Shoulder pain from pull ups

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EL_VIEJO

New Member
Early in my 1st HST cycle I dropped vertical pulls because I thought they were causing my shoulder pain. I'm in my 2nd cycle now in the 1st week of 5's (doing madcow 5x5) and decided to add them in again. Since I'm weak in chins and pull ups I'd planned to do them max stim style and gradually shorten the m-time. 1st w/o I did 10 max stim chins with no noticeable shoulder pain. The next w/o I did pull ups and had to stop at 5 because the pain in my shoulder was getting bad. I had a dull ache in my shoulder for the next week. I tried chin ups again yesterday. No pain while doing them, but a slight ache in the shoulder joint today.

Obviously I have to stop doing pull ups again and may stop the chins also. I'm thinking of doing face pulls and light rotator cuff exercises instead. I've never heard of shoulder pain caused by vertical pulls. I'm hoping some of you that know a lot about exercise physiology might be able to explain why I'm getting this pain. It's in the anterior part of the shoulder in the joint.
 
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(EL_VIEJO @ Jan. 28 2008,16:26)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">I've never heard of shoulder pain caused by vertical pulls.</div>
Oh, yeah -- big time! Depending on the way your shoulders are put together (and shoulders vary a lot from person to person), vertical pulls can cause a bit of damage.

You want to be careful at the bottom not to let your shoulders go all the way limp. That seems to put a lot of weight on some very small muscles and some very soft tissue. You also might want to keep your palms facing each other rather than either pronated or supinated.

It is possible to do a vertical pull without hurting your rotator cuff area, so long as you are careful. My vet tends to be quite restrictive about which exercises I am allowed to do while my shoulder heals up, but he recommends a palm-facing lat pulldown, and allows chins so long as they are carefully done.
 
I've had shoulder issues too on several exercises in the past.

One thing that has helped me considerably is to do a light warm up set or two of side laterals (usually on a machine) before doing any exercise that involves the shoulders (chins, bench press, etc).

Moving very slowly, and holding it for a sec or two at the top of the movement.

Don't know if this will help you or not, but it's something to consider.
 
Yeah, i've had shoulder pain too (i've had just about everything from my bad form power lifting days!!!)

I thought i was stuck with it, but i simply changed my shoulder exercises to make sure that my form was perfect (i'm now lifting half what i used to!!!) and i do a few rotator cuff exercises before anything that may affect them (basically before any upperbody stuff)

Now, touch wood, i'm fine!!!
Plus my shoulders look better than ever even with my tiny weights!!!
 
Thanks for the input. My shoulder was really aching today, so I think I'll lay off vertical pulls for a good long while and start doing some rotator cuff exercises. When I try them again I'll give TR's suggestion of neutral grip pull ups a try. It's quite frustrating not to be able to do an exercise that you feel is important.
 
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(EL_VIEJO @ Jan. 29 2008,15:51)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">It's quite frustrating not to be able to do an exercise that you feel is important.</div>
It's better to correct your form now than to wait'll you can't do bench presses...!
sad.gif
 
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