Two shoulder-prep exercises to fix bench press pain and stability. Y's, T's, and I's targets your lower traps and scapular stabilizers through rotations on the bench. Cable J-punch activates shoulder-blade muscles and stretches your pecs, both done slow and high-rep to fatigue.
My next one is an old school favorite, the Y's, T's, and I's. You're going to create a Y, rotate out, lift the knuckles, rotate again, and lift the pinkies. Now this works your lower traps, it solidifies your shoulder blades, and actually gets you that nice retraction so you can create a base for your shoulders. So to do it, put your face into the bench, raise and hold. Make sure your glutes aren't squeezing when you do this. You don't want to use your lower back, use your shoulders. And then rotate, lift the knuckles, rotate again, lift the pinkies, and back around. And do this exercise until fatigue, and you'll feel a crazy amount of stability when your next time you bench press. Last but not least, the cable J punch. Now this one, you're going to start at your hip, stagger your stance like you're actually going to throw a punch, press down and straight, and then create the letter J as you come up. Just like all of these, you want to create stability, so go slow. And the goal is to do a bunch of reps and tire yourself out. It's to activate muscles around the shoulder blade while giving you a nice stretch in your pecs. Once you finish, it's time to go bench press. Once you've got that taken care of, next bench press. And if it doesn't feel smoother, then I don't even know what to tell you. It should feel really, really smooth now and really, really stable. And you should have little to no shoulder pain. You're welcome.
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