Failed Bench

[scuba]

So as I was doing my workout today I noticed a pain in my arm as I was squatting, it only happened when I was holding the bar locked against my back.

I managed to get through all my warmups on bench, but when I attempted to do my work set I almost dropped the bar on my chest, and only managed to get two reps before I called quits. The pain was above my elbow on the side of my tricept..

Should I man up and work through the pain or take a week off pressing and get back into the next week?

[gzt]

It's a "triceps", not a "tricept". The plural of triceps is "tricipites", by the way.

Neither. You have workouts coming up, try to do them as planned.

Are you by any chance pulling the bar down across your back on the squat? Almost like you're bending it across your back? If so, don't do that. You'll hurt your elbows.

[misspelledgeoff]

superset some curls brah, you'll be fine.

[Jalps]

I had a similar experience (almost identical), but there's no guarantee that what happened to me is what's happening to you.

For a while, I didn't realize that my low-back position for the squat was actually so low that I would be holding the bar on my back purely with pressure from my arms, rather than resting it property on a shelf made by the rear deltoids. What happens is that you are using your lateral deltoid to push your arms forward, pushing the bar into your back, to make it secure.

I felt the pain below my shoulders, near my triceps, but I couldn't figure out why. It turns out it was the shoulder all along. Check to see if that's the muscle that's being affected (look on exrx for lateral deltoid exercises and see if that muscle is sore). If so, then you need to either reposition the bar in a more secure spot on your back, or apply less pressure with your arms during the squat (perhaps both). As soon as I changed this behavior, I was able to get a better grip on the bench press. The soreness from the shoulders affected how well I could hold the bar, and that's why I failed.

I'm not saying this is what's happening with you. However, as you describe the situation, it has some startling similarities with what I experienced.