Tag: recovery

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.

 

Recovery

Two weeks before each of my competition begins freak out time for me.  The heavier percentages mean more misses.  More misses undermine my confidence (that’s just the way my mind’s built).

Rationally I understand that no misses mean I’m not aiming high enough.  But misses also highlight all of the things that are wrong with my technique – being slow under the bar despite being strong enough to get the bar high means I miss.  That’s partly bar fear and partly technique and partly ingraining the movement pattern better.  And ingraining it so it’s faster.

But inevitably some of the issues that are uncovered in those last heavy weeks before deload are my lack of recovery.  I’m just as susceptible as the next person to the myth of the Russians and the Bulgarians.  Train daily, train hard.  Then double that volume and you’ll be a champion.

But a) I’m not on steroids and b) I’m not in my 20’s.  So guess what happens when you hit it hard and daily?  I’ve been lucky to avoid big injuries, but the little accumulation of fatigue and not resting adds up.

There is good evidence that daily training is feasible and likely even preferable to fewer times per week for both strength gains and ingraining neural patterns.  But as a master, I’ve got to be more cognizant that “greasing the skids” (to quote Pavel) doesn’t have to be balls to the wall* each and every time my foot steps inside a gym.  It’s okay to focus on one or two movements and their accessories, some mobility and leave.  It doesn’t have to be 2+ hours and to failure on every set.

That doesn’t mean not heavy, it just means smarter. Because left to my own devices I’d be in my happy place on the platform with a bar in my hand 6 hours/day.

It also means conceding that Superwoman needs sleep.  8+ hours/night.  So I bought a pair of dorky blueblocker sunglasses and started wearing them around 8pm each night so that iPads and computer screen blue light don’t keep me up.  The only negative to that is my children announced that I look like an alien and they can no longer take me seriously.  Maybe I could spank them with a barbell.

Eating is important, too.  I’m one of those people who loses their appetite when I”m stressed (and gee, there’s no stress pre-competition).  So I force myself to watch my intake.  No “intuitive” eating.  That means tracking calories, carbs and protein to make sure I’m getting enough (and not just donuts and protein shakes).  It means making sure that I”m not in a position to lose a lot to stay in my weight class in the two weeks before so that I”m not forced to restrict.

With age comes wisdom.  And I’m wising up to the fact that I gain a lot of strength in what I do when I’m not in the gym, not just under the barbell.

* interesting fact about the origin of “balls to the wall”.  It’s apparently a WWII term from pilots.  Pushing the throttle (that had a little ball knob on the top) to the “wall” i.e. all the way forward was kind of like full speed ahead or all out.  It’s not as raunchy as it sounds 🙂