Cycles, cycles

Usually, I find myself coming back to my fitness routine after layoffs of varying lengths, but now it's the blog to which I am returning after a long layoff. My workout routine has been fairly regular, if not necessarily following a consistent pattern. Translation: Even when I'm "off" the regular routine, I've made a point of doing SOMETHING to stay in shape.

I've had my fair share of workout layoffs, though. Once, when I injured my shoulder, I was unable to do any weight training for an entire year! I thought I'd never lift again, but when I realized how soft and out of shape I'd gotten, I made up my mind that I was going to get back into a routine or die trying. My shoulder still caused me a great deal of pain--even when performing movements you wouldn't expect to affect the shoulder--but I worked my way through it.

Yes, as a matter of fact, without the benefit of any kind of consultation with a medical professional or physical therapist, I rehabbed my injured shoulder all on my own. And I can say with confidence that I am 100% healed at this point. I can't say for sure how long it took before I felt I was fully recovered, but I can remember what it felt like to attempt anything after the injury occurred.

The funny thing is, I have no idea how it happened. I don't remember any specific moment during a workout that my shoulder suddenly started hurting. All I remember is that on a day of a scheduled shoulder workout consisting of military press, seated dumbbell press and lateral raises, I found myself unable to complete a single repetition of military press without experiencing excruciating pain that ran from my shoulder down into my arm. At the time, I thought it was simply that I hadn't warmed up properly, so I did lightweight lateral raises supersetted with some lightweight dumbbell presses. I actually pushed through the pain to perform one repetition on the military press. It hurt badly enough that I realized it would be very unwise to proceed any further.

In the days that followed, I found that the injury caused me unbearable pain while performing many exercises that formed the foundation of my routine: any pressing movement (it hurt so bad to attempt a bench press at even the lightest weight that I nearly puked), tricep pressdowns (who knew?), bicep curls (crazy!) and several others. The only movements I could do without pain were deadlifts (inexplicably), squats and pull-ups.

I even created a new routine around the movements I could perform without pain, but, eventually, I gave up altogether. Why bother? the fatalistic voice inside said.

So I did nothing for a solid year. I thought maybe if I just laid off the weights for a while, the shoulder would heal and then I'd be fine. But it never did. Every single time I picked up a dumbbell or barbell, it hurt like hell. Then I just stopped trying.

At some point I was not happy with the sad state into which my body had slipped. I did some research online about how to rehab a busted shoulder. Much of it was useless advice from people who knew nothing about it. Many people naturally advised me to seek out professional help. I wasn't going to do that because I could see no justification for the cost when I wasn't a professional athlete whose livelihood depended on being able to throw a barbell around. Eventually, I was able to sift through the chaff and find some pearls of real wisdom. And I followed some sound advice to begin strengthening my shoulder and working myself back into shape.

Pressing movements were still very problematic. In and around performing various movements to strengthen the deltoids (dumbbell lateral raise, front raise, etc.) I started bench pressing with just the bar. Yes, that's right. At this point the only weight I could lift on the bench press was the bar itself. After a week or two of this, I started adding weight to the bar. Little by little, I built it back up.

Somewhere along the line, I found myself pain free. It was like the clouds parted and sunshine poured through.

That was a few years back, and I'm happy to say I've been working out injury free ever since.