Bench press rehab or will it be inclines forever

[stlnl]

I have spent the past year rehabbing my strength from pec tear and surgery to fix it (tendon was exploded, have a cadaver achilles in place of pec tendon now). I have done the bench press at on again off again intervals the past year. At first my form even with lighter weight was very asymmetric with the injured side elbow tucked almost too far inside and the path looking funky and feeling strange to me (it seemed I could see the bar going up, but was detached mentally from the movement it is hard to describe). I did inclines for a bit and then moved over to dips to see if I would work out the odd symmetry. After a month of dips it seemed that was ironed out and I went back to bench pressing after another run with inclines. Now it seems I randomly feel or get some odd strain in the chest/triceps or it just feels odd. There is no extra pressure or oddity on the recovered side and the chest strain was on the "good" side. I have no issues at all with the incline, and both times I got the odd strains on the bench press it was with weights slightly less than what I was using a few weeks before with inclines and the level of effort was very pedestrian (the set of 5 weight I was using at the time I think I had another 5 in the tank, I was trying to climb slowly to avoid just that thing...the odd strains).

I think I may have some muscle imbalances of some sort going on but it is pretty baffling at this point. I feel more "connected" at this point when I do a bench press than I did before but I literally have concern about what will pull or strain every time I bring the weight down for a rep. Spotter tells me there is still a very slight difference with elbow tuck on recovered side versus good side. Could I be doing something on a subconscious level creating these issues? I have been sticking with the Incline again for the past 7 weeks or so. I am considering another run through with the bench press and starting extremely on the low end (200 or so) and make smaller jumps every workout (2.5 instead of 5) to see if I can iron this thing out. Any ideas there? I prefer not to simply substitute inclines...but I also seem to cruise through with a minimum of strains and aggravations using Incline.

I am older (51) and am training to prevent injury with Martial arts training (that was how I tore pec in the first place) so I am not married to the bench press....but I much prefer to simply DTP.

[Mark Rippetoe]

It is good that you are not married to the bench press. And dips are your vicious ex-wife. If I had this situation I would just press heavy 3x/week and do a few lighter benches every couple of weeks.

[stlnl]

It is good that you are not married to the bench press. And dips are your vicious ex-wife. If I had this situation I would just press heavy 3x/week and do a few lighter benches every couple of weeks.

Dips do not bother anything at all by the way. No discomfort, no tweaks, full range of motion. Do you think weighted dips can be rotated in? For a good while I did dips (just BW then as I was still recovering strength) and they seemed to help a lot. Is it worth giving the bench press another try with slow progression or even repeating a workout before progressing? I always feel just fine until I dont when I bench press, I wondered if advancing 5 pounds a workout was too fast for me to fully acclimate. In any event I do like the idea of dumping the incline and just pressing with an occasional bench press.

Thanks