Of All The Stupid Injuries

I’m at this small outdoor public skatepark where I took my daughter so we could inline skate a bit mostly just on the ground though they do have some really tame little ramps to fool around with too as well as some bigger ones.

One of the ramps is a flat platform about chest high to me with a hand rail around the top and about a 45 degree straight hill down to the ground. The only way up is to to get going fast enough to make it up the ramp. No stairs or anything.

I didn’t think I could do that on inline skates so I decided to try to climb up the side and go down. I don’t even know how to describe this. Like I say the platform is about straight across my pecs with no good way to get up the side on foot nevermind on skates.

I got my feet (in the skates) on top of one of the braces on the ground that make up the frame of this thing and managed to get myself up to where the bottom of my rib cage was up on the platform so I’m kind laying with my weight on my ribs. As I twisted to try and grab the rail to my left side to pull myself the rest of the way up my ribcage rolled against the platform and POP!

Ouch! I got down right away and felt around and couldn’t find any obvious damage and the pain subsided almost immediately. By a few hours later it hurt on my left side sightly in front of straight down from my armpit right where my obliques run over the botom of my ribs. I worked out (chest, tri’s and shoulders) with some discomfort, but made it through OK.

This morning I woke up and turned to get out of bed and wham!!! Felt like a knife in my side. I think I seperated the cartlidge between two of the ribs or something. It hurts, a lot, but only when I turn certain ways, cough, clear my throat hard or tighten up my abs.

I just cannot believe this. I was just getting settled on the anabolic diet and have been gaining steady in both size and strength. The little voice of common sense and mature experience is whispering in the back of my mind “you better take it easy or you are going to be sorry”, but it’s killin me thinking about a lay off right now. DAMMMMMIT!!!

Of all the dumbass ways to hurt yourself. I’m depressed, but I’ve gotta think about what I’m gonna do now. Thanks for listening (reading) I’m just gettin it off my chest. Sorry about the rambling post, but I couldn’t think of a shorter way to describe to what happened accurately.

–Tiribulus->

Last winter I slipped on some ice and tweaked my knee, didnt squat for a long time.

Now I have a bruised palm from a car accident and can’t bench.

[quote]JNeves wrote:
Last winter I slipped on some ice and tweaked my knee, didnt squat for a long time.

Now I have a bruised palm from a car accident and can’t bench.[/quote]

It’s frickin maddening!!! At least if you hurt yourself tryin for a personal best or something, but this kind of thing? Obviously I feel for ya man. I just wanna wake up and find out it never happened. The doctor will say “rest, and baby it until it’s better and don’t lift until then” duh!!! I may try some careful bodyweight work or isolation stuff just to keep from going too soft.

–Tiribulus->

Your mind is going to be your own worst enemy while you heal up. You’re gonna convince yourself you’re getting weaker with every passing hour. Stuff around the house will suddenly feel heavier and you’ll freak out a little more.

Trust me when I say its all in your head. While gains have to be maintained, they stick around longer than you think. I don’t know how many times I’ve surprised myself with how strong I still am when I return from a injury induced break.

Plus, anything you do lose can be achieved again much quicker than it took you to get there the first time.

[quote]Zell959 wrote:
Your mind is going to be your own worst enemy while you heal up. You’re gonna convince yourself you’re getting weaker with every passing hour. Stuff around the house will suddenly feel heavier and you’ll freak out a little more.

Trust me when I say its all in your head. While gains have to be maintained, they stick around longer than you think. I don’t know how many times I’ve surprised myself with how strong I still am when I return from a injury induced break.

Plus, anything you do lose can be achieved again much quicker than it took you to get there the first time.[/quote]

I appreciate that. I really needed to hear something like this. It’s especially bad because I’m not a kid anymore and that looonnnggg vision of how much time there is left isn’t what it once was. I mean I’m 42, not ancient, but not 23 anymore either.

You’re undoubtedly right. I started training again just to get healthy and get back in passable shape, but once I saw that I could still train hard and grow I made some fairly quick significant gains. Indeed, once I touch the weights I can’t train any other way, but hard. It worries my wife sometimes. It’ll be alright, it’s just frustrating as hell.

–Tiribulus->

Dude I feel you. I sprained my ankle pretty bad this summer messing around doing handstand walks. It’s only now just recovering. Try being a college athlete and explaining that one to your coach…

[quote]jtrinsey wrote:
Dude I feel you. I sprained my ankle pretty bad this summer messing around doing handstand walks. It’s only now just recovering. Try being a college athlete and explaining that one to your coach…[/quote]

That reminds me of a guy I knew in college. The guy was a baseball player. He was, as a freshman, on pace to shatter the schools career homerun record by the end of his sophomore year. What derailed him? He tore an ab muscle while vacuuming his dorm room.

Yes, you read that right. He was vacuuming a 9?x9? dorm room and managed to cause himself a season ending injury. I can only imagine the scene of him explaining what happened to his coach.

He did still manage to shatter the HR record. Just took him till his Jr year.

Tiribulus. I remember you giving me some good advice when I got injured. Actually I went back to the gym today. And in 6 weeks I haven’t gone down on any lifts. Anyway, good luck healing up agian.

I also know how you feel. A few years ago, I was walking out the garbage, holding it in my right hand. I slipped on ice, and my left arm started rotating to regain my balance. I never did fall, but when my left arm settled, it was just hanging there; It was dislocated. I’ve had nothing but trouble from that arm ever since.

Bad injuries in that area, if they will heal themselves, heal slowly and it may take six to eight weeks. If it is painfull and you are not getting better you may benefit by wrapping an elastic band around the chest. But don’t wrap it so tight that you can’t breathe properly and give yourself pneumonia, and certainly don’t sleep with it.

Speaking of stupid, a stupid thing to do, which I did, would be to stretch the area while it is hurting and rip it further.

Let’s see:

I’ve hurt my lower back trying to tie my sneakers.

Caught my crank in between 2 dumbells whilst trying to rack them.

Tweeked a knee while getting out of my car, cause mainly from new dress shoes that hadn’t been scuffed up enough on the soles.

and many more…

I feel for you bro, but it could’ve been worse. You could’ve ridden down the ramp, lost your balance, and did a face plant. :wink:

I had a bad case of tennis elbow this entire summer, from May through August. My upper body progress completely stalled, plus I gained some inches around my midsection. I get an injection of cortisone and then go see a physical therapist and my tennis elbow is gone in about 2 weeks.

Here’s the sad/funny part. I couldn’t work out my upper body (so as to give my elbow a rest) while seeing the PT so I trained my lower body more. As part of that I went on a very easy 2 mile run (more of a jog, really) and pulled/irritated my hamstring right at the end of the run.

Now I can workout my upper body but not my lower! It makes me laugh at how not young and springy my body is anymore (I’m 38).

Tribulus, if you’re really doing this to get in good shape then don’t worry about the lay off. You’re not trying to go into some competition and there’s no deadlines to meet so be smart and take your time and LET IT HEAL. Not letting it properly and quickly heal violates your first principle of getting healthy. Don’t get greedy by thinking you can work past the pain. You won’t. You’ll just drag it out.

And go see a PT. They can work wonders and you’ll probably heal up much faster than by just letting it rest.

WOW!,
I appreciate everybody’s kind words of encouragment. Now I don’t feel as bad listening to some of the dopey ways someone other than me have injured themselves.

You guys are right of course. I’ll have to remember what I told Tmmmey, the guy above. Which was:

“There’s probably not much you can do to get it healed other than basically be careful and rest it which is, I’m sure, exactly what you didn’t want to hear, but if you don’t you may wind up doing more serious damage.”

Easy for me to say when it’s somebody else huh? Glad to hear your back pull healed up buddy.

Oh well. Wadda ya gonna do as they say. I’m hurt and I’ll have to get through it like everybody else.

Plus, let me remind you that you don’t want to mess with the stress hormone cortisol my friend.

Also, though i don’t know how bad your annoying injury is, i bet there’s some areas you always wanted to improve, and never had time to isolate. Calfs, wrists, lateral delts, neck etc, you could go hard on these, making real gains, so your time is not wasted, and stay in that ‘warrior’ zone you know you love so much.

Best of luck man

[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
Zell959 wrote:
Your mind is going to be your own worst enemy while you heal up. You’re gonna convince yourself you’re getting weaker with every passing hour. Stuff around the house will suddenly feel heavier and you’ll freak out a little more.

Trust me when I say its all in your head. While gains have to be maintained, they stick around longer than you think. I don’t know how many times I’ve surprised myself with how strong I still am when I return from a injury induced break.

Plus, anything you do lose can be achieved again much quicker than it took you to get there the first time.

I appreciate that. I really needed to hear something like this. It’s especially bad because I’m not a kid anymore and that looonnnggg vision of how much time there is left isn’t what it once was. I mean I’m 42, not ancient, but not 23 anymore either.

You’re undoubtedly right. I started training again just to get healthy and get back in passable shape, but once I saw that I could still train hard and grow I made some fairly quick significant gains. Indeed, once I touch the weights I can’t train any other way, but hard. It worries my wife sometimes. It’ll be alright, it’s just frustrating as hell.

–Tiribulus->[/quote]

[quote]Zell959 wrote:
jtrinsey wrote:
Dude I feel you. I sprained my ankle pretty bad this summer messing around doing handstand walks. It’s only now just recovering. Try being a college athlete and explaining that one to your coach…

That reminds me of a guy I knew in college. The guy was a baseball player. He was, as a freshman, on pace to shatter the schools career homerun record by the end of his sophomore year. What derailed him? He tore an ab muscle while vacuuming his dorm room.

Yes, you read that right. He was vacuuming a 9?x9? dorm room and managed to cause himself a season ending injury. I can only imagine the scene of him explaining what happened to his coach.

He did still manage to shatter the HR record. Just took him till his Jr year.

[/quote]

Haha, ok, now I don’t feel SO stupid.

I just got done doing some light lower body work I had scheduled. Well it wasn’t scheduled to be light. Surprisingly some 2/3 range squats didn’t hurt too much. With deads I had to go about 40% of usual. A little dumbell squats and some unweighted hypers.

It didn’t seem to be too bad, but any heavier would’ve been, especially on deads. I was fully prepared to quit immediately if it felt like I should. Of course I could be fooling myself and wind up in trouble tomorrow, but I did take it pretty easy. Nothing hurts more than coughing believe it or not.

I guess I shouldn’t be if I think about it, but I am a little surprised to hear other guys report injuries incurred in ways just as silly as this. I was a bit hesitant to admit doing something so juvenile as an allegedly resposible adult:-]

–Tiribulus->

Glad you were able to get a workout Trib. Keep it light for a bit, don’t rush it.

Being old timers, we can tend to try to make up for lost time when we should be relaxing.

[quote]JNeves wrote:
Now I have a bruised palm from a car accident and can’t bench.[/quote]

Dont jerk off while driving…

I got hit in the face with a kayak yesterday…

I broke my index finger pulling off my socks once.

Well. I souldn’t say broke, it was a compound dislocation. Broke, dislocated, didn’t matter I had to split it and couldn’t move it for about 4 weeks.

I felt really stupid…