It hurt if it can’t move like mine. So it got larger over time but could not be pushed back. It was still small 1.5x2.5cm. My friend has a large one, like a small melon. No pain, worked untill the day before surgery. Inguinal hernia are more problematic in general.
It is also genetic, on my mother’s side surgery was done on my grand pa, 2 uncles (1 had 3 surgery done for the same hernia) and my mom and now me. All inguinal hernia.
If it would not have hurt so much, I would not have stop traing. But for me the pain was too much. It burn, pull, rip. I could not even work.
At least while we are off work, we are covered by the gov med leave.
Yeah, I can push mine back in and if I lay down it goes in on its own.
That’s another thing, my grandfather had a real big one above his navel but for whatever reason they never operated on it.
Maybe in Quebec there is something different going on, but in as far as I know in Ontario if you are injured outside of work you get nothing more than disability which is maybe $1000-1200/month. One of the nursing staff at my work injured his back at home and was off work for a few months, all he got was disability. That’s half the reason I switched to hook grip.
I get “assurence chomage” from the Canadian gov. It is like a temporary lay off. Better then a kick in the pants. My work insurence are not that great.
I don’t think we get that in Ontario for injuries, here it’s called employment insurance and is 50-60% of your wages. The guy who messed up his back is full time and only got a little over 1000 a month.
Good because it doesn’t affect anything at the moment, but bad because they won’t operate on it and it can become a huge problem if I keep lifting like I do. I could try looking into private doctors but I’m sure it won’t be cheap and I don’t have much money to spare.
I’m trying to figure out what the hell I’m going to do now. I don’t like the idea of surgery if it’s avoidable, but I also don’t want to make this worse and end up in a bad situation. If I were to keep squatting and deadlifting heavy it’s basically like I would be trying to break my body so that it can be fixed. If I said fuck it, I’m training for this meet in April, then there’s the possibility that I won’t even make it to the meet at all. So now I’m going to be like those guys at the gym who only train upper body and never squat. Curls 3 days a week!
I’m going to still squat and deadlift but light and for high reps like what I did yesterday. I don’t really know where to draw the line maybe 275 or 315 is heavy enough. 225x21 was easy, but my legs are actually a little sore today. I guess barbell rows are out, unless I can figure out some super strict way to do them that doesn’t require much weight. I could still compete bench-only, I said a while back that once I’m benching 400+ then I would consider doing bench meets and I finally benched 405 a week and a half ago.
The funny thing, at the last meet I was talking to the owner of the gym (which has since closed) where the meet was held, he is a bench-only guy and was trying to bench 600 raw for a while. He said they had a bench-only meet coming up in the summer and was encouraging me to sign up. At the time it seemed like a good idea but I didn’t want to start slacking on squat and DL and then I was looking at doing a full meet instead. Then I ended up fucking my back up and could barely lift anything all summer. Finally I get myself back together and start hitting PRs and there is another meet on the calendar, but then I end up with a fucking hernia. It kind of seems like this just isn’t meant to be.
At some point the cost can outweigh any potential reward. If I was doing this for a living or setting world records then I would be looking at it differently, it’s basically just a hobby.
I suppose I should work on losing some fat. If I can squat 600+ and have a bunch of records then I have an excuse for being a little fat, but if not then it’s not worth it. Before I got into PL I was just trying to stay sort of strong and fairly lean, over the years I was mostly around 180-190 at 5’9. Of course I have way more muscle than I did back then but I expect my legs to lose some now, maybe 220 or so would be a good weight. I’m not going to do some sort of major cut, just try to gradually get leaner over time.
I was thinking, someone might come across these posts about a hernia and say “hey, isn’t that the guy who said you don’t need to train abs for PL? No wonder he got a hernia”. I do the McGill big 3 every day, and I still think that conventional ab training is a waste of time. It wouldn’t have made a difference in my situation.
There’s nothing magical about 5/3/1, it’s good for someone who doesn’t know how to write their own program but I can do that myself. The thing is that it doesn’t really seem like a reasonable thing to pursue getting stronger on sq/dl in high reps either, it’s the same problem. If I can find someone who was in the same situation and get some advice from them then maybe I will take a different approach.
If I just decide to focus on bench then trying to push sq and dl is somewhat counterproductive. Josh Bryant has most of his bench-only guys doing stuff like 5x5 with 50-60% on sq/dl and even less going into a meet, it’s just about maintaining some strength in the lower body. Julius Maddox doesn’t even squat normally, not sure if he deadlifts either.
I could try to message Mike Hedlesky on facebook and see if he can tell me something good. My guess is he would probably say to just keep training, he has had a whole bunch of surgeries from playing football on top of years of lifting and while he’s nowhere near where he was before he’s still training. But I remember him saying that if he didn’t have the sort of insurance he has then he would train the way he does.
Chad Wesley Smith also recently had a hernia, not sure what type. It was after he lost a ton of weight and quit PL. He didn’t seem too happy about it from what I saw.
Yeah, I have to brace somewhat, but when you’re squatting for higher reps it’s impossible to even try to maintain the same pressure that you need for max or near max weights. It’s just that if I say I’m going to get stronger in the 15-20 rep range instead of training like a powerlifter then soon enough I will be squatting some heavy weights which will affect the hernia more.
Unless I can find a good reason why I should keep doing what I was doing I just have to give up on squatting and pulling heavy. If I could just go and get surgery now then I suppose I would, but I have to wait until it gets real bad and how bad is that going to be? Seems like something I would end up regretting. You ever hear the saying, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”? Something that is going to leave me physically disabled for months is something I would prefer to avoid if possible.
The problem is, they just don’t heal on their own. It’ll only get worse, even with bench pressing, since you have an arch and a lot of tightness, especially since you actually bench heavy weight. Can you wait a bit and go back to him complaining of pain? Hernia operations, as long as they’re not major operations, are pretty quick to recover from. Some people train with hernias for a long time, and your doctor probably doesn’t subscribe to the whole heavy lifting kills you thing that some doctors are a bit over-the-top about, but I wonder if he can comprehend how heavy 550-600# is. Most people don’t even sniff half that weight in their lifetime once, much less a few days a week, haha. Not saying don’t lift, you can, but I’d do what I could to take care of it, even if it means exaggerating your symptoms a bit.
Oh, I had double hernia surgery when I was young, by the way. So I learned a bit about them at that point, but I’m no expert. Just saying I never had a problem after it was over.
Because it make you nervous in way.
You should ask your gp to give you a rx to meet a general surgeon. A surgeon who does a lot of hernia may be a good option. Start with a consultation and see what the specislist will say. That would be an easy step before calling quit or going private.
One, it’s clown dicktionary, and two, it’s more that with privatized healthcare he could opt for surgery and with socialized healthcare (not knocking it, it just isn’t perfect) you likely need more of a nudge.
I’m actually all for trusting doctors (mostly) but as I said, I dont think the guy comprehends the force on the body from 600 lbs. That’s not normal weight.
That’s true, but it seems like bench is way less likely to make it worse than heavy squats and deadlifts. Plus any heavy lifting or straining could do it, like even taking a shit. I can’t totally avoid all risks, I just don’t want to do the things that are most likely to cause it.
I don’t know if he would even believe me since it’s so small right now. There are people here in all kinds of pain and they have to wait months and years for an operation, unless it’s an actual health risk like the intestine getting strangulated then I doubt they will do anything.
Yeah, that’s the thing, maybe some guys move boxes in a warehouse with a hernia but that’s not even comparable to the kind of weights I’m trying to lift. I am/was on track to squat well over 600 at this meet in April.
This doctor is also not “my doctor”, it was at a walk-in clinic. I had a family doctor for a moment but I never went back after I caught a lung infection from a guy in the waiting room last time I went for a checkup, that was almost 3 years ago and that doctor works in the same walk-in clinic. I saw him yesterday, not sure if he recognized me. It’s like they say, lay down with dogs and catch fleas, sit in a waiting room full of sick people and get sick so I try to avoid doctors unless necessary.
It would be a world record, biggest pussy to ever squat over 500.
That’s a good idea, I’m just not sure how easy it would be to set that up and like I mentioned I don’t have a GP/family doctor and the one I did works in the same clinic. My wife has a doctor that gets her fast referrals when needed, like specialist that you would wait 6-12 months to see she gets to see in a few weeks.
That’s what I’m saying.
You can’t get any sort of elective surgery covered by public healthcare over here, and private doctors are not cheap. I knew I guy who had one side of his face caved in from being hit by a drunk driver while he was riding a motorcycle, they considered it cosmetic surgery an wouldn’t do it even though he was totally deformed. Fortunately he sued the driver for a large sum and was able to go to the US for surgery.
I could look into going to another country to get it done for cheaper, but that presents another set of problems and doesn’t sound like it’s worth it. Unless I can find a doctor who is sympathetic to my case like @donnerschweer said, I’m basically out of luck. And like I mentioned, my grandfather lived in Canada for about 30 years and had a big hernia and nothing was ever done about it. The medical system was better until recently too.
Ok, so for everyone who has been following here plus @JNorton, @marcb84, and @strongmangoals, it looks like I have finally figured this out.
From the Barbell Medicine forum:
I’ve been diagnosed with a small (~0.5 inch) umbilical hernia just above my belly button by my doctor. It is painless and causes no discomfort and is fully reducible. I’m a 26yo healthy male with no previous medical issues.
I saw a general surgeon about it, and he said that surgery is not required for the foreseeable future. When I discussed that I lift heavy weights, he told me to continue on with it as normal, but didn’t seem to have a good grasp of what barbell squatting and deadlifting entailed.
In you personal and/or professional opinion, should I seek corrective surgery now and get it over with, or continue training as normal?
Jordan Feigenbaum’s reply (doctor and powerlifter, stronger than me too):
Given that you have already seen 2 professionals about this who have stated you can train and go about your life, I think it’s likely you can train. They have had the advantage of examining you and taking a thorough history, however both have said you can train- which I agree with.
I have an umbilical hernia for about a decade now. It’s doing just fine.
…….
So it looks like it’s back to lifting as normal, and if I need surgery then I will get surgery like the doctor told me yesterday. It could get worse without lifting weights, and if I never had one in the first place I could end up with a big one so there’s nothing much to it. Well that’s a relief, but now I’m pissed off about those bullshit 225x21 squats yesterday. I guess a little deload of sorts can’t hurt, but I should have squatted at least 495 instead.
I’m going to start an account over there and ask some questions at some point, but for now I need a break from thinking about this bullshit.
EDIT: nvm so saw the conclusion from the BB med post. Ignore the rest of my post. Happy lifting brother just don’t mistake ab DOMS other something for ur guts exploding
I’m not so sure you are looking at this right:
One option is u don’t do the lifting, still a fair chance the hernia does not resolve / gets worse. Low chance of it resolving on its own and is still able to be entrapped/strangulated as is, so surgery somewhere down the line is the best option.
Other option is you do the lifting, higher chance of getting worse. Still low chance of it resolving on its own and is still able to be entrapped/strangulated as is, so surgery somewhere down the line is the best option.
It’s not going to get bad all ninja like it will be very apparent pain and discomfort. It’s not like instant gut exploding either but u should get over to the hospital ASAP and it being a medical emergency u should get bumped to the top of the queue. Out in a couple of days and in a few weeks ready to get in the grind again
So surgery is the likely long term outcome. Whether you lift or do other physical activities that fulfill u or not the outcome is the same only difference is maybe timeframe. So y not lift