Injuries, injuries, injuries...

Hey all-

Over the past few months I have racked up a bunch of injuries. I posted something on the handstand forum about one to my deltoid from dislocate work. Also, my left bicept has been in much pain. It seems to stem from doing the sPL/PE1 >iM and HBP/PE3 work (the lower portion of those movements where the hand is close to the hip and the arm is bent... seems to really cause my arms to hurt). Also I've had on and off tendonitis in my right elbow for the past few months. As well, in my left palm, when trying to do any sPL work where the arm is straight and leaning, there is a pain that passes through my palm right above my thumb. I ended up having to do planche work using push-up bars for a while, but then because of all of these other injuries (my left bicep, my right deltoid, right elbow) I finally decided to just stop ALL GST work involving my arms. Which sucks of course. It's been over a month of no work with my arms... no HS work either, only MN, SL, SLS, FL (hollow body rocks). Basically my arms are hurting all over the place. Now the thing is, I've been following all of the prescribed mobility, I've always been very conservative about moving up (so I've not pushed my body to do anything too soon it seems like, and all of the movements I've been working on are all the ones that I've been doing for months and months (and I've been doıing GST for 5 years now actually, so for instance I'm not new at all to planche work). However this 42 year old dude's arms seem screaming for some help. So... advice? Just continue doing nothing with the arms until all pain is gone? Or some specific mobility/rehab work? I had tried voodoo flossing for months and months for help with my tendonitis and I can honestly say (at elast with how I was doing it) it had absolutely ZERO effect on the pain. Any advice would be most appreciated. I really want to get back in the game here.

Thanks!

See a doctor?

Other than that I would really back off anything that's even remotely painful. I had elbow tendinitis and I ended up taking about 2 months off for it to clear up and have to be careful even now. I had a shoulder impingement and that can flare up from time to time as well.

Taking time to heal up will give you a chance to train another time, exacerbating an injury could stop training all together.

Have you noticed a reoccurring theme?  As evidenced by your multiple list of injuries, you have a tendency to push too hard in your training.  The solution?  Slow down and stop trying to 'force' progress.  

You are correct in thinking that it is very important to work hard, else no progress will be made.  However it is equally important to listen to the body when it is telling you that enough is enough.  To maximize your gains it is important that you ride the sweet spot between too much training and too little training based upon your body's own individual recovery ability.

Remember, nothing slows down progress more than being forced to not train due to injury.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

HamdiC said:

there is a pain that passes through my palm right above my thumb. I ended up having to do planche work using push-up bars for a while

If this is your general approach, I think this might be an indication of where your problem might stem from.

I had some similar pain in my right thumb and palm when doing raised bridge work. So I doubled down on my wrist work to see what I might be slacking on and made sure to warm up thoroughly before doing the position. And I reexamined how exactly I was habitually pressing on the ground in similar moves (too much on the palm I discovered, not the whole hand). After a short while I'm back to normal. I never ignored the pain, or modified the move so I could do it without discomfort. Now I know that I need to keep certain wrist stretches and warm ups before each workout, and be careful to press evenly through my whole hands on similar moves.

You see these kinds of compensations a lot, people who hurt their wrists working planche so they switch to parallets. People who hurt their shoulders doing full ROM dips so they start to think it's 'dangerous' bend the arm past 90 degrees. There's nothing wrong with these moves. If there's pain when you do them don't change the move, change how you approach them.

as a guy who's similar age to you Hamdi, I can attest to the importance of the warmup and an everyday shoulder/scap/elbow/wrist routine that has really solidified my joint health. You obviously need to heal, and I think giving your body some time to recover before re-embarking on all this would be good. Before every workout I do the following: jump rope 2 mins, H1 wrist routine, just 1 set (already mastered all 5); Rings 1 elbow routine; ido shoulder routine; front dislocates x 10, back dislocates x 10, hanging with scap pulls and active/passive hanging for 2 minutes or so. This sounds like a lot, but I cruise through it in just over 10 minutes and then can get to my workout and minimize any injury, plus it is slowly strengthening me over time. do that before every workout for months on end and you'll see what i mean. good luck, man.

Why have you not had treatment? We can only give general advice without assessing your body and your exercise form. Coach has summed it up perfectly. You are pushing too hard for what your body is capable of.

Hy,

I've seen that you have difficulty to find professional assistance, if the source

of your problem are tendinitis buy this product:

http://www.amazon.fr/ARGILETZ-Argile-verte-concass%C3%A9e-Contenance/dp/B0052QTKJO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1418945014&sr=8-1&keywords=argiletz+argile+verte

and start a cycle of applications for at least three or four weeks on the areas that are giving you problems.

Make thick applications and keep them for a few hours or all the night.

Make sure to do it well, both in quantity and mode and time, you find plenty of advice in the network.

If you have the possibility go in a spa centre specific for osteoarticular problems, even sandblasting are useful.

Take a lot of vitamin C in organic form, NO synthetic supplements and a lot of fruit instead and search

for foods rich in organic silicon or natural supplement like horsetail and bamboo marrow, also here NO synthetic supplements.

Keep the alimentation the cleanest possible:  no white sugar, coffee, commercial cakes and drinks, reduce to the

minimum the animal and refined foods and increase fruit and vegetables to the maximum, ecc.

You should see rapid improvements if there are not other causes, of course a professional visit would be optimal.

Like the others above I also suggest to reduce and recalibrate your volume of training and to always perform a warm up routine for the joints and muscles, check the Intu Flow routine by Scott Sonnon on YouTube, the first two level are posted for free.

like MTnordic said.  warmup warmup warmup. always, forever.