Tim

Painless clicking is common and usually not a big deal, but I'm not going to tell you it's definitely nothing from a text description — if it changes, starts hurting, or you lose any strength or range, get it looked at by a physio rather than asking the internet.

That said, what helped me with an almost identical eccentric-only click:

• warm up the shoulder properly. Two sets of band pull-aparts and one light overhead set before the working weight. Mine clicked far less once I stopped starting with 40kg
• add direct external rotation work and face pulls, two or three times a week, light and high rep. Most of us press far more than we pull at that angle
• slow the eccentric deliberately for a few weeks. If the click happens at one specific point coming down, that usually means control drops off there

An asymmetry that appeared three weeks ago is worth watching, not panicking about.

Good suggestion. Landmine pressing is another one in the same family if dumbbells aren't available at your gym.

If the fix doesn't take, look further up. A leg length difference or the way one foot rolls in changes how the heel sits in the boot, and no lacing trick compensates for that forever. A podiatrist sorted mine out in one appointment after two years of taping.

Side-on at bar height is the correct angle. Filming from the foot end tells you almost nothing.

Three things stall a bench at that level, roughly in order of how often I see them.

First, upper back and setup. A bench with a loose, flat upper back has nothing to press from. Retract and depress the shoulder blades, get your feet planted so you can push into the floor, and keep tension the whole set rather than resetting each rep. People add 5kg from setup alone.

Second, volume. Squats respond to heavy triples, bench mostly doesn't at intermediate level. If your bench work is three heavy sets and nothing else, that's the problem — you want 10-15 hard sets a week across bench, incline, dips and some form of row.

Third, triceps. If you're missing at lockout rather than off the chest, add close grip bench or dips as a second movement twice a week for six weeks. If you're missing off the chest, add pause bench at 80% instead.

Also worth saying plainly: bench progresses far slower than squat for almost everyone. 22kg on squat and 0 on bench over eleven weeks is depressing but it isn't unusual.

Worth trying, though I'd note sumo demands more hip mobility, not less, so it isn't automatically the easier position for someone with tight hips.

If it rounds with an empty bar, it's not a strength or bracing problem — it's that you can't reach the bar in a neutral position, so your spine makes up the difference. Bracing harder cannot solve a range of motion issue.

What usually works, in order:

• pull from a 5cm block or from the second pin of a rack. Raising the bar 5cm often puts you in a position you can actually hold, and you train the pattern correctly instead of grooving the round
• work on hamstring and hip flexibility separately from lifting. Not five minutes before you pull, but as its own thing a few times a week
• try a semi-sumo or wider conventional stance. Long femurs plus a narrow stance is a bad combination and widening a few inches lets the hips drop between the legs rather than behind them

The fact that it's never hurt is good news but not permission to leave it. A little upper back rounding is common and largely fine; lumbar rounding under load is the one worth engineering out. If block pulls and stance changes don't get you there in a couple of months, a session with a coach or physio who watches you lift is money well spent.

Not something you get used to, and I'd fix it sooner rather than later. Numbness in the ring and little fingers specifically usually means pressure on the outside edge of the palm, and the usual cause is too much of your body weight going through your hands.

Things to try in order, cheapest first:

• raise the bars. On a hybrid you can often flip the stem or add spacers for nothing, and 20-30mm of height moves a surprising amount of weight back onto the saddle
• check saddle tilt. A nose-down saddle slides you forward and you brace with your arms without noticing
• ride with bent elbows and a light grip, not locked arms
• ergonomic grips with a flat wing under the heel of the hand, which is what they're actually designed for

If it persists after all that or you get any weakness rather than just tingling, see a physio or a doctor rather than buying more grips.

Counterpoint for full body: it's much more robust to missing sessions. If you skip one of four in an upper lower split, one lift gets trained once that week. If you skip one full body day out of three, everything still got hit twice. With a life that produces a 45 minute limit, missed sessions are probably a feature of your schedule too.

You can make full body fit by rotating: one main lift per session at full intensity, the other two at a lighter back-off, rather than three heavy lifts every time.

Seconding this gently. If the flatness covers everything rather than just work, it's worth talking to someone qualified rather than reorganising your career around it.

Rare, but it happens most often exactly in your situation — someone previously trained, coming back after a long layoff, doing more than they think because it used to be easy.

Soreness is also a poor measure of whether a session worked. Some of my most productive blocks produced almost none. Chasing it is a good way to overreach.