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captainsblogThat old joke is a nutshell version of how I got to the place in my fitness program that I now am, and am trying not to stay in.
I'd been doing fairly regular weight workouts- first at the flashier but more annoying local Athletic Club, then at a cheaper, more D-I-Y place then called Planet Fitness, until earlier this year. My right shoulder had started giving me pain the day after the workout, and eventually, it just stopped stopping. It was affecting less stressful ranges of motion, and I was having a lot of trouble even sleeping (I sleep on my side and was spending half the night with that shoulder bearing a lot of my weight).
Trip #1 to the GP resulted in a referral for x-rays. Trip #2, after those were taken, resulted in nothing conclusive, but an apparent diagnosis of an inflamed rotator cuff. He told me that three tendons from the upper arm all head into one spot in the shoulder, and if they are worked too hard, they'll get bigger than the bottleneck intended for them. He put me on Naproxen, which busted down the pain after a month or so, and told me, in essence, "Don't do that!"
So I didn't, and gradually did less of other things, as well, to the point where I just felt I had to do SOMETHING.
Meet something.
After signing up for these classes, I made a mid-year's resolution to really commit to this, unlike all the other times in my 40s when I started something but didn't go all-in. I'd be literally going through the motions on the machines, without working long enough, often enough, and without any guidance on what I was doing on or off the floor that was holding me back. Since beginning classes just last week, I've been in for cardio four times a week in addition to the classes, have worked hard at cutting back food intake between meals and junk lunches on the road, and while I had to miss a class for work earlier this week, we made it up on Thursday and I felt awfully good about the direction things were going.
Until this morning, the 10th of July, when not one but both shoulders started going off like the fireworks of six nights earlier.
I've emailed my trainer to see what we can do to work around this. I also researched the condition, and surprise surprise!, there are exercises that will help ease the pain. It seems that the inflammation may be caused by the rotator cuff muscles themselves not being strong enough to keep the joints in joint, and that is what inflames the tendons.
Sorry, shoulders, but I am not giving up this easily. It's a relatively quiet time in the work world with a lot of people being on vacation, I have a supportive family, a damn good trainer and, most of all, a brain that can find my way around any pain that results on the way out of it. I'm not buying into that "pain is just weakness leaving the body" line, but it is only a symptom, and when I know its cause and its solution, I've lived with far worse. If I don't keep working at this, I may not be living with anything at all for that much longer.
Onward.
I'd been doing fairly regular weight workouts- first at the flashier but more annoying local Athletic Club, then at a cheaper, more D-I-Y place then called Planet Fitness, until earlier this year. My right shoulder had started giving me pain the day after the workout, and eventually, it just stopped stopping. It was affecting less stressful ranges of motion, and I was having a lot of trouble even sleeping (I sleep on my side and was spending half the night with that shoulder bearing a lot of my weight).
Trip #1 to the GP resulted in a referral for x-rays. Trip #2, after those were taken, resulted in nothing conclusive, but an apparent diagnosis of an inflamed rotator cuff. He told me that three tendons from the upper arm all head into one spot in the shoulder, and if they are worked too hard, they'll get bigger than the bottleneck intended for them. He put me on Naproxen, which busted down the pain after a month or so, and told me, in essence, "Don't do that!"
So I didn't, and gradually did less of other things, as well, to the point where I just felt I had to do SOMETHING.
Meet something.
After signing up for these classes, I made a mid-year's resolution to really commit to this, unlike all the other times in my 40s when I started something but didn't go all-in. I'd be literally going through the motions on the machines, without working long enough, often enough, and without any guidance on what I was doing on or off the floor that was holding me back. Since beginning classes just last week, I've been in for cardio four times a week in addition to the classes, have worked hard at cutting back food intake between meals and junk lunches on the road, and while I had to miss a class for work earlier this week, we made it up on Thursday and I felt awfully good about the direction things were going.
Until this morning, the 10th of July, when not one but both shoulders started going off like the fireworks of six nights earlier.
I've emailed my trainer to see what we can do to work around this. I also researched the condition, and surprise surprise!, there are exercises that will help ease the pain. It seems that the inflammation may be caused by the rotator cuff muscles themselves not being strong enough to keep the joints in joint, and that is what inflames the tendons.
Sorry, shoulders, but I am not giving up this easily. It's a relatively quiet time in the work world with a lot of people being on vacation, I have a supportive family, a damn good trainer and, most of all, a brain that can find my way around any pain that results on the way out of it. I'm not buying into that "pain is just weakness leaving the body" line, but it is only a symptom, and when I know its cause and its solution, I've lived with far worse. If I don't keep working at this, I may not be living with anything at all for that much longer.
Onward.