injury workarounds

If it causes pain or the injury to get worse, don't do it. I could stop right there, but this is another lesson I've had to learn time and time again.

Your body is pretty fantastic at giving feedback when something isnt right. Often, this feedback can come weeks or months before the actual fuuuucccckkkk. And that's exactly what most injuries are. They arent the 'well i did one weird thing and my body didnt like it.' Oh no no. That's what i tell God, my wife, and the gram. It's more like, ya my neck is constantly nagging at me and i have to foam roll this giant knot in my back daily to avoid pain but ill just do some farmers to stretch it out. This is a child talking.

The fact is, the more pain free days you have, then the more pain free days you will have. Read that again Roger. If you are pain free for 3 months after an injury while still staying mobile and active, you won the prize. If you are over the main ouch but still feel pain 3/7 days of the week, you have not addressed the problem.

Fast forward to today. For me, working around an injury satisfies the first sentence of this blog. Whatever you do, it does not hurt or cause the injury to last longer. 

Status report: neck injury

- acute pain in neck when it stretches towards my right side.

- extreme weakness in my left arm.

- extreme pressure felt in my neck when i assume a pushup positon.

This counts out most bodyweight pulls and presses, barbell squats, barbell deadlifts, and (sad enough) keg carries. This sucks, but more importantly it leaves behind some gems that can be exploited. DB floor press, ghr, sled drags, light farmers walks, high angle bw rope rows, and bulgarian split squats. This, is, a nice little corner I'm backed into.

All of the nono list items are on hold. My goal is to remain pain free for a month before venturing outside of my hole. This leaves a month to get amazing at movements ive never really paid attention to before.

New rule: 

Every workout has a feeler tab. What hurt. Is it persistant. Scale from 1 to 10. Be aware and remember.

Brain droppings 9/12/21

Everyone should be prioritizing:

• Their conditioning
• Their knees, neck, abs, and spinal erectors.

I should never, ever, give anyone fitness advice. Besides the plain fact that I'm a poor model to build off of, the universe tends to break me via a karmic reaction. Me giving advice = me getting hurt. 

One meal a day (OMAD) is fucking fantastic and an easy way to feel great. At my peak last year, I was leaner than my 20s self, had no injuries to speak of, and could visibly see my arms/shoulders stretching my t-shirts. All the while, I thought I was wasting time because I was unable to squat, deadlift, or oly lift. My biggest change was OMAD was a staple in my life. Funny that.

I've never done a deload past my brief jaunt with 5/3/1. I also have failed to make meaningful progress over the past 6 years and have accrued an impressive amount of injuries. I'm sure these things are unrelated.

Daily low impact work feels great on the joints. My right knee went from 'shit do I need surgery' to 'nope I'm fine' in a week. Babying an injury only allows for scar tissue to take up residence.

Most barbell movements just don't feel great anymore. I should feel disappointed but I'm not. I depended on pseudo oly moves (snatch high pulls, power cleans) to feel fast and lean out. While these movements definitely helped from a speed component, they have safer alternatives (see: KB swings, cleans, and snatches) and are overall not needed if I just lose some god damn weight. Seeing video/pics of myself from my height of oly moves, I really was not as lean as I thought I was. Weird enough, I bet if I lost 30lbs, I would get faster. 

I love mythical strength's blog post about granting permission. Do you want to do something? Instead of researching for 10yrs, just try it. I let a Layne Norton video lambasting fasting make me second guess OMAD. Why should I care what the science says when I know fasting feels great, makes me look great, and generally has very little impact on overall performance.