My Shoulders are Killing Me…

As most of you guys know, I’ve been on Rusty’s Visual Impact program now for the last several months.  I have not gone past phase 1 just because I like the phase 1 routine and don’t feel the need to progress to his strength and density phase .

There is one thing I am going to have to change.  And that is the shoulder workout.  My shoulders are starting to kill me.  I thought I slept on it wrong one night and or something.  But the pain is there.  And it’s starting to bother me.

I recall an article that a guy name Joe DeFranco wrote over in T-nation:

When you think of shoulder training, you probably think first of the overhead press or military press. Well, brace yourself: I bagged heavy overhead pressing years ago – removing them from 99% of my athletes’ programs. I’ve seen great improvements in shoulder health and strength since ditching the heavy overhead presses…

Read more by clicking here…

For me that was pretty radical when I first read it. I love shoulder presses.  As a kid, I did the behind the neck version because it seemed like that was all that everyone recommended in the 70′s.  I got away from that in the 80′s and pretty much focused on front, military presses for power and seated dumbbell presses for reps.

Either way, I loved them.

Segue way to recent years and I had pretty much done away with presses in favor of laterals and horizontal, face pulls. But I went back to shoulder presses because it’s a part of the selection in Visual Impact.

Now my shoulders are killing me and have been for the past month or so.  I am going to drop the presses in favor of front laterals.  Shoulder presses might not be the culprit but at this point, might as well find out.

So my shoulder routine will be side laterals followed by face pulls and then front laterals to hit all 3 heads.

I’ll still get the pressing movement in with the incline version that I do with the Bodylastics plus dips at the park or elevated pushups at home.

If Joe DeFranco is correct in his observations, this move should help.  I’d love to try his Shoulder Shocker but that little circuit is not doable with my Bodylastics band.  But, if some of you can do it, let us know here how it went.

Thanks.

PS – I’ll let you know now the shoulders feel in a few weeks.

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