Several months back I hurt my left shoulder. It apparently still hasn’t healed completely because every time I get any good weight doing chest it hurts. My GP told me that it was likely just overstretched tendons, but it’s still givng me trouble.
I have more recently strained a tendon in my right forearm near my elbow that acts up during curls (and most pulling exercises). I’ve been advised to let that rest now as well. So the question is… What do I do now? Due to the two injuries I can’t really do any heavy lifting that involves my arms w/o aggrivating one or both injury. I can’t do legs every day.
Any suggestions on some creative mix I can do to stay active and not completely bored?
Unscheduled layoffs blow, plain and simple, but if you push heavy now you are likely going to extend the time you have to lay back. I can’t tell you exactly what to do because I can’t feel your injuries, but I also have shoulder issues and have to limit my ROM for now and be very aware of how heavy I’m going.
You may be surprised how decently you can work with a shorter ROM and careful deliberate movement.
I have a pair of power hooks I use for dumbbell pressing that really help for instance. I can push pretty hard if I’m careful and don’t let ego get the best of me.
Screw this up now and you may be paying with the rest of you lifting career. Shoulders just love to never really heal up right. I can’t be any more specific than that.
you need to figure out what caused the injury to begin with. The generic answer is you have some common imbalances that you neglected until they may have gotten severe enough to cause an injury.
Did your doctor examined you thoroughly, dig he get an echo or MRI scan off your shoulder? When somebody works out and his shoulder starts acting up, I wouldn’t think of just overstretched tendons. Shoulder impingement would be the first thing on my mind. There are a lot of articles on this site covering shoulder impingement.
Also, the right forearm, sounds like tennis or golf elbow to me. This is more serious than a strained tendon, it’s a degeneration of the tendon tissue.
Get it looked at by somebody who knows what he’s doing.
Use a foam roller or a tennisball on the the forearm.