Hurt Shoulder while Squatting

[grumble]

Hi,

A few years ago, I was benching heavier than I should have been with no warmup and messed up my shoulder. For about two weeks it had a lot of pain when I tried to supinate it / rotate it externally. After a little while it healed up aside from some occasional discomfort, so I largely ignored it.

I've had a nasty flareup of this pain during a squat set; the hooks were set too high and when I tried to rack it after a set, one caught and the other didn't. After a serious effort to bring the other side of the bar to rack, I was forced to rack it asymmetrically and deal with it from the side. During this effort to rack the bar, I screwed up my shoulder again. I'm experiencing a nauseating kind of ache that makes it uncomfortable to squat, bench, chin and overhead press in equal measure and has impacted my ability to do my workouts. I just did 280 on the squat with some discomfort, then after my first set of 170 on the bench my shoulder wasn't happy and I called it for the day.

My question is whether you have any idea what's going on with my shoulder, what your recommendation would be to get it functional again and if I should make any modifications to my training in the meantime. The flareup happened about a week ago, slight improvement since. I'd appreciate any advice you have to give.

[Mark Rippetoe]

I think you have injured your shoulder. It's hard for me to see from here, but I think that it will either heal up in a couple of weeks, or it won't and you'll have to have it diagnosed.