A shoulder injury has a way of feeling like it's shut down your entire training life, even when it's really only ruled out a handful of specific movements. The shoulder is involved in almost everything upper body — press, pull, carry — so when it flares up, the instinct is often to stop training altogether until it's "fully fixed."
That's usually the wrong move. In most cases, training around a shoulder issue — rather than stopping completely — keeps you stronger, keeps your other muscle groups progressing, and often supports the recovery process itself. Here's how to approach it sensibly.
Start Here: Get It Actually Assessed
Before anything else — this article is general guidance, not a diagnosis. Shoulder issues range from minor irritation that clears up in days to things like rotator cuff tears or instability that need a proper diagnosis and a physio or sports medicine professional's input. If you haven't had it looked at, or the pain is sharp, worsening, or affecting your daily life, get it assessed before you make any training decisions off the back of a blog post. What follows applies once you understand what you're dealing with, or while you're waiting to.
The General Principle: Train Around It, Not Through It
"Around it" means avoiding the specific movements and positions that aggravate the injury, while continuing to train everything else as close to normally as possible. "Through it" means pushing on with your normal programme and hoping it settles — which is how a minor niggle often turns into a much longer-term problem.
Pain during a movement is information, not something to be tough about. Sharp pain, or pain that lingers well after the set, is a clear signal to stop that movement and regress or substitute it.
What You Can Usually Still Train
Lower body is almost always fair game. Squats, deadlifts (grip and setup dependent), lunges, leg press, calf raises — the shoulder plays little to no direct role here, so lower body training can typically continue close to normal, which protects a huge amount of your overall training volume and progress.
Core work with the right modifications. Many core exercises can continue if you avoid loaded overhead positions or heavy pressing-based positions that stress the shoulder.
Grip and forearm work. Generally unaffected and easy to maintain.
The uninjured side. If it's a one-sided issue, training the unaffected arm as normal is not only fine but has a documented benefit — research shows training one limb can help maintain some strength in the opposite, injured limb through a "cross-education" effect, even while it's resting.
What Usually Needs to Be Modified or Paused
Overhead pressing is often the first thing to aggravate a shoulder issue, since it puts the joint into its most vulnerable position under load.
Heavy horizontal pressing (bench press, push-ups) can also be irritating, particularly at the bottom of the movement.
Behind-the-neck or extreme end-range positions are usually worth avoiding regardless of whether they currently hurt, as they place unnecessary stress on the joint.
Rather than cutting pressing and pulling entirely, this is where regressions and substitutions come in — for example, adjusting grip width, range of motion, or angle of a movement can often let you keep training the same muscle groups without provoking the injury. This is exactly the kind of decision worth making with a physio or trainer who can see how you're moving, rather than guessing alone.
Don't Neglect the "Boring" Rehab Work
If your physio or professional has given you specific rehab exercises — light rotator cuff work, scapular control drills, banded movements — these aren't a side project to fit in occasionally. They're often the actual difference between an injury that resolves properly and one that becomes a recurring issue. Treat them with the same consistency as your main training.
Watch Your Overall Recovery, Not Just the Shoulder
An injury adds a layer of stress to your body, even a relatively minor one. This is a good time to be extra diligent about sleep, protein intake, and not simultaneously running yourself into the ground elsewhere in your programme — recovery capacity matters more than usual while your body is already dealing with repairing the injured area.
The Bottom Line
A shoulder injury rules out specific movements — it doesn't rule out training. Get it properly assessed, keep training everything that isn't aggravating it, modify or substitute the movements that are, and stay consistent with any rehab work you've been given. Handled this way, most people come out the other side having lost far less ground than they feared, and often return stronger because they didn't lose months of consistency waiting to feel "100%" before doing anything at all.
Written by
Wolverine PT
Coaching adults who want to build muscle, get stronger and stay capable while balancing work, family and normal life.
