Month: November 2015

What To Do When You’re Sidelined

I think of myself as Superwoman.  Or Wonder Woman.  I actually have two pairs of WW underwear from Target so I must indeed be wonderful.  Clearly if it’s on your underwear it must be true.

What are not wonderful are my shoulders.  I’m on shoulder “issue” number three in four years.  The first was left shoulder when I first started lifting heavy weights.  It hurt to even put my left hand on top of the steering wheel to drive.  Symptoms matched “bursitis” when I consulted with Dr. Google (yes, even doctors use Dr. Google sometimes) so I treated it with rest and NSAIDs

It took four months to resolve.  But the upside was I discovered the semi-sumo deadlift during that period.  I couldn’t even pull with my hands more than shoulder width apart, so I learned to semi-sumo pull with hands straight down.  Hallelujah! I added 75lbs to my deadlift during that period.

A few years later, which is to say earlier this year, it was my right shoulder.  Same symptoms.  Painful in some ROMs, not in others.  I’m pretty sure this one came from over-exuberant practicing of handstands.  I tend to overdo anything I”m excited about so I was spending 30 minutes per day upside down.  Cue shoulder pain.

That seemed to magically go away over several weeks when ironically my volume was high but so was my NSAID intake.  This was at camp in Asheville.  It “should” have been excruciating but it actually got better.  And since wide grip didn’t hurt, I worked a lot on my snatch and PRed at 50kg.

Then the day after a few sets of handstand push-ups the left shoulder flared again.

So what to do now.

I’m not a rester.  I’m not the type to use an injury to sit on the sidelines and yell “go team!” to everyone else on the field.

So right now it’s time to build my squat and my snatch.  Jerking is very hard on my shoulder (as are presses), so that’s all on hold.  But wide grip once again isn’t so bad so I’m going partial Bulgarian and trying to do a snatch variation and a squat every day.  There are so many great things written about doing exercises every day that I figured I ought to really try them for awhile.

I’m also doing some bodybuilding.  Yes, bodybuilding.   Like bro stuff of 3×12 for triceps and lats.  If you know me, this is a sign of the apocalypse.  I count my reps 1, 2, 3, one too many, two too many, cardio.  And I don’t do cardio.

But here I am bro-ing out, trying to put some muscle back on.  I inadvertently lost about 7lbs through working really hard running around the hospital and just not eating enough because of some stomach issues.  That was a sudden 6% drop in body weight.  Not shocking that many of my lifts were affected and not in a good way.

So why am I giving you this big rambling status update?

Mainly because I’m eager to share my journey into bro-world and squatting every day with you in the upcoming weeks.  But also because I’d like to make the larger point about not giving up.

I’m pretty aware at this point that there is something fundamentally wrong with how I move my shoulders or how my shoulders are constructed or both that lead me to recurrent injuries.  I am going to work on figuring out why and how to fix it.  I’m finally going to get over mourning the death of my massage therapist and find a good MT.

But I’m also going to squat every day because my legs are just peachy.  I’m gonna do all kinds of core and back work because my trunk is pristine.  I’m gonna keep snatching because I can and that is joyful to me.

I will not sit on the couch and eat Lenny&Larry’s cookies while I bemoan my fate.  OK, well I will eat Lenny&Larry’s cookies, but only after I lift.  It’s for recovery brah.

I can’t jerk right now.  OK.  Big girl Wonder Woman panties are on and I’m ready to make lemonade out of lemons.  Or gainz out of cookies.  Same diff.

 

Fred Flintstone is the Only One Who Should Make the Bed Rock – The importance of sleep for recovery

I refuse to make you all jealous by posting pictures of my bed.  But I really do have the greatest bed of all times.

It’s huge, it’s got a big caved canopy and it sits in a very cold room.  My bed is sleep heaven.

Why is this important?  Because the number one thing one can do for recovery is sleep.  Everyone seems to perseverate on diet.  I would argue that eating enough and not eating *only* crap are good general guidelines for diet and that people spend far too much time arguing about the details of what and when and macros.

Nobody really likes to talk about sleep.

But many great things happen during sleep including growth hormone release to fuel more gainz, re-phosphorylation of ATP (to fuel tomorrow’s workout), new neural connections and repair of free radical damage.

Not sleeping can contribute to depression, impair the ability to learn new activities (like, oh say, snatching) and make gainz less likely by impeding all of the above processes.

Sleep is an integral part to becoming stronger.  So important that I would argue that when I hear people complain about overtraining, what they’re really saying is that they  are under-recovered and that usually means not sleeping and, to a lesser degree, not eating enough.

But the problem lies mostly with sleeping and that’s something people don’t even realize they’re lacking.  In many surveys, around 70% of people get 7 or fewer hours of sleep per night.  And the actual quality of the sleep is often poor.  Just being in bed for 10 hours doesn’t count if the hours of sleep aren’t restful with appropriate REM cycles.

Smartphone melatonin

So what should you do to get better sleep and become a gainz making beast?

  1. don’t be afraid to look like a dork.  My husband convinced me to get blueblocker sunglasses to wear after 9pm so that the light, especially the light from my smart phone and computer, doesn’t disrupt sleep.  I am actually tired and able to go to bed when I wear these starting after dinner.  The pair I bought was $9 from Amazon.  It’s not a bank breaker
  2. keep your bedroom cold.  Sleep quality is enhanced by sleeping in a cold room.  No more thermostat wars.  Just turn it down and keep it down.
  3. If you refuse the dork look, at least get programs like f.lux for your computer which will automatically dim the computer screen at night to decrease stimulation to your CNS.
  4. Nobody loves caffeine as much as I (and maybe my bestie who keeps Starbucks in the black) do.  But I have a hard and fast rule about no Monster, no coffee, no nothing after noon.  I want at least 10 hours between my last Monster and bedtime to prevent disrupting sleep patterns
  5. eat some carbs and consider some milk before bed.   I’m not going to argue whether or not milk is good for you.  But I will say that it has tryptophan which can aid sleep and it has casein which is a long release protein to keep your muscles fed overnight.
  6. reserve bed for sleeping and sex.  Read, surf the web, post to Facebook from your couch or a chair but keep bed a space only for sleeping and sexing.

Promise yourself for a mere two weeks you will try to get 8 hours of outstanding quality of sleep.  If you don’t see mood, weight and your lifts all improve, I’ll be shocked.  Give it a try.  The only thing you’re risking is being mocked by your children who will hum, “I wear my sunglasses at night….”