My shoulders HURT during dips...now what?

[MJBossman]

My shoulders have always hurt a little during weighed dips, but now it's pretty bad. I could probably do my sets and handle the pain, but it's not worth the risk anymore. I'm doing sets with 115-135 hanging on me at a bodyweight of 215, so it's a good amount of stress on my shoulders.

Am I basically fucked? I tried bodyweight dips and they felt all right, but it's not gonna work my chest as hard.

Is there a substitute? Decline dumbbells?

Right now my current routine is 3 sets of barbell bench, 3 sets of incline barbell bench, 3 sets of weighed dips. Every other week I alternate with barbell bench and dumbbells...

Thanks for any help.

 

[tzan]

I can sympathise with your shoulder pain when doing weighted dips focused on my CHEST. When I do them focusing more on my TRICEPS they don't hurt. Basically the more you lean forward, the more stress is put on your shoulders. Hence, in my case the reason it hurts more when I train chest. Declines would be a decent substitute for them. I like decline fly's better then presses, but I wouldn't totally lose the weighted dips. If your going to substitute decline work for them as one of your chest exercises, I would throw the dips in for your triceps.

 

[supreme]

What is your ROM during the dip, the correct & safe ROM is to only go down to the point where your bicep touches the top of the forearm (slightly below a 90 degree bend) If you go too deep you run the risk of damaging the anterior capsule of the shoulder and can wind up with a variety of problems including: tendonitis, bursitis, impingement, anterior instability, and rotator cuff damage.

Its like bringing the bar all the way down to your chest when benching - good for some, bad others. Everyone has their own end point of motion, to push beyond that goes beyond normal ROM and you get shoulder damage. You need to determine what your end point is and then stop above that, since there is a 10 -15 degree carry over of strength past the end point and muscle fibers contract "all or none", you will still develop strength in the full ROM without injury

Also I would check your shoulder gridle alignment and shoulder ROM, do you have full flexion & external /internal rotation. Also what is your form on the dips, bench press and do you do shrugs?? If your form is off i.e head forward and down (looking at the floor during dips) or too far forward with a rounded upper back during shrugs, every rep is traumatizing your acromioclavicular joints. you may need to drop the weights, do corrective stretching, fix postural alignment and then gradually increase the weights back up. Remember "train your body, not your ego".

I will try to dig up some articles on benching rehab, shrugs, dips etc. may take a while super busy at work - had to give up 1 of my days off because so many meatheads need to be fixed by summer, along with the usual assortment of falls, chronic injureis, piss poor rehab and big, giant fat assesd women who need to fit into a size 7 by thier daughters wedding in the spring.

S