Four-time World’s Strongest Man and three-time Arnold Strongman Classic Champion Brian Shaw may have suffered his first setback on his “Road to 701” bench press series.
In a video posted on the Shaw Strength YouTube channel, Shaw was working with 515 pounds of bar weight on a Shoulder Saver bar with 60 pounds of chain on the ends of the bar.
A shoulder saver bar has a large round center that forces the bar to stop on your chest sooner than a traditional barbell. The 65 pound bar is designed to relieve the shoulders of extra stress while still challenging your chest and triceps. The chains are placed on the bar for the purpose of decreasing resistance as the bar lowers and the chains collect on the floor. It also increases the resistance as the lifter is pressing the weight up and the chains come up off the floor.
Shaw performed a set of three reps with the top weight. It starts on the video at the 6:40 mark. On the second rep, the bar moved in a different pattern than he was used to. Spotter Tyler Stickle suggests one more rep which Shaw was able to do. He wasn’t aware of what happened until after the set when Shaw suggested something may be wrong. After a few minutes of recovery from the set, Shaw assessed what happened and concluded that he may have strained his right pectoral muscle.
“So I have had a chance to calm down and cool down after finishing the bench press and with that second rep when the bar drifted, I definitely pulled something in my right pec. It’s kind of tightened up and started to hurt a little bit here. So I don’t think it’s super bad but what I will say is when you have things like this come up, when your body is kind of telling you ‘hey, something’s wrong’, at that point you don’t want to push it through the rest of the training.”
Shaw eventually opts to skip the direct assistance work of the workout and focus on the arm training portion of his session. The training that was shown on film included single arm triceps pressdowns and large EZ-Bar curls.
The Colorado native had stated in the past that he would eventually start shifting his focus on training for the 2020 World’s Strongest Man contest which is currently scheduled to take place this November in Bradenton, Florida. At the end of the video, Shaw expressed that he would get treatment and was hopeful he would come back strong from this incident.
Featured Image: Instagram/shawstrength