OK, you definitely need to see a specialist like Sleazy said.

I, like the others, know exactly what you are talking about with the doctor. They are just generally going to react to the problem with that sort of attitude. And even a regular everday "physical therapist" is likely to look at your desire to bench press or any number of things with that same attitude.

A little background that may help.

Whether you have a labral tear now does not mean you've had a tear for years. That injury is more likely a result of a generalized problem you've had for years, upon which wear and tear may have lead finally to a labral tear. It may also lead to other things.

It's the whole idea of "working past it" that probably got you in the fix of it all coming to a head. You can rarely ever really work past things are around them for long. Eventually everything gets out of balance and you have just a bigger problem then you had in the first place. Especially with shoulders because there is such a sensitive balance of stabibility, or lack of it really. One structure just can't take up the slack of others for long before becoming overloaded and boom, a little problem is a big one.

Since you're talking about flat bench and "working chest" I would suspect that you've had an anterior instability or the GH joint. Some type of recurrent anterior subluxation. The humeral head coming partially forward could definitely cause pain and apprehension, maybe a popping sensation, etc. Probably the gh ligament (there is not one discrete ligament it is more like a sheet of ligament) is lax and overstretched. If it's been going on for years than some scapular disfunction may be present also (what they call scapular diskynesis)...look for some scapular winging...and maybe there was bicep tendonitis for a good while.

To make a long story short, you do not usually just suddenly get a labral tear one day working chest and then just sort of ride it out. The instability is the real underlying problem. The tear is more likely the symptom. Keep in mind I'm saying "most likely". I don't know of course. You will read people saying "I got if from dong bench" but probably none of them will be able to pinpoint when they "got it".

If a SLAP lesion was more sudden then probably something more traumatic happened like falling on an outstretched hand or lifting a weight much too heavy with really bad mechanics. Basically something that wanted to suddenly dislocate the shoulder so that the biceps tendon contracted very suddenly and the end result was the tear.

The reason I want to point all that out is because when you look this stuff up besides traumatic events like falling or the kind of problems pitchers get when it comes to weights it'll just say "lifiting heavy weight". That is vague enough to be worthless. There is obviously more to it than "lifting a heavy weight" or we would all be in pain all the time. If you lift properly and with steady progression then it should take more than lifting something heavy. If you remeber something sudden and traumatic that would be very important info. But if not then consider other underying problems. Could even be in the mechanical structure of your shoulder.

Most of the patients studied are are simply not involved in weight lifting activities so we are at a disadvantage.

You may want to consider your form on bench. Are you lifting in a way that severly challenges shoudler stabibility? Maybe you flare your elbows out?

One thing we all need to do in general is give our joints time to recover. The ligaments, etc. cannot recover at the rate the muscles can. If you ignore discomfort, never take time off, or adopt the moronic attitude of "whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger" then everybody will eventually get chronic problems. How bout, "whatever doesn't kill you will put you in a wheelchair for life"....for those who don't live in fairyland.

Anyway, none of this will likely help you solve the problem, but hopefully it will give you some background of what to expect and look for when you see a specialist. Sorry it was so long. I suppose it is entirely possible that one day you had bad luck and it lead to a SLAP lesion but you must consider these other things.

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If you act sanctimonious I will just list out your logical fallacies until you get pissed off and spew blasphemous remarks.