I hope I didn’t screw up my shoulder. *sigh*

Based upon Paul Carter’s LRB-365 and Base Building – dealing with ankle injury

• Incline Press
  • 45 x 5
  • 45 x 5
  • 105 x 5
  • 125 x 4
  • 145 x 3
  • 175 x 2
  • 195 x 1
  • 155 x 13
  • 155 x 6
• DB Bench Press
  • 55e x 10
  • 55e x 10
  • 55e x 10
  • 55e x 8
  • 55e x 7
• Behind the Neck Press
  • 85 x 8
  • 85 x 8
  • 85 x 8
• Seated DB Press
  • No
• Triceps Pushdowns
  • 30 x 100

I want to get better and chin-/pull-ups. One common approach is frequency. So while I’ll more seriously work them on back days, I figured why not do a few each day, right?

So I get in, warm up some, then figure to hit the bar and work to crank out 3. 1 and 2 went fine, went for 3 and didn’t quite get it. And that may have been too much. I was a little warmed up, but probably not warm enough, and suddenly moving my 240# through the air may have been too much for my cold shoulder.

I lay down in the bench to start the empty-bar warm-up and something in my left shoulder screamed at me. Crap.

I’m not sure what I did, and it doesn’t give any symptoms of serious damage, but it does hurt. I was able to work through things for the most part. Heck, the 195 went up really easy. I did notice because of the shoulder pain I worked on getting REALLY tight and having a much better setup. It was a small thing, but I think it made the difference in that 195 feeling so light.

I thought BNP would be painful, but it went fine.

Then I grabbed DB’s for the seated press, lifted the DB’s to my shoulders to start, and immediately put them back down. There was a pain that said “don’t be stupid, stop”. *sigh*

I think it’s starting to tell me… that yeah, chin-/pull-ups are probably not in my future. Every time I try to work on them, something ends up being a problem with my shoulders. Always. It may happen slowly, it may happen quickly, but without fail any time I try working on them and this happens. I do think a great deal of it has to do with hand position and how it causes things to have to rotate, lateral stresses and so on; just given how it feels. I mentioned to someone the other day that I might go back to trying pull-ups with a towel — drape a towel over the bar, then you grip the ends of the towel and go. It’s wicked awesome to work on your grip and forearms, and it puts things in a mostly neutral position PLUS since the towel can move, it doesn’t necessarily force your body into a particular track or groove of movement. So that may wind up being the approach I consider, if I’m going to give -ups another try. If that doesn’t work well… I may continue to search for SOME sort of solution, but I may also just have to give up on them and accept that. Oh well, such is life.