Shoulder injury update

I went to see Kevin, my physical therapist, on Tuesday and the news is good. My ribs are all staying in place. The injury in my shoulder is a slight strain of the muscles and tendons at the 'head of the bicep' which is where the bicep muscle joins the shoulder. My rotator cuff muscles are a little irritated from compensating for the bicep, but are OK otherwise. Kevin thought another 1 - 2 weeks and it would be resolved.

So, I will have to take it easy lifting tomorrow, just to be safe, but I can fill in with other exercises (though, alas, ones that aren't as fun). This just underscores the need for me to work on my rotator cuff and shoulder muscles to make sure they are strong enough to take the weight of the lifts I am doing.

Yesterday was leg day and we kicked things up on squats. It will be nice "just" to run my intervals for cardio today.

Benching hiatus

As you can see from last week's stats (week of 9/17), I am on hiatus from benching, pending diagnosis of a shoulder injury. It could be that I have a couple of ribs popping out again, or some tendon problems, but I have had both before and it doesn't feel like those. More likely it's just that the shoulder muscles are a little stressed, and need conditioning.

I will leave the official diagnosis to Kevin, my wonderful physical therapist, on Tuesday. In the meantime, I have been doing shoulder exercises with light weights, lots of stretching, and using the heating pad when I get a chance to sit down for a few minutes (which means rarely). I dislike using the light weights and told Cory, "Barbie called...she wants her dumbbells back," last week when he handed me the five pounders for some deltoid work. ;-) I was a bit at loose ends on Friday without bench press or even incline presses since I was keeping my shoulder out of it, so I hope that this gets resolved soon.

Things not to say to your trainer

Yesterday was leg day and my day to work out with Cory, my trainer. He is also a competitive power lifter so he knows what he's talking about and how to get me ready. I push myself pretty hard, though, so I wonder how much worse I would get if I was thinking about how to win against other people

ANYWAY, he started me off with squats, doing light weight (for me...125 lbs) so I could focus on form. After a few sets, I said, "well, that wasn't tough."

"If you want a tough workout, I can do that," he replied.

"Sure...do your worst," I challenged. Silly me.

He then proceeded to put me through leg extensions, leg curls, lunges, and some hamstring exercise with the stability ball that I think was actually designed as torture during the Spanish Inquisition. Can't complain though...I asked for it. And I would probably not complain anway, since 1) I don't like to and 2) I can't argue with the results so far. I was tired, but it wasn't so bad (just don't tell Cory). It's good to balance all the quad work with hamstrings anyway. I am a little sore today but able to walk normally. Cardio tonight on the recumbent bike should help loosen things up again.

Darned shoulders

Saturday was bench press day. That's my least favorite of the workouts because the strength gains have been much slower and more difficult to achieve, as opposed to squats and dead lifts. I'm always determined, though. :-)

I sailed without incident through the warmup set with the bar, then a set with 95 lbs, then another with 110 pounds. No problem. Then I decided to go to 125 since I had lifted 120 the week before and managed six reps. A five-pound increase should be no big deal, right? HA. The first rep was no problem, but then I took the bar down for the second rep and found myself struggling just to keep the bar from crushing my windpipe. Kimo, my spotter, was apparently as confident as I had been that I could get a couple more reps, so he had looked away for just a second. He jumped to lift the bar off as soon as he heard my squeaked, "help." I was prepared to be peeved about this, but Kimo just grinned and said, "that happens to people all the time."

"Really?" I asked incredulously.

"Yes," he replied. "Congratulations--you have just finally experienced 'lifting to failure'."

And it certainly was a spectacular failure. It's really my shoulders, particularly the right one that I partially dislocated a few years ago, that are holding me back from making better progress on bench. Or should I say - it's the posterior, anterior and lateral deltoids that need work. I see lots of military presses and lat raises in my future as I work on that.

First post

The purpose of this blog is to chronicle my journey with power lifting.

I did bodybuilding in my late teens and early 20's and found that I enjoy lifting weights and getting strong. What's new now, in my early 40's, is that I am much stronger. A recent body fat composition test revealed that I am carrying 20 more pounds of MUSCLE than I did in my 20's. No doubt the years of starvation dieting to try to be thin took their toll back then.

I made decent strength gains back then but nothing like I have now been able to get, though I didn't think there was anything unusual about how much I could lift until one of the trainers at the gym (Gold's in Redmond) took me aside and pointed it out. He said a) what I can lift is already more than many people can do; and 2) therefore I have the aptitude to be a competitive lifter, either as a power lifter or Olympic. I got my trainer on board with this, and we changed my workouts around a bit to gear things more toward competitive lifting. For now I am just concentrating on gaining strength and maintaining good form in the standard power lifting lifts: dead lift, squat and bench press.

I'll keep track of my progress here, and relate any amusing anecdotes I have from my experiences.