Archives for rehab (page 5)

Eleven days have elapsed since my previous workout. I was happy to find that I had not grown any fungus in my locker during the rest period. After grabbing the standard stuff (wrestling shoes, lock, shampoo, pen and shaker) I changed and headed over to the power rack for some load testing.

Decided Zercher squats would be an excellent candidate to carefully poke the ligaments with since not so much weight can be moved cradling the bar in the arms. If something would not feel right, it would also be easier to eject compared to having the bar over the shoulders. Besides, the movement is also excellent for learning correct squat technique (sitting back with shins vertical and driving the head back on ascent) when done wide and deep (like I did). For those of you not familiar with this great movement, that not only targets the legs and erectors but also tax the abs heavily, here’s an article in Finnish with excellent pictures (hint “väärin” means wrong) and a video of Finnish Westsider Patteri doing them in a pulling fashion off boxes with 125 kg/276 lbs. Among several variations, the Zercher good morning is also particularly interesting.

After the initial sets with only the bar felt good I carefully pyramided up until a somewhat strenuous triple with 65 kg/144 lbs. I wasn’t quite ready to max out just yet, but this felt good. I must admit it was a teeny weeny bit scary as well, since this was the first load test for my back since the injury on December 2nd. Even though it felt good I still had visions of my back ripping again. I guess this post-injury fright will disappear as I slowly start going back to harder training. Then did two lightish sets of pull-throughs and finished with a light reverse-hyper + ball crunches superset. Did the Zerchers fairly slow, but kept rest down in between sets of the other exercises. My conclusion? Twenty seconds is a fairly short time.

Now I will wait and see how my back feels tomorrow. If it seems to be hanging in there, I might do moderately heavy box squats on DE Squat/Deadlift day on Friday. Nice to be back, even though pulling lockouts with the likes of 190 kg/420 lbs for reps still seems pretty remote.

Being in the midst of a pre-party hurricane when posting the previous entry, I neglected to mention that my left bicep tendon seems to be a little overstressed. I felt it a little doing curls on Sunday, but it really announced its presence to my nervous system after I finished the benches on Wednesday. Hence the shorter workout.

The sore point, located on the inner arm about two-thirds up towards the deltoid, feels knotty and jumpy. It could also be a local muscle spasm or something, I’m not the massage therapist in this family (she is currently on a few-day retreat so can’t get her diagnosis yet). No matter what it is, rest and massage is the ticket unless I insist on adding an arm injury to my lower back ligament sprain. I don’t think I do.

I seem to tolerate the standard four day/week Westside split fairly well, as long as I take some time off now and then to prevent my body from getting cranky or falling asunder …which is fine given that my records keep a climbin’. That being said, I have been thinking about changing things a little lately after having followed the same training routine without major modification since May. This might be the perfect time to try out a modified three day rotating Westside split proposed by Jim Wendler in the QA section of elitefts.com. It goes like this:

Besides providing some needed variation, this split could be good for easing into the DE Squat day again since it would allow my lower back more rest. I am also playing with the idea of gradually increasing the intensity of assistance work up to Westside standards by dropping the rest between sets to 15-30 seconds. I would be the first to acknowledge that I don’t get all that much work done during 60 minutes. In short, my plan is to gradually increase the intensity of workouts while increasing the rest time between them. Not a very novel concept, but hopefully it is all the more time proven.

The battle plan is this: take a rest week (haven’t done so since the end of September) and work out a new training routine based on this rotating split in the meantime. Depending on how my back feels, I will either be back in the gym on Friday doing a long-time-no-see DE Squat workout (in case of which I will start the split at the end of Week I) or the following Monday.

I remind thee honorably reader that there is still time to join the guessing competition about how much I will bench by June 2nd. Unless there are more participants, the Amazon.com gift certificate will automatically go to the Lone Ranger who voted for 117.5 kg/260 lbs. The rules are here, the polling booth here. Nostradamus?

In yet another attempt to improve conditions for my lower back, today was chair purchasing day. What I wanted was a comfortable professional chair that would allow me to keep moving around as per the advice of Stuart McGill.

Many people think they should adjust their chair to create the ideal sitting posture. Typically, they adjust the chair so that the hips and knees are bent to 90 degrees and the torso is upright [..]. In fact, this is often shown as the ideal posture in many ergonomic texts. This may be the ideal sitting posture, but for no longer than 10 minutes! Tissue loads must be migrated from tissue to tissue to minimize the risk of any single tissue accumulating microtrauma. This is accomplished by changing posture. Thus, an ergonomic chair is one that facilitates easy posture changes over a variety of joint angles
McGill, Stuart (2002): Low Back Disorders, Human Kinetics: pp. 175. My emphasis.

I ended up buying it at Kaapin paikka, an outlet in Helsinki that sells models taken out of production at a discount. I bought a funky looking blue and black version of the chair above for 450 euro (discounted from 750 euro). Not cheap, but according to the seller this chair should last 10-15 years which makes it a good deal in the long run. It also has enough levers to accommodate a variety of sitting postures from the leisurely style with feet on desk to an extreme forward lean. Weighing in at 24 kg/53 lbs, it was pretty fun to slug it around town on my way home. This was already the second time during the history of this blog that I wondered whether the bus driver would let me in or not; I had to lift it up above the railings that divide the back-doors in two to get it into the bus as the wheels were too wide. Still, it is easier for the driver to relate to a chair than to a bunch of boards that threaten to put a nice dent in the roof… What next? We already have a nice washing machine… Anyway, many thanks to my dad who funded the bulk of this chair. A very nice Christmas present indeed!

After having recuperated at home from the hardships of chair slugging for a few hours, it was real lifting time (surpriiise!). When push came to shove, I was still too hesitant to load a free weight barbell on my back even for fairly light squatting. I have never really found the smith machine good for anything, but today it seemed like a safe alternative that would ensure that my upper body stay erect no matter what. On the downside, the mechanics of a smith squat is quite different from a free weight barbell squat, especially in the upper range where the feet are way in front of the bar (in order to achieve vertical shins they have to be placed quite far out). In contrast with a free weight squat, I found getting out of the hole below parallel the toughest part. A strenuous wide stance well beyond parallel double with 90 kg/199 lbs may not sound too glorious, but considering the state of my back it is not too shabby and much preferable to the Kraftwerk squat machine.

Now, time to get off the chair and do the reach-for-the-ceiling movement McGill recommends for thwarting the accumulation of disc stress caused by prolonged sitting.

Since my lower back felt happy enough after last week’s would-be ME Squat/Dead workout I repeated the workout. Went very near failure on the lying squat machine plus added cable crunches for the abs which also went well. My first post after the lower back injury was titled “Not what I wanted for Christmas”. Three weeks post-injury I now feel that the fact that I have been able to continue working on my bench and am already doing cable crunches make for a pretty good Christmas present all things considered. To cite myself, things could really be much worse.

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE! I will be benching on Wednesday, but expect to update my blog on the 27th or so.

In an effort to keep some power in my squat and deadlift muscles I did some lower back “friendly” exercises today. The Kraftwerk lying squat machine was the best thing I could come up with short of leg extensions. Tried to get as close an approximation as possible of a powerlifting squat on it; got the shins nearly vertical by putting my heels as high up as possible on the platform, which involved having the toes off the platform altogether. Width wise it was a little too narrow, but let’s just call them medium-width squats and be happy that the word squat still features in this blog. Things could be much much worse.

Worked up to some light straining with 130 kg/287 lbs for five reps. Felt good. If there are no ill side-effects I might go a little heavier next week. Getting into the Flex hamtractor seated leg curl was just the opposite; just getting into position was uncomfortable. Hamflexor standing one-legged leg curls proved a good substitute, where I worked up to a heavy fiver. Ditto for the lying leg curls. Chances are my hamstrings will be pretty sore after those two.

Seated calf raises -> shower -> home.

I’m happy to report that the injury I sustained doing good mornings on Monday is not, relatively speaking, all that bad. A slight bruise showed up on the spot where the strain occurred indicating some internal bleeding, but judging from its light color and size it wasn’t too severe. Although I had a very hard time sitting for any length of time yesterday, things where feeling somewhat better today following extensive icing, liberal amounts of IcePower, ibuprofen to lessen swelling and frequent 1000 mg doses of vitamin C. I guess a fair assessment is that people around me won’t notice I’m injured before I need to bend over (have to sit down to tie my shoelaces) although I do continuously feel the injury. I’m so happy we bought a new lower back friendly bed, since this is still going to take weeks to clear up (always the optimist).

With the bad comes the good. Ordered Stuart McGill’s Low Back Disorders from Amazon after this book turned out to be the bible on the subject of lower back injuries. There is an excellent two-part interview with this Mr. Spine over at T-mag (part I, part II). In short, I am going to let this injury teach me the lesson I deserve and take this opportunity to work on technique. Meanwhile, I think I will be able to continue my bench workouts as long as I avoid movements that hit the lower back. Will also continue the ice-IcePower-C-ibuprofen treatment for at least 72 hours following the strain.

Thought floor presses would be an ideal candidate for a back strain friendly max effort movement. Indeed they were as they effectively take the lower body out of the equation. Despite a fairly easy rep with my previous max 90 kg/199 lbs I decided to play smart for once and proceed in small increments. Better to end up at 95 kg/210 lbs than fail at 100 kg/221 lbs and be left with no new max (like I did on the bench last time). Managed to get 95 kg/210 lbs and 97.5 kg/215 lbs, but could not get 100 kg/221 lbs further than slightly off the ground after first nearly tipping it over while balancing it on my elbows for two-three seconds. Felt my right shoulder getting a little sore during the movement, but it cleared up after some post-workout icing.

To continue keeping stress off the back I did some triceps extensions on the floor and chest supported t-bar rows in very strict style.

As the dutiful Westside boy I am, I went for good mornings today. I was hoping on setting a new 5 rep max at 105 kg/232 lbs. Everything went fine until I went down for the second rep with 95 kg/210 lbs on my back. It was a deep rep, at least parallel. When I started pushing into the bar to get back up I felt something in my lower back and the bar came crashing down on the pins. I dare not think what would have happened had I been doing my good mornings outside the rack.

My first though was that “now it finally happened, I just popped my back in two”. But the pain failed to materialize and I seemed to have a full range of motion (at least physically). Furthermore, when it happened it didn’t feel like something burst into pieces, it was more like something “rolled down a little”. My best guess is that I have a back sprain in the sacroiliac region and not a slipped disc. My copy of A Complete Guide to Sports Injuries informs me that a mild sprain of this kind should heal within 2-6 weeks with a moderate sprain requiring 6-8 weeks. Seems like I won’t be getting a big deadlift for Christmas.

The best I can hope for is that I can continue working my upper body, which would give me an excellent opportunity to boost my bench. How I feel tomorrow morning will probably be quite indicative of how badly I hurt myself. It goes without saying that I will have to think over my relationship with the good morning after this. I might be guilty of rushing things a little on this front by going too heavy too soon.

My lower back was feeling better today, but still somewhat sore deep down. With wisdom hardened by limited experience and a master plan in my brain pocket, I was not one to fall for the lure of the “easy ME exercise that will not tax my back to the max”. Hence I pulled out my belt again and did reverse hypers in place of my ME exercise. Followed up with some ball crunches (this is no time to prove the “no back pain following sit-ups” theory correct) to stretch the spine and finished with some direct hamstring work to avoid strain on the lower back while giving the hams something to think about. After the reverse hypers my lower back was pretty fried. In a couple of days I will know if it this is to be regarded as a positive statement or as a plunge into darker pains.

Speaking of rehab: my shoulder is still not a 100%, but massage and the avoidance of harmful movements have led it to become a non-issue. I still take it somewhat careful though until I stop feeling it altogether.

Now for my healing sleep.

My back soreness refuses to leave me alone. It was probably a mistake to do seated good mornings last Friday with a stiff back adding fuel to the fire and preventing it from recovering. I’m pretty sure I don’t have a back injury, unless it has disguised itself as a persistent slight training ache. I have no problems bending over and no problems standing straight in the morning, but enough of a sore back not to do balls-to-the-walls deadlifting.

The standard thing to do with a sore or injured back is, of course, reverse hypers. With no hyper machine at the gym, I was lucky to find Kevin Veit’s description of a home made setup, which involves running a belt around each leg and through the holes in the plates to secure the weights between the legs. Having dragged enough custom equipment into the gym of late, I don’t think I will start building my own reverse hyper machine just yet…

After doing my standard speed box squats concentrating on arching the weight up, I ignored Veit’s warning about not taking “my only dress belt” and headed upstairs for the hyperextension machine. Had to put 20 kg/44 lbs plates under the thing to get enough space off the ground for my legs. Then tied a 10 kg/22 lbs plate sandwiched between two 5 kg/11 lbs plates to my ankles with the belt and mounted the bench holding on to the feet rests. Worked great, although I discovered that you indeed need to strap the weights tightly unless you like them jumping up at the top when doing explosive reps (trying to hold on to them by pressing your legs together is not very enjoyable). Did 5 sets of 12 and then ditched the plates for a burning 50 reps. If my lower back is still sore on Monday, I will ditch the ME exercise in favor of several sets of reverse hypers and ab work. Repeat until ready for a new max deadlift.

Briefly rewinding back to the speed box squats: forgot to mention last week that I have now started to periodize my box squats according to a sheet taken from Sakari Selkäinaho’s Westside manual in Finnish.

Week 1: 8x2 @ 65% of box max
Week 2: 7x2 @ 70% of box max
Week 3: 6x2 @ 75% of box max
Week 4: 5x2 @ 80% of box max
Week 5: 3x2 @ 80-90% of box max

This workout was week 2. Hopefully I will have gotten rid of all my lower back problems after week 5 so I can go for a new max.

The shoulder did indeed feel a lot better this morning following massage and ice treatment yesterday. As the day progressed it felt like some of the stiffness was coming back. In the evening my girlfriend gave me a more direct massage of the sore spots, which hopefully will loosen things up a little (at least it did during the massage itself, when more and more pressure could be applied with less and less pain… to a point). For a nice visual of where the problem is, see spot 1 on this page.

I am going to insert my periodic rest week here (see training routine). Not only because of the shoulder, but also because my body is starting to feel a little rundown (as evidenced by the previous ME Squat/Dead workout) and I have a somewhat hectic week ahead when I would have possibly had to skip one or two workouts anyway. In practice, I have trained the whole of September without breaks other than skipping a couple of DE Bench days to give some room for the shoulder. Also, I expect the Westside videos to arrive any day now, and I will probably not feel like taking any time off once I get a hold of those! I might go to the gym for a light pumping workout on Friday. The next heavy workout will be DE Bench on October 8th.

Before closing shop today, here’s something to prove how fiendish rotator cuff injuries can be. Happy not to be in that league.

Contrary to popular belief, partial or complete tearing of the rotator cuff is often asymptomatic. [..] tears of the rotator cuff often are compatible with normal painless use of the shoulder.
Hans, Guy DC: Chiropractic management of shoulder pain and dysfunction of myofascial origin using ischemic compression techniques

Last but not least, my copy of Mastery of Hand Strength arrived today.