66Kg Monster!

[-FIGJAM-]

Just a bit of news. Hit 71.4kg last night on the scales. Looks like I have finally broke into the 70kg mark.

Managed to do incline bench last night with no pain in my shoulder. Moved over to Chin ups and the pain came back with a vengence. Stopped before I finished 1 rep.

The workout I am currently doing has three phases to it over 9 weeks. Basically 3 weeks of growth, 3 weeks of strength and 3 of overall conditioning.

When you say clicking what do you mean? I know when I do some exercises I feel a bit of a click in the shoulder but there is no pain. Example of that is machine shoulder press, my spotter needs to help my left arm drop the weight back down completely, this however does hurt if he doesnt help. However this same thing doesnt happen with dunbell shoulder press or military press...

Will post some of my lifting logs soon.

[rev210]

Like I said rotator cuff injury.

You are only going to make it worse. There are lots of other sympathetic injuries you can develop once you have this injury.

Leave the shoulders alone mate , till a physio says you are right to get back into anything thats using them.

The machine shoulder press and all that gaff needs to be left alone for you. Till you fix the injury.

Then you need to strengthen the rotator cuff muscles.

Clicking is something a good physio will diagnose. My guess is one of the shoulders is being pulled forward by tightness in the front delt/chest muscle connection point. You will have a big knot there most likely. Lots of causes sometimes bad posture , things like sitting at a desk / using a computer mouse and slouching.

You can test the shoulder injury by getting someone to press a thumb into the muscles in between and around your shoulder blade on the sore side. Go to a physio. It won't get better by itself, just worse.

If you start developing your shoulder girdle strength first and continue to keep it up. You will find bench and other pressing movements will have a much higher potential and a lower risk of injury.

My tip is leave the whole bench press and bicep/tricep curl stuff for when you are strong in the shoulders,back, core and legs.

[R31Nismoid]

^ exactly the issue i had last year, it simply does not go away without getting it sorted... And it will take at least 4-6 weeks.

[-FIGJAM-]

So my shoulder has been getting better, pain seems to be going slowly so I am keeping a close eye on it, icing if it gives me any issue and lifting lighter.

The workout I have been doing is a 3 phase workout over 9 weeks. Designed to hit all aspects of training - general size, strength and conditioning. After night one I have seen good gains in my lift just about across the board except on my shoulders where I had to go lighter.

Before:

Bench Press: 50kg x 10 reps

40kg x 10 reps

40kg x 10 reps

Dumbell Incline: 10kg x 10 reps

10kg x 10 reps

10kg x 10 reps

Machine Flys: 37kg x 10 reps

37kg x 10reps

39kg x 10 reps

Dumbbell Shoulder Press: 12.5kg x 10 reps

12.5kg x 6 reps

10kg x 8 reps

Dumbbell Lateral Raise: 4kg x 10 reps

4kg x 10 reps

4kg x 10 reps

Last Nights Lifts:

Bench: 50kg x 10 reps

50kg x 10 reps

50kg x 8 reps

Dunbbell Incline: 15kg x 10 reps

17.5kg x 8 reps

17.5kg x 8 reps

Machine Fly: 45kg x 10 reps

52kg x 10 reps

52 x 9 reps

Dumbbell Shoulder Press: 10kg x 10 reps

10kg x 10 reps

10kg x 10 reps

Dumbbell Lateral Raises: 6kg x 10 reps

6kg x 10 reps

6kg x 10 reps

So if anything I am lifting more this time around so the workout is doing at least something. I do realise that I have to get stronger in my shoulders, hopefully when this discomfort leaves I'll be able to hit it hard again.

Cheers,

[rev210]

So my shoulder has been getting better, pain seems to be going slowly so I am keeping a close eye on it, icing if it gives me any issue and lifting lighter.

So if anything I am lifting more this time around so the workout is doing at least something. I do realise that I have to get stronger in my shoulders, hopefully when this discomfort leaves I'll be able to hit it hard again.

Cheers,

One big factor to being successful in the gym.

Attitude.

Attitude to your body needs to be right.

In the gym you inflict controlled damage the body. The word is 'controlled'. Right now your attitude is not in line with that. You are pushing through an injury, a weakness in the muscle that is taking control away from other movements it's involved in for stability.

That injury you have is rotator cuff. It's not getting better. I won't without help.

If you are unlucky , the next time it goes you will need surgery. Keep this up and it WILL go again.

The reason physios see so many guys like you is that you don't have the attitude right and when thats out you don't listen to the body.

It's a critical skill. Listening to the body also improves the focus in a workout.

There is no sporting title at stake for you. Why permanently stuff your shoulder?

Edited February 21, 2012 by rev210

[Birds]

As long as you have a good technique and the exercise isn't making the pain WORSE than it was, then I say it's not such a bad thing to just work through it and ignore the pain. Now I don't really like saying this, because it's counter-intuitive and you can't always get away with it. You really have to know your body well to know if it's the kind of injury you can just work through. But if it is, your joint will still heal, and sometimes for the better IMO. There are benefits to mobilising joints that are/were injured, as opposed to immobilising them and then putting them through their paces after healing (injury can come back easily if the joint did not heal around the movement).

So my shoulder has been getting better, pain seems to be going slowly so I am keeping a close eye on it, icing if it gives me any issue and lifting lighter.

How bout that

[rev210]

How bout that

Birds, it would be good for him to get qualified advice on his injury (which he still has if he's in pain).

I'm not pretending to be a physio or a doctor. But, I am suggesting expert advice is the way to go for injuries. We should support this notion first.

At the very least look the injury up, if there are concerns about wasting money on consults.

Speaking from my own experience with it, rotator cuff injuries may not present painfully. They can continue to increase in trauma without noticeable symptom as well, this is a fact of them.

However, if there is even slight pain then there is a sure fire marker for the injury to continue to increase. Therapy will not involve pain like this to treat the injury.

My 2c

[Birds]

I don't disagree it would be a good idea for him to see an expert about it, be it physio or doctor, but I do trust him to know the pain better than you or I could diagnose it over the internet. We haven't even seen him point to where the pain is. Pain is the body's way of you monitoring what, if anything is wrong with it, thus I recommended he pay close attention and test the grounds with it...not every joint pain means an horrific and chronic injury is on the way if you don't stop the exercise...it can be a matter of conditioning and sometimes you can get past it while the body does it's thing.

[rev210]

Birds, his description of where the pain is ,when it occurred and his trouble with clicking and pain in assisted press movements is sufficient to indicate possible rotator cuff injury. Due to the nature of this injury pain measurement by the patient has no real bearing on their ability to manage the damage if they continue to train.

We must be careful as 'testing the grounds' in so far as continuing with weights, with rotator cuff and many other skeletal/muscular injuries causes further degeneration.

The advice is harmful to people.

If he has this injury, a mild case may require a 4 week or more recovery. These injuries can take even longer to heal, setting you back over 6 months is not uncommon.

Many muscular injuries are self managed by people where they ideally could be fixed before becoming permanent. The gym is a place where bad attitudes keep surgeons in good money.

In terms of " not every joint pain means an horrific and chronic injury is on the way if you don't stop the exercise...it can be a matter of conditioning and sometimes you can get past it while the body does it's thing."

Joint pain isn't serious when the Doc/physio says so and clears you to go hit the weights.

I'd like it to be something less sinister for his sake. I'd love to be wrong. But, I am pretty certain about this one.

[TM7GTR]

There's a lot of truth in what you're saying rev210, but even when you see a physio they clear you based on what info you as the patient provide them. They understand the injury and what's going on, but they rely on your feedback of "yes this movement hurts" or "no that was fine" to clear you to lift weights again anyway. Seeing the physio/doc isn't a must as they can only tell you what you want to hear, but I will agree with you that it would be stupid not to at least take a week or two off. Listen to your body figjam, pain is its way of telling you something is wrong so take a week off of upper, then see how it feels. I too have a shoulder injury related to my rotator cuff (comprising of torn stability muscles around the joint) and I've had the last week off already. When I say week off though, I don't mean you can't gym at all. This time off of upper body has been a great way of improving leg and core strength, targetting legs every second-third day, and core on the days in between.

[-FIGJAM-]

due to recent discussions I decided that I should probably update this...

shoulder injury seems to be all but gone. No more pain at least, but when I do some exercises (incline flys for example) my shoulder more burns, when this gets a bit much I stop, no use re injuring it. As a result my upper body lifts have gone backwards, but I am starting to get them back.

Workout has again changed. The guy I train with likes to do this for some reason, I thought the Tri Phase routine was working well, so we have modified that so to speak. We are also going near 5 days a week and working each body part separately.

Logs from before the Change:

Deadlift:

80kg X 8 reps (no wrist straps)

110 x 10 reps

110 x 6

110 x 5

Barbell Bent Over Row (dont really like this exercise, I am not real comfortable doing it so I could go harder but dont. It is also largely subject to availability of the barbells.... anyway its more laziness then anything):

25kg x 10 reps

25 x 10

25 x 10

Cable Seated Row (i was doing more then this awhile ago, but my form really dropped, so now i focus on form and really squeezing the back):

60kg x 10 reps

60kg x 10 reps

60kg x 10 reps

Cable Pushdown:

18kg x 10 reps

18kg x 10 reps

18kg x 10 reps

Pullups:

8

6

6

Barbell Curl:

25kg x 10 reps

25kg x 10 reps

25kg x 10 reps

Dumbbell Bicep Curl

10kg x 10 reps

10kg x 8 reps

10kg x 10 reps

Bench Press:

50kg x 12 reps

60kg x 8 reps

60kg x 8 reps

Incline Bench:

40kg x 10 reps

40kg x 8 reps

40kg x 6 reps

Cable Cross Over:

15kg x 15

20kg x 10

20kg x 10

Machine Fly:

45 x 10

52 x 10

54.3 x 10

Dip Machine:

40.8 x 10

42.5 x 10

49.9 x 10

Close Grip Bench:

20kg x 10

40 x 8

30 x 10

Machine Tricep Extension:

15kg x 15

25 x 12

25 x 12

Barbell Squat:

80kg x 10

100 x 8

100 x 10

Lunges:

10 x 10

10 x 10

10 x 10

As a note, I have been doing more then this, but this is the latest log that I am working from.

Leg Press:

170kg x 10

170 x 8

210 x 6

Leg Curls:

59 x 10

59 x 10

66 x 6

Standing Calf Raise:

60 x 10

65 x 10

65 x 10

Seated Calf Raises:

120 x 10

120 x 10

120 x 10

These are old logs. I will update this in a week to see how I have improved.

My Measurements:

Waist: 31.7cm

Chest: 35.9

Arms: 11cm (puny)

Forearms: 10.9cm

Shoulders: 43.8 cm

Thighs: 19.3

Calves: 14.4cm

Neck: 15cm

[Trozzle]

lol for waist measurement, do you mean 31.7 INCHES? haha

Same for arms I think. And neck. lol

[-FIGJAM-]

waist would be inches... other are right. Bit embarrassing but I seem to have real long limbs which I think makes it a little harder (not impossible) to get bigger round the arms and legs.

My spotter has much bigger biceps, but in length wise my biceps are much longer, same as my forearms. I should be a praying-mantis...

[TTT]

cm???

how the f**k are you measuring?

from one side to the other?

measurements are taken as a diameter....

[TM7GTR]

How would you suggest it's done? As PT's, we do girth measurements in cm around the limbs, etc

[TM7GTR]

-_- double post

Edited May 4, 2012 by TM7GTR

[-FIGJAM-]

also my rep tempo is as slow as possible with heavy weight 8-10 reps. Aiming for 30-45 second sets with a minute rest.

Im a skinny guy mate, small frame. thin limbs, its going to be a while before I get thicker. specially my diet being the way it is.

[Trozzle]

Yeah there's no way we're on the same page here... 11cm really doesn't sound right, that's thinner than my wrist.

Measurements such as biceps are circumference - ie the distance around the limb, easiest to measure with a string.

[TTT]

How would you suggest it's done? As PT's, we do girth measurements in cm around the limbs, etc

did you read his measurements?

My Measurements:

Waist: 31.7cm

Chest: 35.9

Arms: 11cm (puny)

Forearms: 10.9cm

Shoulders: 43.8 cm

Thighs: 19.3

Calves: 14.4cm

Neck: 15cm

Take out your measuring tape and put your finger on 32cm.

now loop the end of the tape over to it to create a circle.

does that look like a waist size?

11cm arms?

That's smaller than making a cirle with your thumb and index finger.

obviously they are either INCHES or not measured "around" the limb/part but from one end to the other or some weird shit.

It's like measuring your wang but measuring just the head... we all know the measurement of our wangs starts at the gap between your a-hole and ball sack. amiright?

[TTT]

look at the tag of your pants..

does it say 32?

that's inches.

edit - you wrap this around your limb

Where the tip touches the tape around the other side is the measurement (in the case of this pic it is in cm).

Some tapes have cm on one side and inches on the other.

Edited May 4, 2012 by TTT