Easy tip to fix your shoulder pain when overhead pressing and bench pressing

Almost all pressing problems can be fixed by switching from 2 arm press variations to 1 arm presses.

This goes for both vertical pressing and bench pressing.

It's fairly common for people to occasionally experience shoulder pain during overhead press and bench press variations. I've been there. But, like clock work, I'm almost always able to get someone pressing pain-free when we switch to a unilateral variation.

This is probably a sign that we should spend more time doing our horizontal and vertical presses 1 arm at a time.

It's tedious because it forces us to use less weight and it takes twice as long to do the same amount of sets.

But the payoff is better feeling presses, more stabilizer activation, more core activation, greater range of motion, freer range of motion, better focus on the movement because it's easier to focus on one thing at a time than 2 things.

Finally, it also fixes imbalances between left and right sides (remember, the shoulder joint is a ball and socket joint and ball and socket joints don't always develop symmetrically, therefore, the movement pattern for each arm's vertical and horizontal presses may be slightly different).

So, if you're dealing with shoulder pain while bench pressing or overhead pressing, try doing single arm press variations for awhile. You may just decide to make the switch a permanent one.