How to keep proper flexibility in the sterno-cavicular joint so it won’t affect racking the weight for cleans or front squats??
Falcon
How much bench pressing are we talking about? Yes, I find that some athletes lack the flexibility to hold the barbell in the rack position, but many of them did ridiculous amounts of pressing and/or arm curls.
In any kind of balanced strength training program, I don’t believe that kind of flexibility will be much of a problem…
good luck!
Thank you for the replay.
I am just trying to improve my bench press while staying as flexible as possible using it as an additional conditiong tool for the upperbody.
Do you think it takes much work to get from 198lbs to 264lbs? Since I cannot focus on bench press I’ve benched in the past 220lbs.
How much work would you suggest me to do? To stay as flexible as I can? Are there some joint mobility moves to do to keep these joints mobile?
I’d try some self-massage. Lay face-down on the ground, throw a smooth rock or ball under the shoulder joint and lean on it in different positions. You could also throw some oil on the area and massage it with your hand.
I don’t have a lot of time now, but one of the critical things I have our athletes do is the overhead squat. Besides the obvious lower body flexibility work, I think it does a wonderful job of keeping the shoulders flexible. We sometimes include it in our warmup, other times in our post training…Also, make sure you continue to do prehab work for your rotator cuff!!
good luck
Quasi isometric press ups held at the bottom of the ROM for around 1-2min are very good for teaching the pecs to lengthen. Once you have free shoulder movement overhead squats also help a lot to maintain ROM but often until they are freed up the body will strategise and compensate for lack of shoulder flexibility at another joint (cervical spine or hip/spine) so I’d prefer to get everything loosened out with therapy etc before using them.
Just keep cleaning/squatting while you increase the benching. Unless you are w. lifting it should not be a problem.
Also, great shoulder flexibility ie. OH squat, full snatch, can present difficulties for benching, depeding on how extensive it is.
How can great shoulder flexibility present problems to benching? What are quasi isometric press up?
About rotator cuff work is once a week enough work for them?
http://www.exrx.net/WeightExercises/Infraspinatus/DBLyingExternalRotation.html
I have difficulties performing this movement I can’t get the dummbell as up as this person in the picture does while keeping my elbows attached to the body. Or if I do I sense some kind of pain.
I am doing olympic weightlifting right now and I don’t have yet problems with my flexibility.
Thank you guys for the advices.
Falcon
Is it that you can’t get your arm (in the exercise) up at all, or that you can’t use weight?
If you can’t rotate your arm like that at all, you might have a whole set of other issues to discuss…
If you can, but just can’t use weight/heavy weight, that’s OK. For our college athletes, most don’t use anything heavier than 2.5 - 5 lbs for their rotator cuff work.
For any overhead/throwing athlete, we’ll do something like this 2-3x/week:
1.Int/Ext shoulder rotation (we use a “shoulder horn”, but the lying exercises are fine as well.
2. Side raises
3. Front raises
4. Raises to front at a 45 degree angle from body, thumbs UP.
5. Med ball one hand rotations against wall, using 1-2 pound med ball (you know, similar to Mr. Myagi, wax on, wax off)
We’ll do these for 1-2 sets of 8-12 reps each. It doesn’t take much longer than 3-4 minutes to complete this little circuit…
There’s a whole host of things that you can do. Please note, we’re doing these things with athletes who DON’T currently have any reported shoulder problems, it’s just pre-hab.
What’s most important to you - benching more weight/ more volume, or maintaining/building a better clean/front squat?
As was mentioned by others, as long as you keep hitting the proper positions while cleaning/f squatting, it really shouldn’t become a problem unless you start following some kind of wacky chest workout from Muscle & Fiction.
Are you really having current shoulder flexibility problems, and if so, what other movements (besides the rotations) are you having problems with?
No I tried it again I can do the rotation exercise but this exercises isn’t the most comfortable exercise for me.
Can I do it standing and will it give me the same results? Or can I do some other exercise that will train the same muscles? I will start doing the routine that you guys do plus i’ll add to it rear delt work.
By the way the most important thing to me is to have good clean. But I also want a decent bench press volume is not important to me at all but 1rm is the most important to me.
I will start to bench press after weightlifting training just change the intesinty from training to training. Or what do you think might work better?