A shoulder injury does not have to mean that you can no longer do shoulder exercises for the time being. In fact, recovery often benefits from making the muscle stronger. However, you should try to perform the exercises pain-free, which sometimes requires adjustments. As with this slightly modified variant of the dumbbell shoulder press.
DIAGNOSING SHOULDER PAIN
It is best to consult a physiotherapist if you have pain in your shoulder. He can check whether there is actually a shoulder injury and of what nature.
Keep in mind that shoulder complaints can also be caused by injuries to or in other muscles. A biceps tendonitis, for example, also causes pain in the front of the shoulder (anterior delt), which is especially felt when pressing the shoulder.
IMPINGEMENT
Shoulder complaints often indicate an impingement, a clamping of certain tissues in the shoulder joint. The clamping takes place between the shoulder head and the shoulder roof (acromion) when the arm makes certain movements. Impingement is usually caused by overload and a disturbed movement pattern of the shoulder. [ i ]
Sometimes you have to give the injured shoulder some time to rest initially, whether or not in combination with physiotherapeutic exercises.
If your physiotherapist gives the green light, you can start training the shoulder again and thus make it stronger. Because the latter seems to be the quickest way to recovery after all. However, you should try to train as pain-free as possible, so “training around the injury”. Coach Menno Henselmans:
For most injuries, especially those in strength trainees, there are no magic healing exercises. (…) A big part of successful rehabilitation is training ‘around’ the injury while the body heals itself. [ ii ]
CUSTOM SHOULDER PRESS
The shoulder press is the basic exercise for the front shoulder heads in particular. With an impingement, you may experience pain in your injured shoulder during a certain part of the range of motion.
However, that doesn’t mean you have to cut the exercise completely. You just may have to adjust her on a number of points.
1. DUMBELLS INSTEAD OF BARBELLS
For pain-free shoulder presses, you should first of all trade in the barbell for dumbbells. Maybe definitively. Training with dumbbells gives you much more freedom of movement and provides a more natural shoulder movement, creating more space under the shoulder roof.
No worries, shoulder presses with dumbbells are not inferior to the classic barbell overhead press in terms of effectiveness (perhaps quite the contrary).
2. POSITION OF THE DUMBBELLS
Second, you use a different starting position than with the traditional dumbbell shoulder press. Instead of holding the dumbbells horizontally next to your head, have them pointing forward. Your palms then face each other (see video below). When you press the dumbbells upwards, you rotate them so that they are still horizontal in the top position. On the way down, rotate them back to the starting position.
The exercise thus resembles the Arnold Press.
3. SHORT BREAK
The third modification is that in the bottom position, you pause for one second on each rep. That way you press more from your muscles, so that the tendons and connective tissue in your shoulder experience less stress [ iii ] .
4. LIGHTER WEIGHTS
Finally, you may want to train with lighter weights, in the range of 10 to 20 repetitions. This way you put less pressure on your tendons and joints. Even with light weights you can achieve optimal muscle growth, as long as you make enough effort.
So train until close to muscle failure, but not completely. Keeping two or three reps in the tank will give your shoulders enough training stimulus without them having to bear the disproportionate load of training to muscle failure.
And this is what the exercise looks like: