Generally speaking, exercises should not cause pain when performed with good form and not grossly overloaded. There can often be soreness post-exercise but pain during the movement is not at all expected.
Your question does request alternative exercises, but seeing as the bench press is a popular compound movement targeting the upper body, I think it may be important to identify exactly why there is pain rather than moving to a different compound or isolation exercise.
Without further info, all I could recommend is to try lower weights on the bar, or even no weight, if that results in the pain subsiding or going away. Regarding form, this Instagram video may be useful: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C-GdEHBRVm7/
I tried a bunch of stuff to fix it myself. My next step is getting some sort of professional help. But I’ll only be able to do that in almost two months, so I’m looking for what to do in the meanwhile.
Is the pain like in the front of the shoulder?
Maybe you need to work your back and rotator cuffs. Also stretch your pecs.
Is the pain like in the front of the shoulder?
I’d say so, but only on the left.
Maybe you need to work your back and rotator cuffs. Also stretch your pecs.
How can I do that?
Band pull aparts and face pulls are great for shoulder health
Do you go to a gym? Are there any trainers there? They’d be the best people to speak to. Ask if they have any kinesiologists. Sometimes gyms provide free training sessions and you can get great advice.
Otherwise you can look on YouTube for exercises. Athlean X is a pretty good reference. But there are a lot of physiotherapy channels as well that have good information.
I have something very similar happen (except on my right). When it gets ‘bad’ I do chest press (I love the one where you sit down with cables on each side and doing one arm at a time not the ones with plates on a side no idea if that makes sense) and after a week or two I try light bench again and if no pain we are good I’ve only had to do this twice. I believe It happens because I bench till failure basically all the time and with that comes bad form trying to get last rep out but no idea
