replacement lifts

[merican]

Hello everyone, i have a question about the program that i thought fit best in this part of the forums. i used to be a powerlifter in highschool, but after a major reconstruction of my left shoulder i am no longer allowed to lift more then like 30 pounds above my head. i want to get back into lifting and SS sounds like a good program to do that with. my only issue is i cant do pullups, clean and jerks and skull crushers as they all have me lifting weight above my head and could damage my shoulder.

are their any lifts or machines i could use to replace these lifts in the program?

[merican]

i basically can't lift anything over 30 pounds above my head because i have bolts holding my ligaments back into play in my shoulder. if i put to much pressure on them they may complete rip off the bone like they did last time or the bolt may be ripped out. now i did buy the book i just mistook the press and a for essentially clean and jerk.

[veryhrm]

(note: i'm not a doctor and this isn't advice to do anything, etc.)

Along the same lines as hsilman: The "don't lift anything over 30 lbs over your head" thing is either a temporary restriction or your doctor just doesn't know anything about sports.
People have ligament and tendon tears of various sorts all the time from which they eventually return to full sports activity.

Generally speaking, if there isn't impingement (bone on bone grinding or ligaments or nerves being crushed between bones) or you have a lot of missing parts you should be able to train and the trained parts and motions will get stronger.

Another way to look at it: if your shoulder really is so fragile that you can't press more than 30 lbs or try to do pull-ups because it will break... would you really trust yourself with a 200lbs bench press or a 300lbs DL ?

Anyhow, find out EXACTLY what your injury was and what your "major shoulder reconstruction" was and what the current state of your shoulder is and search the board for the same kind of injuries and/or operations and see if you can find anything. Once you marshal your information you could also ask Rip about it in his Q&A. This is the kind of thing where Rip's experience and insight is pretty awesome.

[Kazzin]

You should probably find a new doctor more confident in his work if he thinks 30lbs overhead is going to rip your ligaments off the bone.

[FatButWeak]

I agree with the majority here, but:

How old are you?
How many years ago was your injury?
What was your injury/how did it occur?
When not lifting, what restrictions does your injury cause?
Why do you think skull crushers are in the SS program?
Does doing any pressing movement - including unweighted movements, hurt your injury site?
Other than your doctor's say so (and 30 pounds seems very arbitrary) do you have some reason to believe why your injured parts cannot adapt and grow stronger to carefull and slow incremental increases on the bar?

[ColoWayno]

Watch this everyday:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bj-gyl-e4y0

[scwot]

Awesome.