I’ve never gotten it diagnosed, but I’ve gone through periods where trying to move my shoulder though a full ROM was painful.
What worked for me was to take stupidly light dumbbells (like unloaded handles or 5lbs) and do seated partial DB presses. By partial, I let the ROM be dictated by where I felt the pain. I’d push just SLIGHTLY past where the pain was, and keep tension on the muscles the whole time. I was doing a single 100 rep set and just flushing the area with restorative bloodflow.
Followed it up with band pull aparts, because those seem to fix everything.
Yeah I remember seeing that. I actually tried that test already, and it feels a little uncomfortable but not downright painful. That’s the problem: nothing feels incredibly painful, just a little more awkward than I think it should.
The thing with pull aparts is that they seem to do the opposite to me. After a set of those, or really even during a set, I feel like “room” is lacking inside my shoulders and the movement feels awkward (everybody seems to like pull aparts but they really never felt right to me).
I always end up with that weird pressure in between my front and middle delt, which is weird because usually when you have impingement you’re sensitive to internal rotation, whereas apparently I feel this even when a movement is done with the shoulder slightly externally rotated (like pull aparts).
@T3hPwnisher I just tried BBQ sauce on eggs. Unfortunately I couldn’t find the no sugar version so I’m just going easy with the amount I put. Man, I have no words to describe how delicious this is. I could eat 30 eggs in a sitting like this. Oh my God.
Hell yeah dude! We’re going international, haha. And actually, you may have just come up with a solid post workout meal if you use the full strength stuff, because now it’s pretty much pure protein and quick carbs.
It’s a bit too high in fat, it’ll blunt the insulin response.
@samul I feel we’re in the same boat, I see tons of convenient stuff on these boards available at Costco and know that there’s not even the word “keto” written on a single item at any grocery store near me.
Edit: in fact, I remember reading that eggs are a good breakfast staple for two reasons. The egg whites will, despite the presence of the fat, quite shortly be broken down into amino acids and enter the blood stream. And then, of course, the fat being energy sets you up for… Doing stuff. It’s not too bad
Edit 2: eggs are also somewhat decent pre-workout. The fats in a pre-workout meal serve to slow gastric emptying and thus allows the glucose (from pre-workout carbs) to enter the bloodstream over a longe period of time than if they were absent ensuring a steady stream of nutrients to the muscles while working out. Imagine a chest/back workout. The recovery window for the chest is ongoing while the back is being trained.
John Meadows, for instance, favors including a small(er) meal (~30-90min) pre-training that has a small amount (~20g) of fat for this purpose.
This strategy can also be employed in a meal before bed, along with a “slow” protein like casein to provide a more continuous supply of amino acids while sleeping.
I like to think that with a good pre-workout meal intra-workout nutrition isn’t as necessary but, I surmise the most anabolic combination is having a pre-workout meal, an intra-workout shake, and a post-workout meal. If one didn’t eat beforehand, I’d personally want to have the intra-workout and post-workout meal. And, another option I employ at times for convenience is pre-workout meal, whey shake immediately post-workout (whey is insulinogenic) and then a post-workout meal an hour later as I’ve finished cooking.
I’ve been experimenting with higher carb/low to no fat meals before my squat and deadlift days and high fat/low carb meals on my bench and press days for pre-workout nutrition and have seen interesting results in both capacities, although I’m not training with a focus on building muscle at the moment, so it’s different strategies and outcomes. Been doing a lot of reading on nutrition in my downtime, all very interesting, but also always seems to be a lot of different ways to succeed, haha.
I believe it’s a venue with a lot of nuance as there’s a mish-mash of physio- and psychological impacts. Further, it becomes even more convoluted when recovery from past sessions come into play, and I’m not convinced that days exist in isolation from one another dietarily either. I’ve found that leanness has a profound impact. The less lean I am, the less carbs seem to matter.
I believe that what you are observing on your bench and press days is conceivably that you are in a more dopaminergic state. Protein and fat will foster dopamine over serotonin. This’d be suitable on day a heavy day that’s otherwise low in volume.
If you haven’t already, you could experiment with coconut oil in those pre-workout meals.
I am abstaining from coconut oil for now due to the high saturated fat content. Fully aware it is a MCT, but just playing things very safe until I test my lipids.
possible. I had cream of rice as my pre workout meal for the longest time. I stopped when I couldn’t have whey anymore due to intolerance and I moved to rice + white fish as my pre workout. There is a video somewhere that was shot around halloween in which he adds corn candy to the mix, for good measure haha. we don’t have corn candy here but it looked good.
As far as my own nutrition: I decided to up food intake over this week and the next one.
Reasons being: I’m looking leaner than I was expecting to be at this caloric intake, so I think I can try and push calories a bit more; also, these two last weeks on the program will be the hardest, and I need every bit of recovery and growth I can get out of them.
One thing I’ve been experimenting with lately, which might seem a little bro-sciencey, but heck what do I have to lose, is increasing sodium intake around workouts. I salt my fish pretty heavily and add soy sauce, and yesterday I bought some bags of pre-made risotto or pasta. Those taste very good and have at least 2 g of salt per serving, so they’re perfect for my case.
Today’s post workout was: two servings of pre-made pasta alla carbonara, then kale with ground beef (pretty heavy on the salt there too). Plus lots, and lots of water around and during sessions. I think that should help with creating a better pump (as far as the pre-training part) and drive water into the muscles better, which supposedly should signal all the good anabolic stuff to muscle cells.
This is probably not the healthiest way of eating long-term, but I got my nutrition completely dialed in most of the time, I’m just experimenting with something a bit different for a while to see what happens
I might be progressing on dumbbell bench presses, but my barbell bench press isn’t going anywhere apparently. Today all I could do was 158 lb x 13 and then 12 reps. Sure, I’m doing those after a pretty taxing dropset on the incline db press, but still.
What’s more, my right wrist has been killing me for a week. It started hurting last Tuesday, right after my last set of incline presses, probably due to a sketchy rep at the end. I instantly knew it was pretty bad, so I started putting some anti-inflammatory pomade on it, but the issue hasn’t gone away yet.
I can’t pinpoint a single spot that hurts, because the pain is pretty “deep” and it kinda irradiates, but it’s pretty much here:
and it happens anytime I supinate my hand, or when the wrist gets bended backwards (wrist flexion, so to speak) under load. Curls and presses are what hurts the most.
I figured I wasn’t going to halt my training or change it at all as I’ve had this kind of issue in the past already, and it’s not invalidating, just very annoying. So my plan is to push through this week and the next, then there’ll be a deload and hopefully my joints will have a chance to recover.
This isn’t even the first time it happens, it’s just the first time it happens to the right side. I am confident I could have gotten a couple more reps on both db and bb presses today, but I went into the sets with not much confidence, as I had to pay attention to not hurting myself more while I also tried to push the reps as hard as possible. I hate my wrists, they’re so weak and get injured all the time.
