Brachialis & shoulder pain

[Pramod Reddy]

You are free to do what you like. We don't know exactly why you can't get into a narrow grip - your shoulders don't seem any wider than mine, it could be prior injuries. At least take a look at this video before you give up on LBBS. Getting into the position took me a couple of sessions worth of stretching and you always have to progress to the narrower grip gradually after some warmup sets with wider grip. In any case, inch or two outside the 32" rings sounds too wide for a stable shelf.

Low Bar Position Stretch | Paul Horn

[JHG]

The ultimate take home message from me is to keep training. Reduce the load so as not to piss off your tendons, but continue to train. There is good evidence supporting this recommendation: http://www.nfkom.com/Is%20tendon%20p...0continuum.pdf

It is frustrating but you will get past this stage and you will be able to continue to lift heavy once your tendons calm down. In the meantime, reduce the load, increase your number of warm up sets (you can start off with 5-10 sets of 5 on the empty bar before adding any weight to your subsequent warm up sets - this was recommended to me by Jordan Feigenbaum and it definitely helped me) and gradually work your way back up.

[dhurstell]

For me, it just led to higher elbows, which, I think, contributes to the root cause of the pain.

Can we get some recent video of your LBBS, please?

Tom has mentioned this in your form checks (yes, I be creepin' on ya):
"At the top, you are in mild flexion. Your upper back is round and your lower back is a little, too. I would like to see you drop your elbows and stand up a little straighter."

I had the exact same source of the elbow discomfort. Like Chris, I believe your issue to be the curved thoracic spine as well. Watching my videos I realized I am "reaching" for depth with my head and chin... which results in rounding the spine, elbows flying up, and the bar rolling up my neck and pain in my elbow.

If you see your elbows flying up at the bottom of your squat, that is probably your cue to the source of the pain, and the underlying cause is rounding the upper back at the bottom.

The good news is, even though I haven't completely corrected the issue yet, merely being aware of it, and controlling it (for the most part) has radically reduced the pain, even eliminating it from some workouts.

[Chris Lippke]

I think it was hinted at here (and you probably do something like this anyway), but I start with my index fingers on the powerlifting marks (32" vs. the 36" of Olympic) for the empty bar warmup and move them in one finger at a time per warmup. I end up with either my pinkies on the mark or another finger width within the marks. This way you gradually work it in so you get a nice, tight rack for the working weight.

And for a while, I would stretch it out using the Horn method between warmup sets. I should probably still be doing this, really.

My buddy who lives in the area started lifting again but almost immediately stopped because of this same issue (though, he did experience a detached biceps about a decade ago, so he's a little gun shy as it is). I don't think he's been under the bar in a few weeks now, and that's bad.

As Rip has mentioned before in a similar post, we'd all rather you high bar squat than not squat at all if the pain is that bad (and no one here doubts it is). Perhaps you can hybridize JHG's input with what you want to pursue. Something like:

Warmup using LBBS and stretching/moving your grip in. Throw in more warmup sets like JHG mentioned.
HBBS at a working weight for x sets.
LBBS a couple backoff sets at x% (I'm thinking 10% is a good starting point) less.
- You can use this to really explode your ass out of the hole with more power-focus or
- take it normal pace to fine tune the heck out of your form.
- if the backoff sets hurt the shoulders/arms take a bigger % off.

Lots of options. Less than optimal and NDTP? Sure, but it keeps you under the bar at least. My only concern would be lack of hamstring involvement in HBBS to make the knees happy. If you don't have any knee problems, this might be a nonissue. However, you've said you played soccer and wakeboard, so you probably got some knee problems. :-p

[timelinex]

I think it was hinted at here (and you probably do something like this anyway), but I start with my index fingers on the powerlifting marks (32" vs. the 36" of Olympic) for the empty bar warmup and move them in one finger at a time per warmup. I end up with either my pinkies on the mark or another finger width within the marks. This way you gradually work it in so you get a nice, tight rack for the working weight.

And for a while, I would stretch it out using the Horn method between warmup sets. I should probably still be doing this, really.

My buddy who lives in the area started lifting again but almost immediately stopped because of this same issue (though, he did experience a detached biceps about a decade ago, so he's a little gun shy as it is). I don't think he's been under the bar in a few weeks now, and that's bad.

As Rip has mentioned before in a similar post, we'd all rather you high bar squat than not squat at all if the pain is that bad (and no one here doubts it is). Perhaps you can hybridize JHG's input with what you want to pursue. Something like:

Warmup using LBBS and stretching/moving your grip in. Throw in more warmup sets like JHG mentioned.
HBBS at a working weight for x sets.
LBBS a couple backoff sets at x% (I'm thinking 10% is a good starting point) less.
- You can use this to really explode your ass out of the hole with more power-focus or
- take it normal pace to fine tune the heck out of your form.
- if the backoff sets hurt the shoulders/arms take a bigger % off.

Lots of options. Less than optimal and NDTP? Sure, but it keeps you under the bar at least. My only concern would be lack of hamstring involvement in HBBS to make the knees happy. If you don't have any knee problems, this might be a nonissue. However, you've said you played soccer and wakeboard, so you probably got some knee problems. :-p

The good news is I don't plan on giving up on lifting (just yet!). I can see why your buddy quit, having pain at such an early stage is just really discouraging.

I've actually done the Horn stretch and that is one of the things that allowed me to being able to get in the low bar position in the first place. Once I was able to get into position I did stop doing it and did some other stretches for a few seconds instead. I tried to start doing it again the other day and it didn't help at all and only made things hurt more. But I'm thinking thats because while my arm is so sensitive I'm just irritating it by doing the stretch right now.

If you looked through my previous posts, you will see I have had these type of flexibility issues since day one (especially in the shoulders). I thought it was normal growing pains of the LP from tendons nots growing fast enough. Obviously I was wrong. Squats were just pushing my flexibility limits too much and inflaming my entire shoulder girdle the entire time. I'm surprised it didn't get to this bad till now.......My knees are actually OK. Not to say that they don't have random ache's and such. But even with years of soccer, then skateboarding, and now wakeboarding..... They are relatively ok.

Anyways. I think I will try a few more things with the grip at the gym (including more stretching still), but ultimately I am starting to accept that I will probably need to start high bar squatting till the inflammation goes down. Then when it's down I can start working on stretching with the goal of getting a narrow enough grip to start LBBS again.

As far as high bar squats go. I can squat in the same position just with the bar higher right? No need to change anything else? (obviously adjust back angle to have the bar midfoot)

[timelinex]

The ultimate take home message from me is to keep training. Reduce the load so as not to piss off your tendons, but continue to train. There is good evidence supporting this recommendation: http://www.nfkom.com/Is%20tendon%20p...0continuum.pdf

It is frustrating but you will get past this stage and you will be able to continue to lift heavy once your tendons calm down. In the meantime, reduce the load, increase your number of warm up sets (you can start off with 5-10 sets of 5 on the empty bar before adding any weight to your subsequent warm up sets - this was recommended to me by Jordan Feigenbaum and it definitely helped me) and gradually work your way back up.

Thank you for the words of encouragement.

I do plan on continuing my lifting. Luckily, the pain subsided enough in the last week that my presses did not stall. Deadlift has been my favorite lift lately. No pain and still adding 10lb a week to it (will get 355LB today). So I've been focusing on that to motivate me!

Looks like an interesting study. I will have to read it over.

[Chris Lippke]

I thought it was normal growing pains of the LP from tendons nots growing fast enough.

Aahhh, thus the questions you had about tendon growth/recovery along with muscle. Makes sense now.

As far as high bar squats go. I can squat in the same position just with the bar higher right? No need to change anything else? (obviously adjust back angle to have the bar midfoot)

A HBBS will mean a more-closed knee angle and more-open hip angle compared to LBBS. This means that the hamstrings will be less engaged in the HBBS than the LBBS. That means that the tibia is going to experience more net pull from the quads at the front and less from the back. Stability will then be had from the ligaments (ACL, etc.) vs. the rear-pull from the hamstrings. In a LBBS, the ligaments are pretty happy as the hamstrings and quads are pulling on the tibia equally (more or less). Obviously in a front squat, this is much "worse," but it's still present in the HBBS.

There's a better illustration of this in the blue book.
derp2.jpg

[timelinex]

Aahhh, thus the questions you had about tendon growth/recovery along with muscle. Makes sense now.

Yep. I was commenting based on my own experience and used flawed reasoning. I began with the outcome of all my tendons/ligaments hurting and applied my medical knowledge that tendons/ligaments grow slower to make my conclusion that this rate of muscle growth could outpace tendon growth and cause issues........ Rip is very knowledgeable (obviously) but outside of his articles/books/literature getting any info out of him feels like trying to squeeze juice from a rock. So his replies didn't really help with spotting the flaws in my reasoning. Basically just got a "nope your wrong, dumbass". Doesn't answer much for someone that actually wants to learn and not just take orders.

Months later I think it has alot more to do with my severe flexibility issues being something I am working on simultaneously so things are just getting overworked (especially when you add the wakeboarding I did every week.) I was overtaxing my recovery portion.

I'm ALOT more flexible and ALOT stronger compared to the beginning of 2017, so I'm still thankful for SS getting me doing the core lifts correctly, even if I ended up not doing the exact program (YNDTP).

Thanks again Chris.

[timelinex]

I just wanted to check back in. I saw my SSC coach again and we worked on my LBBS position.

He didn't see anything wrong with my grip and bar placement looked fine. But after some back and forth, he figured out that it might be better to place the bar a little higher than I have been doing. I would describe the position to be about 1/4 of the way up towards the HBBS position. I think the issue is that in the LBBS placement that feels and looks right, the bar might touch my delts but it's actually not touching my lower traps at all (So the middle of the bar is mostly floating). So the bar is being held by my hands and only a little bit by my delts. We moved it up just enough to get onto my lower traps and the position was ALOT more solid. I can remember feeling that the bar might not be resting on my delts anymore (I think) but the middle of my bar was now actually held up significantly by my back (my lower traps) and that eased my arm involvement by alot. I did 265LB with him and while it's still uncomfortable to be that stretched out, it did NOT hurt! I'm hoping this might be the fix, and it wasn't just because the inflammation has subsided in the 2 weeks i havent LBBS'ed (I've been HBBS instead).

He also worked on my hip drive. It took a bit of trying, but he was able to trick me into it by having me do box squats, then taking away the box.

I have decided that while I keep adding #'s to my HBBS I will continue doing it for atleast another 2 or 3 weeks. I want to really let my arm cool off. But I will add Low bar box squats as a light middle day. Hopefully that will imprint this new bar position and also the hip drive.

Thanks for all the help guys. It's been much appreciated. I will try to check back in if anything changes or after I transition back to LBBS and see if this fixes it or not.

[timelinex]

I'll have to keep experimenting, but yesterday was the first time I tried the new position on my added light day (I do it as box squats because I need to work on kicking my ass farther back on my LBBS).



You can see I'm fumbling with the location of the bar placement. I'm still not used to put it in the "new" position. It doesn't really feel right there, but I'm sure I'll get used to it. I did still feel a relief of pressure on my left arm after racking (not pain though). So I'm still worried that as the weight gets heavier this will still cause the arm pain, but I guess we will have to see.