was benching almost normal in 9 months.