how to maintain LBM while injured

Training Bodybuilding
1

Two weeks ago i had medial deltoid ligament injury and am now finally capable of doing some very controlled movements and excersised invloving the shoulders. However it appears i have lost a lot of lbm and thanks to the painkillers i dont eat much anymore. 3 good meals on a good day. How do i controll this lbm loss? i know the diet needs to go back in the range of 3000 cals and 5-6 meals a day but what about execerises? i cant perfrom any press, shrugs, DLs, even squats are a pain. The only thing i seem to be able to train is legs(no squats or dls though), arms and abs.

To help me out please list every possible excerise that i could use for my back( at the least ) and possibly chest that dont incorporate any kind of major shoulder movements.

I could ofcourse continue taking the painkillers, but they cause serious drowziness and take away the hunger, making it impossible to eat right, resulting in lbm loss, and as a hardgainer i dont want to lose too much mass cause it takes forever to put some back on.

Any suggestions you folks have, or past experiences with injury recovery is appreciated.

BTW has anyone tried prolab’s Flex-a-new-joint? The guy at the supp store was like you have to , have to buy it to make the training pain free.

2

the only way you will maintain lean mass is by doing leg workouts. forget about upper body if you are that afraid about your deltoid. anyone who says that there is a movement that does not put stress on the deltoid is incorrect. just think about it. if you want back mass do deadlifts, if your shoulders can handle that. force yourself to eat to maintain your lean mass and in the mean time do some cardio vascular training to stay in shape. Another idea is to do some androgens to lesson the lose of lean mass. you need adequate protein though. good luck. laters pk

3

I can’t think of any movement to work chest or back without stressing an injured deltoid. But don’t worry too much about this. You will probably get more of a systemic effect from working legs, anyway.

Be creative and do everything for legs you can think of that doesn’t hurt your shoulder. Smith squats, maybe? Leg press, leg extension, leg curl. Jumps? Lots of single-leg stuff with just body weight (Ian King has some great ones). All those different leg machines. It doesn’t matter if these aren’t your favorite exercises. Something is better than nothing, and the variety could be beneficial anyway.

I would try to get off the painkillers. Two weeks of painkillers for a ligament injury sounds exessive to me. Painkillers have MANY bad side effects. And using them for longer than a week or so is detrimental to recovery and healing.

At the least, downgrade to Tylenol or something like that. Rub topical capsaicin on the injured area 4X a day (every 4 hours). This has proven to be very effective for pain relief. I have had very good results with it. Also, use ice and/or heat. I like heat, but if you have any swelling or tenderness, use ice, or ice and heat alternately.

Also, try walking or other light cardio for 20 minutes or so. Aerobic exercise has a proven painkilling and mood-enhancing effect. It also increases circulation, thereby promoting healing.

These strategies for pain relief do require a lot more effort than popping a pill. But they will help you heal and recover, rather than hinder.

I know just how you feel. But, it’s not that hard to get back lost muscle you once had. It’s not nearly as hard as gaining brand-new muscle.

In addition to the above, do as much movement as the pain will allow. For example, do lateral raises and arm circles with no weight in your hands, 10 reps 10X a day. Movement promotes healing. You just have to be very careful not to put too much stress or weight on the healing tissue. Just enough, not too much.

4

Thanks for the detailed replies.

The bright side to this injury is i now get to focus on my wheels and non mirror muscles, something i was negelecting in the past, now however rises a whole another issue. How many times a week is the max for legs without overtrainning? twice ? thrice(is that a word)?

My legs are thinner compared to my upper body, but do pack an explosive punch and allow me to dunk over just about anybody, a 40 inch vertical exists, but i have never(on a regular basis) in the past trained legs more than once a week, unless playing ball counts.

Secondly whats the maximum number of days a week i can train arms (fore, tris,bis and grip strength)?

Or is there no actual method to measuring recovery besides soreness?

Once again thanks in advance.

5

you can also try an androgen like 4-ad or mag 10.

6

what about HMB, OKG and AKG…
sorry i couldnt resist

7

"To help me out please list every possible excerise that i could use for my back( at the least ) and possibly chest that dont incorporate any kind of major shoulder movements. "

how about you check this site out:

http://www.bsu.edu/webapps/strengthlab/home.htm

stick it in your favourite cause its great :slight_smile:

8

Pain is the body’s way of saying something is wrong.

Be careful, being too eager to train will most likely prolong the recovery. You must train smart.

I know, I have been in the same situation and started too hard too early. Don’t do the same mistake.

9

Yeah i am not planning on pushing my self too fast into getting back to lifting heavy, but the question remains whats the max times a week one can train his legs?

No i am gonna pass on the androgens, cause honestly without being able to do any presses i lack the motivation of regularly going to the gym(currently i am barely going twice or so). Hence the adnros will just make me hornier and give me a shit loads of dht and estrogen to go along with that. I would rather wait a month or so, until i am physically ready to make dumbells scream “i am your bitch”. Before i do any andros or mones.

10

work with excercises that don’t put stress on your deltoids/shoulders. i love the deadlift/olympic lifts but if you have week shoulders you can easily redamage that area. i would say stick to squats for leg workouts with glute ham raises, extensions, curls, and maybe some leg press. you can do calves easilly. for forearms you can do wrist curls on a bench. i suggest you workout at an intensity that will allow you to improve without taxing the cns system and getting you too sore. you want to maintain a frequency of atleast 3 times a week so going overboard on a workout will affect your recovery ability. Also adding mass will decrease your jumping ability so you need to make sure it’s functional mass so that you definitely get stronger for that added body weight. that’s my take if i was an athelete and wanted to maintain my hops. laters pk

11

Samsmarts,
I recall an article demonstrating that there were training benefits (increased strength)in a non-trained corresponding body-part when the other corresponsing bodypart was trained (i.e. the left leg increased strength while only the right leg was trained). The study was done I believe on injured individuals and also non-injured with similar results. The researchers identified this as a possible sympathetic response to the training of the opposite limb. I would take that to mean that you could/should include training of the other shoulder, arm, etc while recuperating. This should help meet your lbm maintenance goal as well as help mitigate the lost strength that you can expect, making your training recovery that much faster. If you are interested, I can try to locate the article referrence. Best of luck.
old dogg

12

Old Dogg–You sure it wont result into one massive delt on the left and a tiny one on the right?

Come to think of it, i am not gonna put on three inches on my left shoulder anyway if i train it four or five times before i start training my right as well. Because i never gained 3 inches of beef in such a short time before.

yes Old Dogg I would appreciate it if you could post that articles link, i want to read it and see how one can train an injured body part without actually training it. Cause what you said makes sense, i jump off my right foot in basketball(and have been doing so almost daily for three years now) not both feet. But if you look at my claves there is no difference in size between the right and the left even though i use the right alot more often.

13

Samsmart,
The link to the study is posted below. (available on PubMed). The study showed the untrained leg strength increase (peak torque value) of 18% of the total achieved for the trained leg if dominant, with 38% of the trained leg strength increase transfered when training the non-dominant leg. The abstract includes a note that the impact may be greater when injured. While this study specificaly looks at ankle muscle strength, studies showed similar results in ACL rehabilitation. I believe you can safely assume the effect would also transfer to the deltoid. In addition, while emphasizing legs might make sense, you could also include non-deltoid single arm exercises (one arm rows, one arm deadlifts, one arm tricep ext, etc) to maintain as much upper body strength as possible. Good luck.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi? cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=10921652&dopt=Abstract

old dogg

14

Yes, it’s true that the bodypart contralateral to a trained bodypart will get stronger. But not as strong as the trained bodypart, so keep that in mind. As the injured arm heals, you would have to be very careful to shift the balance of training in the other direction (more for the weaker, less for the stronger delt).

You may not think that one-arm rows, for example, use the delts, but if you have blown a ligament, you may find that the delts do more than you think whenever you hold something in your hands and move your arms.

I think you haven’t gotten more opinions about how many times legs can be trained, because it depends. It depends on YOUR recovery. And it depends on how hard you train them. If you’re doing very little for upper body, I would try training them 2X per week. If that goes well, reduce the volume/intensity of each workout and try 3X per week. Chad Waterbury (I think) has recently written about training a bodypart 4X per week. You could check out his protocols for that.

15

sam, you could invest in a EMS machine. In my opinion this is the only way you will be able to stimulate your chest/back without having to contract your injured shoulder. Do a search for the EMS article on here written by Charlie Francis.

16

Andersons/Samsmarts,
I must not have been clear in what I was suggesting related to 1 arm exercises. I assumed that the medial deltoid ligament injury described would preclude any exercises involving that arm (including rows, dl, etc). My suggestion was to perform those one-arm exercises with the healthy arm for the sympathetic effect on the injured side in an attempt to minimize atrophy and strength loss.
old dogg

17

old dogg-- i understood what you were trying to say and the article made it pretty clear, once again thanks it was an informative study.

Today was my first day without any pain killers at all and i feel only minor pain if i swing my right arm. I was planning on going to the gym but damn we are caved in here at halifax canada. Check this cam out to see what the city looks like now.

http://www.gov.ns.ca/tran/webcam/Bedford.htm

18

The deltoid ligament is at the ankle. There is no such thing as a medial deltoid; there is a middle deltoid muscle, though. Furthermore, ligaments do not attach to muscles; they attach bones to bones. I’m assuming that you had surgery to correct a problem with one of the ligaments of the shoulder girdle, which includes several joints. As such, you’ll need to be a bit more specific before any recommendations can be made.

The contralateral limb idea is an excellent one; I reviewed another one of these studies in “Rhode Island Recap.”

19

Eric,
In interest of giving credit where it is due, I most likely read and recalled your article. The dark recesses of my old mind couldn’t recall exactly where I read it, so I simply went to PubMed and searched. I found a number of articles, with the one referenced pretty clear in the conclusions. I don’t usually spend that much time searching PubMed for contralateral limb training, although I do find it intersting when exploring an idea. Sorry for the oversight.
old dogg

20

old dogg, sorry, I thought “non-deltoid single-arm exercises” meant exercises using arms but not delts. Which I couldn’t imagine. Nice way to remember what you read and apply it!