Shoulder pain can be one of the most frustrating things to go through, especially when you are an avid gym go-er who uses their shoulder for a lot of their exercises. Shoulder pain might lead some to stop working out, take up another form of exercise, or just flat out give up. We’re here to show you some ways that you can continue to workout your shoulders despite having shoulder pain so that you can stay as fit and as active as possible. 

Some of the first ways you can start to shoulder press around shoulder pain are the strategies discussed in our “How to Bench Press Around Shoulder Pain” blog. These strategies include changing your grip (for barbell press, you can also adjust the way you hold dumbbells if you are doing that variation), modifying the range of motion, decreasing the weight, slowing down the tempo, or switching to a similar movement. We go into detail for each strategy in that blog article, so check that out first!

If you’ve tried those strategies and are still having trouble, then give these alternative exercises a shot. These exercises are similar to a shoulder press and work similar muscle groups, but allow you to do so in a way that is not painful for your shoulder. This will allow you to continue training while helping improve your shoulder pain. These exercises include:

1. Landmine Press 

2. Incline Dumbbell Press

3. Lateral Raise

4. Push Ups

5. Face Pull

The goal of this strategy is to temporarily avoid the exercises or positions (overhead shoulder press) that are currently aggravating so that we can allow the shoulder to recover, train using these alternative exercises so that we can stay fit, and then gradually reintroduce overhead pressing as the shoulder starts to feel better.

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