Looking for OHP alternatives

DianeinCA

Hello! I started SL last month -- I needed to get back into the gym, and while I've lifted for years, I recently had an injury that led to taking some time off. I needed something "simple" like SL to entice me to go back.

The injury, unfortunately, was one of my shoulders. I had surgery on it last January and I am fully healed. A few years ago I had surgery on the other shoulder (same problem: bursa, bone spur). I'm never going to be able to do much on the OHP. I did 5x5x15 today and I can tell I'm going to be at my max soon. Since I've had surgery on both shoulders, I feel no need to push myself to the absolute limit!

What are some good alternatives to the OHP that will allow me to switch it up?

krokador

Dumbell shoulder press might be the next best thing. You'll have more range of motion and more freedom so the shoulders should be in a more natural movement pattern. You'll probably have to drop the weight a bit (if you are doing 15, then 5 each hand to begin with would probably be plenty.

You can do them seated or standing. Seated will take your legs and hips completely out of the equation, so you'll have a bit less "drive" to push the weight up, but it will really isolate the shoulders and as you progress to heavier weight it should carry on.

That,s really all I can think of that really substitutes the OHP. other than that you have a bunch of isolation exercises, but most of these tend to aggravate my shoulders and they,re pretty healthy lol. Although if you wanted to strengthen them with relatively light weight, you could do resistance band face pulls and external/internal rotation. It'll help stabilize the shoulder and in the long run you might be able to go back to straight bar OHP, who knows?

DianeinCA

Thanks!