War Torn and On The Mend

Training Bodybuilding
21

Hey Roland,

I am with you on how it’s hard not to lift. Like yourself I’ve had more injuries than I care to admit and my body finally said enough is enough.

I followed a similar plan of attack as you with different twists here and there and the time off from the weights really paid off.

Once you get past this hurdle and back to the weights you will appreciate them more because you will leave the weight room feeling worked but not in pain.

You might want to consider using Celadrin and Cissus. I can’t begin to tell you how much these two supps helped my beaten, arthritic, 37 yo body.

Good luck and best of health!

22

Thanks Nikolo, I’ll check out the Celadrin and Cissus. I know what you mean when you say you appreciate the weights once you get back. I’ve had lay offs too and it was great to come back each time. This time I’m doing it differently though, I’m going to come back much slower and ensure proper mobility, activation, strength and length balance all stay with me.

Roland.

[quote]nikolo wrote:
Hey Roland,

I am with you on how it’s hard not to lift. Like yourself I’ve had more injuries than I care to admit and my body finally said enough is enough.

I followed a similar plan of attack as you with different twists here and there and the time off from the weights really paid off.

Once you get past this hurdle and back to the weights you will appreciate them more because you will leave the weight room feeling worked but not in pain.

You might want to consider using Celadrin and Cissus. I can’t begin to tell you how much these two supps helped my beaten, arthritic, 37 yo body.

Good luck and best of health![/quote]

23

Well today is feeling good, my illio-psoas bursitis and femoral anterior glide syndrome is starting to feel a bit better and my shoulders are showing signs of healing. Well they hurt less at least.

Is it possible to like stretching? It seems it is, I’m learning to love the feeling of all four types of stretching that I’m doing. i.e. AIS, PNF, Static, Dynamic. Oddly enough I like the how I feel the most after static stretching… I’ll be wearing yoga pants soon… daisy colored. It is almost as if the muscles are finally starting to do what they are supposed to. Odd feeling, it does scare me a bit thinking that that same feeling is foreign because I’m not used to losing strength at such a rapid rate. I hope it is not as bad as I imagine.

Thursday is coming and I’m looking forward to seeing the doc.

Later,
Roland

24

I hate the job interview question “Where do you see yourself in five years?” How the hell do I know? Did the interviewer five years ago think s/he’d be doing this interview?

If you’d asked me a year ago what I thought about static stretching I would have said it is for people that don’t know much about much. Ask me today. I’ve some real ROM issues and have been stretching using AIS, PNF, dynamic and static. I typically use AIS to get the ROM, then do either static or contraction followed by static stretching. Things look good, yadda yadda yadda.

I go to school and take the train each day. The window ledge is about four inches lower than my shoulder and is just big enough to hold my elbow. I thought I’d try and push my shoulder up close to the window, put my elbow on the ledge, bend the elbow to ninety, internally rotate the arm and relax for the 30 minute ride. It didn’t hurt at all, but felt unstable at about the 20 minute mark, so I stopped the external rotators stretch. After about two minutes, the shoulder felt fine again.

So? Who cares? I do. I’ve stretched until I heard a cow outside my door, which is odd in the city. I never got much range increase in the external rotators, until now.

Suppose while standing, you hold your upper arm parallel to the floor and straight to the side, elbow bent to 90 and upper arm straight out in front and parallel to the floor is the reference point for measuring range of motion, internally rotate your arm while keeping the elbow and shoulder from moving and observe the degrees of ROM (start is 0). I used to get about 15 to 20 degrees.

After a lot of stretching over a month I’d get to maybe 45. Starting again at about 15, after only about two weeks of the long held static stretching I’ve finally got about 70 degrees. I’ll stop when I can get 90, hopefully not much longer.

So? I’ll be weak and tear those rotators like paper when I finally am able to lift again right?

I don’t think so, with the PNF I’ve felt them remain strong and after I get 90 degrees, I’ll add weighted external rotations and build the strength up without losing any range of motion. I cannot see for the life of me the disadvantage of Static ROM, if I am able to get a good range and build the strength qualities I’m after while maintaining the ROM, how can that be bad?

I agree with Cressey when he says dynamic is king, but only if ROM is up to par. If you are exceptionally short ranged, why not get the range first? Shit if you could take a month off from training a body part (I’m forced to right now anyway), then why not use that time to get ROM, then build the quality up from that new ROM?

I’m sold! I admit it seems scary to take this approach, but fuck it, it’s working so far.

Roland.

25

Doctor update, my appointment was cancelled on me and I rescheduled for Tuesday… health care takes for ever.

The good news is that my strategy so far is showing dividends! My hip is improving all the time. In fact I can walk without looking like I’m confused about gravity and wave without pain now.

I stated training the glutes with both single leg rack pulls and kneeling squats. Both seem to help… especially the rack pulls. When I feel the glutes better I’m adding in pullthroughs.

For the shoulder I’m thinking scapular abduction syndrome and I’m doing prone, thumbs up, arms straight out in a ‘y’ shape, static holds to activate the lower traps and shorten the muscles somewhat. I’m close to a much better self-diagnosis and will add what is needed then.

Roland.

26

This thread is for accountability, and it’s about damn time I did an update.

First observation:
This takes way too damn long. I think I’m finally learning what it is like for people who make a new years resolution only to stop training in a month. It is easier to plan on rehabing than actually doing it. I think it’s because there is no feeling of power, that moment after a heavy deadlift that you know you’ve just put it on the line is the high that keeps me addicted to training. It just isn’t there when you do everything else but push it.

Second:
A good PT is gold, but don’t think that he/she is going to figure out your problem, the truth is, that you are the one that needs to figure your own shit out. I would love to find someone who tests for problems that I didn’t bring up, someone who understands more than most and knows that a patient may be so used to pain that they don’t mention some because they aren’t aware of it. It seems that most practitioners that I’ve seen will address only what you tell them.

Third:
It wouldn’t be much value for me to list all my issues and what I’m doing for them. To me at least, that misses the real challenge, staying motivated.
My issues are numerous and my rehab is mostly exercise based. The trick is learning to love wimpy exercises. How does someone fall in love with mobility/activation? It is alright if it is before a real workout, at least you have that to look forward to when you are doing it, but what if the mobility/activation is the workout?

Fourth:
It is not an error to focus on body parts! I love Cosgrove’s writing, etc. but until I learned how to focus on light weights, high frequency, high reps/sets, I never would have learned to fire my lower traps at will. It took a mind muscle connection to do that.

Fifth:
This post is too damn long,
Roland

27

Victories:
Lower traps are firing! I’m now learning to do all the familiar exercises again, starting with really light weights and focusing on, God forbid, the muscle. As soon as I don’t feel the lower traps when doing a few of the exercises, the weight is to high. That means high volume and frequency.

Glutes are firing! Same strategy as above.

Range of motion has improved!
I now realize that ROM exercise (AIS, PNF, Static, Dynamic) are here for life.

I now have knowledge of more problems and with awareness I can do something about them.

I can see a year of training very differently than I’d prefer before I can train like a beast again. This is a victory by the way, at one time I didn’t think I’d ever train hard again.

Roland.

28

Haven’t posted as there hasn’t been much reason to. I’ve been plugging along and have finally closed in on the mobility and activation I need to thrive.

Man that took some time… too much, I’d do it differently if I could go back again.

I’ve added Cressey’s and Robertson’s “Building the efficient athlete” to the library and will use that as the central theme for the upcoming training.

I truly cannot fucking wait to deadlift again… hopefully in about three months.

Roland