My left deltoid area has been bothering me the past week. Usually, I just work through it dispite the pain, but it's starting to get worse. What's hitting it the most is my incline bench presses @ 160 pounds, and I suppose the chest flys. Should I drop the weight in bench presses for a week till it feels better? Or should I just continue to work through it? I used to get these pains all the time from sleeping wrong, and it would take like a MONTH to go away, and that was before I started lifting.

Also, my left knee is starting to have some decent pain and my wrists are giving problems as well. Whew... I had a BIG motorcycle wreck 2 years ago that left a nice scar on my right arm, but I have never broken anything (i.e. bones) ever in my life. Could I just have weak joints? What can I do this late in life?

My left deltoid area has been bothering me the past week. Usually, I just work through it dispite the pain, but it's starting to get worse. What's hitting it the most is my incline bench presses @ 160 pounds, and I suppose the chest flys. Should I drop the weight in bench presses for a week till it feels better? Or should I just continue to work through it? I used to get these pains all the time from sleeping wrong, and it would take like a MONTH to go away, and that was before I started lifting.

Also, my left knee is starting to have some decent pain and my wrists are giving problems as well. Whew... I had a BIG motorcycle wreck 2 years ago that left a nice scar on my right arm, but I have never broken anything (i.e. bones) ever in my life. Could I just have weak joints? What can I do this late in life?"This late in life"? You're 21. You need to assume your body has to last another 60 years, so take care of it.

How is your left knee hurting and when does it hurt? What are you doing to hurt it?

The last time I hurt my shoulder was with incline bench press. I will probably never do it again. I think that exercise, for me at least, is hell on the shoulder. I also do not do military press with a bar for the same reason. I can do flat bench all day long without a problem and I can do heavy dumbell incline press until the cows come home, also without a problem.

I generally work through any shoulder pain that crops up but only because it's very mild and weights do not make it worse. They surely slow recovery, but if I'm not noticing the pain getting worse, I continue on. If your shoulder hurts a lot and is consistently getting worse of course you need to stop hitting it with heavy weights.

The thing about joint pain is that if what you're doing now brought the pain on, you can't possibly expect to be able to continue what you're doing now and end up with less pain. Unlike the highly vascular skeletal muscles, joints repair very damn slowly and, if you're unlucky enough to really bugger the joint up good, it may never repair fully, depending on what you've done to it.

If it's getting worse, my first thought would be get yourself to a doctor to make sure you don't have something serious going on.

If that isn't an option, I'd say lighten the load and use ice and ibuprophen after your workouts. Try it see that goes for a couple of weeks and see what happens.

Don't ice or use ibuprophen before workouts. You need warm muscles to prevent injury and ibuprophen can mask pain if you have a high pain tolerance.

Same can be used for your knees and wrists.

If that doesn't help, see my first suggestion.

Whoops, sorry for the mis-information! What I've been doing lately are DECLINE bench presses, not incline. I notcied great results from my chest area, but they really tax my delts.

Actually, come to think of it, I started getting pain in my delt again when i put flys back into my routine. Is there anything else that duplicates the work done in flys without putting so much stress on the delts? Of course I know there are great machines for them, but I own a home gym also, and dumbbell pullovers just don't seem to give me that great of a pump.

The knee pain is one of things where if I sit for a while and not move around too much it starts to stiffen up right above the kneecap, and when I strech it a little the pain completely subsides. I never had any type of knee pain before though, until I upped my squats. My wrists have always had problems, so I'm used to that already anyway.

Should I start taking calcium pills? Or will they interfere with my other supplements?

You injured your shoulder. So I don't think you should consider 'working through the pain' as an option. Take a break..it never hurts (no pun intended).

Once you can do your usual lifts without the pain, you should be ok, but be sure to check your technique. Pin your shoulder-blades back when doing the lift/press/fly.. do not let them come off the bench. Keep the weights angled so they go-up/come-down in a straight line starting from the nipples, or a few inches higher than the nipples - never higher than this, or you will start using your delts too much.

Also, really avoid trying weights which are uncomfortably heavy. You may "be able" to push up 50 pound dumbells, but probably with wonky form which uses a group of muscles... ultimately not doing very much. Try reducing your usual maximum weight by 50%-60% and go slow. Concentrate on technique. You should be ok.

Steve