Topo Edition – Starting Strength Weekly Report August 11, 2025

Griffin727

I have seen on here that doing the press helps prevent shoulder injuries. My question is what is the main mechanism of why? I feel most people hurt there shoulders outside the gym more often then from doing just the bench press and not the press. I feel most of my tweaks happened from not managing the recovery part of the process as well as I should. Could it be that people who use the bench as their primary upperbody movment get hurt more because once you get stronger the bench press can become a pretty big driver of stress. Which for some can get a little difficult to manage? Were as with the press, even at a intermediate level you still are not using a ton of weight. Theoretically by nature it makes it the prefect light day and helps prevents the over reaching of stress in which can cause injuries to the shoulder area. It’s hard for me to buy into the whole muscle imbalance idea, if one is deadlift and doing row/chins as well.

Satch12879

As all of the major barbell movements are systemic in the nature of the stress applied and the strength built; the reason the press aids in shoulder injury prevention is that it serves to strengthen all of the small muscles that are primarily involved in keeping the joint together, just by virtue of performing the movement properly.

Maybach

It is possible in theory that the way some people program the bench press might lead to injury. This theory is analogous to my observations about the deadlift, which is that most people who “hurt themselves deadlifting” are programming it wrong, and “wrong” can get quite silly in the general population

The bench press, however, in terms of raw volume is hard to really overdo, certainly much less so than the deadlift or squat. Chucking a bunch of deadlift volume into your program usually leads to “injury”, whereas chucking a bunch of bench press volume in very often results in a heavy ass bench press.

I agree that “muscle imbalance” as the way it is usually talked about in exercise circles is probably horseshit: if the force of muscles is moving a joint one way increases, then the force the antagonist muscles need to overcome to keep the joint “in balance” will ALSO increase, which ensures that at the very minimum, they “keep pace” with the primary muscle. You’d have to work pretty hard to get your pushing musculature to exert more force on the shoulder than the shoulder itself is experiencing during training, which should *strengthen it*. If you were to train only pushing movements, and ignore pulling movements, the main side effects would be a weak pull.

But the idea isn’t necessarily pointing in the wrong direction. The bench press is unique among the five major lifts in that it requires the use of what is, effectively, a kind of orthotic. Normal shoulder motion (which the press is an example of) rarely uses this orthotic. So I suppose it is possible that it does “omit” some musculature that needs training. Bill Starr seemed to think this was the case. But it’s less than the pressing muscles become “overtrained”, and more that it leaves out muscles that SHOULD be trained, and causes the standard problems of weakness. Note that bench press shoulder problems and weak people shoulder problems are usually around the same type and severity, when you account for the fact that people who are . Benching a lot are using their shoulder more, and are paying more attention.

The alternative explanation is the observed tendency that it is actually possible to actually for real ding your shoulder in the bench press. That is, the thing people THINK happens to them on the deadlift, actually does on the bench. The shoulders can get into compromised positions on the bench, and subject some poorly innervated tissue to some relatively heavy weights. This is closer to your idea, but is not a strictly volume/ stress dosage phenomenon, but rather a technique one.

novicejay

Does this mean the reason the press fixed my ac joint (which was on fire by the way) is that the muscles got stronger and somehow move something into the right position?

Jason Donaldson

There are a lot of shoulder issues that are fixed (or better, avoided) precisely by strengthening the musculature around the joint.

The shoulder is classified as a ball-and-socket joint, as is the hip. However, the hip joint’s structure is a deeper socket, and it bears weight differently, relying on the bone structure to a much greater degree. The structure of the shoulder joint, however favors mobility over stability, which is what allows the range of motion that we have there. As a result, what holds it together is the muscle structure, hence the strong correlation between the health of the joint and the strength of the muscles around it.

To make this strengthening most effective requires that the strengthening be done in natural movement patterns, to bring in all the necessary structures. This is where the press (and the chin and the deadlift, in fact) really shine.

PrimalFist

From a brilliant article you wrote:

“Lifters, bodybuilders, and strength athletes often lose sight of the fact that they’re really in the same situation. For us, heavy work on squats, deadlifts, bench presses, presses, power cleans and snatches, leg presses, and maybe barbell rows for bodybuilders will comprise the vast majority of the productive effort we’ll expend throughout our training careers.”

Wondering why you snuck leg presses in there?

Mark Rippetoe

I think someone has taken over PrimalFish’s account.

Scaldrew

What makes you think so, Rip?

stef

The actual quote: “For us, heavy work on squats, deadlifts, bench presses, presses, power cleans and snatches, and leg presses and maybe barbell rows for bodybuilders, will comprise the vast majority of the productive effort we will expend throughout our training careers.

Mark Rippetoe

This is the second low-quality question from his account in 2 days, and he’s sharing an IP address with Gettingstronger. I don’t remember him being a troll. Moving commas around to start shit I didn’t expect.