Fitness Distilled

I hurt my shoulder. No, it wasn’t from benching or setting a new PR with five, 10, or 20 more pounds than I should have been using. It was while doing a Turkish getup (and, as my friend Ben Bruno said when I told him, “it serves you right for doing Turkish getups”).

Ironically, beforehand, I was doing a shoulder prehab exercise that had me lying on the floor holding a kettlebell over my chest. The weight of the kettlebell helps to drive your humerus further back into the shoulder socket, opening up the front of the shoulder and relieving impingement symptoms. Since I found myself in the bottom of a getup, I figured I’d knock out a few reps while I was there with the kettlebell—and on the second one, I felt my arm drift back a bit further behind my head than it should have. I sensed a slight click and a little discomfort but didn’t think much of it.

This is where the problem lies.

“Well, on to benching,” I thought. And as it turns out, that was about the stupidest thing I could do.

Fast forward to me benching with 225 on the bar and my shoulder was screaming. “Hmmm,” I thought. “It’s supposed to be the left shoulder that hurts. Why am I feeling it in the right one?”

My left shoulder has had problems off and on over the years for various reasons, but the right one was always in the pink. Till now.

It kept hurting for another week until I decided to see my physical therapist. She didn’t give me a clear diagnosis—she and her team assume it’s just some irritation of the AC joint—but she worked on it with some Active Release Technique, massage, and ice.

It’s been getting better, but for the last month, my training has been extremely limited as a result. I can’t do any pressing, in any direction. I can’t even do a pushup. Since the biceps tendon is also irritated, right where it inserts into the shoulder, some variations of curls and triceps exercises are also impossible.

I’ll spare you the details about my horror and disappointment over this injury, especially when I was on the cusp of military pressing 190 pounds, which would have been a PR. I won’t take you through the Five Stages of Grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance). But I will share what I’m doing about it, so that you may do something similar if tragedy strikes you.

WHAT I’M DOING ABOUT IT (Besides complaining)

1 When I realized that my shoulder wasn’t going to heal overnight and accepted the suckyness of the situation, the first thing I did was re-tool my diet.

Since I can’t train all out and can’t do hardly any shoulder and chest work at all, there’s no point in me eating above maintenance in an effort to put on muscle. (I wasn’t really in bulk-up mode before but I wasn’t watching my food either. As far as I was concerned extra calories would go toward my training.) I recalculated my calories for fat loss and am now following a gradual diet. Again, since my training is limited, it doesn’t make sense to go on a full-blown fat-loss program either, but I should be making better choices and eating lighter again so I don’t get fatter while I’m less active.

BFR builds muscle and improves recovery.

2 I’m committed to keep training. I obviously can’t do the kind of pressing workouts I’m used to and there’s no sense in doing upper/lower splits but I can keep working everything else. To make up for the lack of intensity, I’m doing more frequency. Now I’m following full-body workouts so I get a little bit of everything I’m able to do in each session.

Sadly, the only chest/shoulder work I can handle is raises, so I do front and side raises often. I can’t do pullups or pulldowns but I can work rows at different angles. I can’t do any biceps training that puts the biceps tendon on stretch, so I do hammer curls, cross-body curls, and very light EZ-bar curls. For triceps it’s been overhead cable extensions (these are done walked-out from the machine and bent over at the hips, not with the elbows pointing straight overhead), cable pushdowns, and pronated kickbacks.

I experimented a lot with blood-flow restriction training last spring and am starting it up again because of its rehab-promoting potential. In a nutshell, the concept is that by restricting blood flow to working muscles you encourage the release of various muscle-building hormones and promote more blood flow when the tension is released. I’ve been using elastic wrist wraps tied around the top of my arms just below the shoulder. I end workouts with four sets of curls and overhead extensions done with high reps and short rests. The pump is unbelievable and, hopefully, it’s driving blood into the shoulder area to speed healing.

3 I begin every workout with three sets of internal and external rotations for the rotator cuff. This is what my doctor advised and should help take some pressure off the shoulder and realign it.

4 In addition to eating healthier and eating less, I’m trying to control inflammation as much as possible with good food. Greens, greens, and more greens, including cold-pressed juices. There isn’t any definitive research that shows this works but it certainly can’t hurt. The healthier the body is overall the faster it can fix what’s wrong that.

I’m not going much heavier than her these days, unfortunately.

Beyond that I’ve just been icing and resting. The worst part of any injury is always the mental aspect. “When will I be better again?” “How much progress am I losing?” “Why did this have to happen now?” I’ve been through em all and the best answer I can come up with is to stay as active as you can and give yourself the time you need. Remember that there is such a thing as “muscle memory” and you can usually get back to where you were in a short time once all systems are go.

On the brightside, I don’t seem to have lost much size… yet. I’m still able to squat and deadlift, and even though those exercises don’t directly tax the shoulders and chest, they do seem to keep muscle on them. My friend Ben Bruno was out of action for several months with shoulder and groin injuries recently and he didn’t show much decay—and bounced back quickly when he was able to train again—so I’m trying to stay positive.

But I’ll never do a Turkish getup again… 😉