My therapist has told me to lay off of direct bicep work and focus on legs, cardio, and core training for now. Apparently this thing will subside on it’s own. It’s tough to stay patient though when I consider how long I’ve already dealt with the injury. In addition to not doing any isolated bicep movements, I think I’ll need to pull deadlifts, rows, and shrugs out of my routine for another month or two. 

I also managed to pull 275lbs five times on the deadlift last week. It was scary as hell, but I had no pain during or after the pulls. 

All in all, no complaints. I’ve been doing core workouts here and there, and I know that being lax is going to come back to bite me. I’ll make a concerted effort to up the core workouts from here forward. 

Hope everyone else is doing well!

Today’s back workout: 

Pullups: 4×5 – bicep pain on all sets, superset with

Straight arm pulldowns: 4×12 (80, 90, 100, 100) no pain

Lat pulldowns (behind neck) 2×12 (100, 110) no pain

Machine shrugs: 4×10 (180, 235, 275, 325) mild pain on all sets

DB Rows: 3×8 (60 lbs) no pain

I’m too scared to do deadlifts because I know they can cause bicep tears. I also need to be really careful on shrugs for the same reason. Perhaps it’s time to invest in some straps? 

Military Press: 4×12 (65, 85, 85, 85) – bicep pain when unracking

Front Raises: 4×12 (15, 15, 20, 20) – no bicep pain

Side raises: 4×12 (10) – no bicep pain

Shrugs: 4×10 (80) – significant pain

Cable raises: 4×12 (15) – no bicep pain

Swiss ball cruches: 5 sets to failure

Stair climber intervals for 10 minutes.

Significant bicep pain upon waking up the next day.

I’m not sure what to do with the bicep. Clearly, time of, PT, and Voltaren haven’t given me a fully recovery. I can continue to rest, and be miserable in the process, or continue easing  my way back into my routine and hope that I don’t have a full tear. At this point, I honestly wouldn’t  mind a complete tear. I’m three months in to recovery with no end in site.. surgery followed by a six month rehab period for full recovery doesn’t sound half bad.

My earlier post about internet forum comments being bullshit stemmed from a lot of frustration. One post in particular put me over the edge – a guy complaining that he was previously an athlete and he had been on crutches/walker for over 3 months post-op for a torn hip labrum. I felt a rush of blood to my head as I thought about the prospects of my wife having to be on crutches for 3 months – that would certainly put a huge damper on our Italy vacation plans come spring. 

A few days later, and I have to say, I blame myself for going to the forums in the first place. If you want sound medical advise, you really should get it from the source. Long story short, my wife won’t be on crutches for 3 months as I/we had been dreading. She’s two days post-op and we’ve weaned her off of crutches already. 

To the unknown guy from the forum I can’t remember who is 3 months post-op and still on crutches, I say this: sorry to get all flustered and use you a launching pad to bitch and whine about others, and I’m really sorry that you’re still in bad shape. I’ve got a great hip guy if you’re interested

That was a few years ago, and I’ve learned to avoid the forums as much as possible when rehabbing an injury. That is until tonight. 

My wife goes in for surgery tomorrow. No big deal, just a torn hip labrum. In fact, I have the same condition, but I’m in better shape so PT and a cortison injection were enough to get me back to normal activities. Normally, I wouldn’t even bother researching rehab options, but I’m a little concerned given that we have a 2 week long trip planned to Italy exactly 3 months post-op. 

So I’m searching around looking for recovery times and what do I find? The same sob stories and general bullshit that I found when researching my spondy symptoms. It’s the same damn story time and time again. Elite athlete, blah blah, pain, blah blah, worse now than before surgery, blah blah, best surgeon in the world, doc fucked up because I’m such a unique snow flake, blah blah my life is over blah blah quiet wimper. 

Some People Are Special. I’m Not. Chances Are, Neither Are You

What really bothers me about these stories is the inflated sense of ego. More often than not, the person doing the ranting well make certain to mention, usually more than once, that they are “athletes” in “phenomenal shape”. I don’t think so. Just because you hit the gym, run a couple of miles, and can do 20 pushups, that doesn’t make you a god damn athlete, let alone an elite one. You’re probably in better shape than the average population, but that’s not saying much in a society in which one in ever three people is obese. I push/pull more weight than the vast majority of people and I’m nowhere near close to being an athlete. 

You want to know who an elite athlete is? Alex Rodriguez. As a Red Sox fan, it kills me to say that. But that fucker had a torn hip labrum and he was hitting homeruns at the major league level a few months post-op. 

The Bottom Line

Bloggers, forum posters, “sports rehabilitation communities”, lend me your ears. Recovering from injury doesn’t have to be rocket science. The people who work on us (i.e. the surgeons) need to be really smart and think of all the what-ifs, that’s their job. Our job is to recover, and if we’re feeling ambitious, help our fellow patients in the process. 

So please, Internet, stop with all the bullshit. Rather than giving me (and others) inane commentary, give us science. Instead of telling me how you had 3 weeks of pain, why don’t you tell me what your active ROM was at 20 days ago vs 10 days ago vs 5 days ago. Instead of telling me how you’re “still walking with a cain” perhaps you can tell me how many exercises you were prescribed to do, and how many you actually did. 

% Effort = % Results. Keep that in mind the next time you complain about an injury. 

tl;dr

I’m making some broad generalizations, and probably sound like a giant asshole. I don’t mean to offend, but I vehemently believe there’s a lot of truth to what I’m saying. Do your rehab (or better yet, prehab) and stop complaining. Injuries don’t have to be so complicated. 

My Status

My back is in good shape. I left it in good shape prior to the bicep injury and haven’t really done anything to piss it off. I know I need to start back up with the core training soon, though. I can tell my core strength has gone down substantially over the past couple of months. The bicep tendon seems to be coming along. I maxed out the therapists weights on some exercises, so I returned to the gym to give things a try. A threw up 205×4 on the bench yesterday with no pain, and I was able to do flat flies at 30lbs with no pain, that was really promising. I couldn’t do pec deck at all though without pain, and I was keeping the weight very light at 80lbs. Oh well, I’ll take the two steps forward, one step back. 

The strained bicep tendon is driving me crazy. I honestly don’t know if I’m having pain, or if I’m imagining it anymore. PT has been about as good as PT can get. I’m blowing through their workouts in 45 minutes max, supersetting/tripple setting everything they throw at me. I’ve also been asking to fold in new exercises with each workout. So far the routine they have me looks like this:

1. Lat pulldowns
2. Pushups
3. Chest press
4. DB curls
5. Cable tricep extensions
6. Shrugs
7. DB press
8. DB front raise
9. DB flies

Exercises 1-5 were what the therapist wanted me to do, items 6-9 were slowly added in by me upon receiving the therapist’s approval.

The workouts are getting a bit better in intensity, but I’m frustrated by how much arm strength I’ve lost in the impacted arm. My bicep and forearm feel like they’ve turned into mush. I’m going to try to throw some rows in tomorrow and see if we can’t get things moving along a bit quicker.

On the spondy front, I did my first leg workout almost two months. My legs are wrecked, but my back held up surprisingly well. I did box squats, stiff legged deadlifts, lunges, single leg curles, and quad extensions.

My goal for the end of the year still remains to do deads and squats without any back pain. I’m remaining optimistic about my chances. Hell, who am I kidding; I’m a stubborn/competitive jerk whose going to do both exercises regardless of how my back/bicep feel just to say I did it and met my goal.

I like the idea of PT – it’s an opportunity for us to get back into the swing of things under the watchful eye of someone who understands human anatomy (and if you’re lucky, the mindset of an athlete.)  But when it comes down to it, I outright HATE being at PT.

It’s not like the gym – the weight room is all about the journey, not so much about the destination.

PT is different, though. The first day in particular is always tough because we are, generally speaking, at our absolute weakest. This mindset though should have no place in the brain of a spondy sufferer. We know that our condition is permanent, and that flair-ups are going to happen. Thus, we need to embrace the journey at every step; yes, this includes the mundane that is your first 1-3 sessions of PT.

As far as the session itself.. there isn’t much to say other than I can’t believe I got a pump from doing bicep curls with 15lbs. Whatever, it’s better than the 0 lbs I’ve been lifting over the past month Here’s to Friday’s session being more productive.

As strange as this may sound, the bicep injury has wreaked havoc on my back. Because I can’t lift, I’ve given up entirely on going to the gym. I haven’t done a core workout in the past month, I’ve done maybe two or three days of cardio, and I’ve been eating like shit the entire time. On top of that, I’ve been working longer hours, which means sitting more, which means more back pain. I’m staying optimistic though that I can return to full strength by the end of the year. Getting into PT will at least force me to take physical breaks in the middle of my work day. 

All in all, I’m more frustrated than anything. My back was in relatively good shape prior to injuring my bicep. My goal right now is to ease my way back into shape, and finish off 2011 with squats and deadlifts on my final leg and back days of the year without any back pain.