[Roosh]

I seem to keep getting tendonitis (or other muscle injuries) in different places, mostly from weight lifting..

1. Left adductor. I got injured from doing squats. Took about 2 months to heal. I adjusted my form.

2. Left elbow. This took another 3 months, there is some lingering pain on certain days but I'm over it. Not sure how this happened.

3. Lower back. From doing deadlifts. Muscle gets "frozen" if I bend over for a long time and then try to sit up. It's been a month and it's mostly healed.

4. Left rotator cuff. New injury! Right now I can't do a shoulder squeeze behind my back. It's in the front of the shoulder. Judging by the pain... another 3 months.

I noticed my left side is weaker. I wonder when lifting with bars I'm inadvertently shifting a lot of weight to my right side, weakening the left and setting up an injury.

I don't remember ever getting any serious muscle injury younger than 30. But now it's somewhat common.

[BortimusPrime]

There's a fine line between enough weight to make gains and enough weight to fuck your shoulder up.

[sixsix]

1. How's your form?

2. How's your diet?

3. How's your sleep?

[worldwidetraveler]

Yep, older sucks when it comes to injuries.

Left shoulder (probably rotator cup).

I am sure it is my flat bench. I don't even know my max because I never try to find out. I just try to add some weight to my routine when I am able to get through the routine. I still must be doing something wrong or too heavy.

Lower back.

This was a big problem for some time until I started doing more body weight exercises. It took care of my lower back. I don't know if the body exercises were just stretching it more or it helped strengthened it. I did just hurt it a little on the stiff leg deads which I don't do often.

You may want to give body weight exercises a go. I found them a lot tougher than expected but it did help clear up some areas.

These injuries sure make me think about HGH more and more. heh

[dk902]

1. Left adductor. - Possibly due to tight IT band.

2. Left elbow. Do you do skull crushers or heavy curls?

3. Lower back. With lower back problems then I think it's a good idea to examine the hip-flexors, are they tight? Also the posterior chain, i.e. glutes and hamstrings - make sure they get worked and stretched, e.g. lunges. And maybe some abs work because of the antagonistic makeup of the human body, and many muscles work in pairs.

4. Left rotator cuff. I have impingement syndrome. I've done a lot of shoulder rehab, but the genetic makeup of my shoulder's doesn't make pressing the most comfortable. I minimise the strain more nowadays, I've replaced barbell benching with dumbbell pressing, I find you get a better range of motion and it's kinder to the shoulders - ditto for military press. I also do different variations like floor presses. I still get a bit of discomfort but I've come to live with it as a part of pressing.

I noticed my left side is weaker. I wonder when lifting with bars I'm inadvertently shifting a lot of weight to my right side, weakening the left and setting up an injury.

Get someone to film you when you squat and deadlift from the side and from the front/back, so you can evaluate your form properly. There is also a smartphone app called Coach's Eye, you can film your technique with it and view the video frame by frame, so you can break down where your form is suffering.

I found out a while back I was arching my back too much with deadlifting, I was disappointed because I thought I didn't. But I got a good coach to help me fix it and now it's almost perfect.

Mark Rippletoe is the best teacher when it comes to the deadlift in my opinion, I use his setup every time.

I recognise these issues because I had a lot of the same and I tore my hamstring because of it. Especially if you spend a lot of the day sat in a chair, this will mean your psoas and hamstrings get really tight because they're shortened. These will then pull on your adductors, lumbar spinae (lower back) and the surrounding muscles.

If you're not already doing it, foam rolling is an absolute must for muscle health and longevity in the gym. Also stretching and dynamic warmups. They're a ball ache and tedious at first, but once you're used to them they become habitual and you do them in 10 minutes.

I recommend checking out Eric Cressey's videos on youtube with regards to warmups and foam rolling.

[MikeCF]

You foam rolling bro?

Once you're in your late 20s, you can start to feel your muscles become less supple and more "plastic" like.

Lots and lots and lots of foam rolling.

I spend 10 minutes on a rumble roller (more extreme version of a foam roller) before lifting. Use a lacrosse ball for spot relief/trigger points.

[MikeCF]

(07-10-2013 05:03 PM)worldwidetraveler Wrote:  

These injuries sure make me think about HGH more and more. heh

HGH is good for connective tissue but there's no way around trigger point therapy/foam rolling.

A lot of "ligament" injuries are actually caused by knots.

http://dangerandplay.com/2013/02/18/a-cu...endonitis/

[worldwidetraveler]

(07-10-2013 05:14 PM)MikeCF Wrote:  

(07-10-2013 05:03 PM)worldwidetraveler Wrote:  

These injuries sure make me think about HGH more and more. heh

HGH is good for connective tissue but there's no way around trigger point therapy/foam rolling.

A lot of "ligament" injuries are actually caused by knots.

http://dangerandplay.com/2013/02/18/a-cu...endonitis/

Thanks Mike. I have a feeling my lower back was knotted up and then hurt when lifting. I will have to give foam rolling a go.

[MikeCF]

(07-10-2013 05:11 PM)dk902 Wrote:  

4. Left rotator cuff. I have impingement syndrome. I've done a lot of shoulder rehab, but the genetic makeup of my shoulder's doesn't make pressing the most comfortable. I minimise the strain more nowadays, I've replaced barbell benching with dumbbell pressing, I find you get a better range of motion and it's kinder to the shoulders - ditto for military press. I also do different variations like floor presses. I still get a bit of discomfort but I've come to live with it as a part of pressing.

I've got the same thing.

Do this:

1. Take a lacrosse ball and go find a wall where you can roll on.
2. Put the lax ball between you and the wall.
3. Start leaning down (with your back straight up against the wall) until you hit a knot.
4. You will be hitting nasty, gnarly fucking knots in your trap area and also your subscapularis.
5. Lean back into the knot.
6. Take your arm and pull it across your body with your other arm to get a full stretch.
7. Now slightly roll back and forth.
8. When doing this, move in the direction of the muscle tissue. Look at an anatomy chart. Since the subscap tissue runs basically parallel to the ground, rotate back-and-forth or at an angle rather than up-and-down.

This is all intuitive and you need to go by feel.

But soon you will be able to break up the scar tissue by yourself.

Arnold presses are good to do for guys with shoulder issues.

[Prophylaxis]

Some good advice here.

Roosh, have you seen anyone about your new injury? Are you sure you have torn your rotator cuff? 3 months is a long time to be out of the gym (unless you have torn it)

There are a number of reasons for your shoulder pain when working out, here are some:

*Shoulder instability
*Impingement
*Referred pain from the neck
*Bicep tendonitis/tendinopathy
*Torn rotator cuff/tendinopathy

What I see generally from young men who work out, is they go too hard on the incline press. This massively overpowers the deltoids, which pulls the humeral head superiorly (out of the shoulder socket). This means the rotator cuff have to work ten-fold harder to keep the shoulder in place. Another issue which I'm willing to bet you have, is that your shoulder blade control and movement on your left-side is out of sync - this also reduces shoulder stability, and can narrow the space within the shoulder (causing more impingement).

Assuming you have either shoulder instability/impingement, you want to work on your shoulder blade movements (basically think gently shrugging your shoulders 'up' while gently squeezing your shoulder blades and moving your arm:

Also plenty of controlled rotator cuff strenthening -




As the symptoms settle down, you could then commence some external rotation strengthening:


Lay off any incline press for now, until you get the shoulder blade reset and cuff functioning better.

Let me know how you go. I've dislocated my shoulder numerous times (due to genetics unfortunately), but it wasn't until I started regular cuff exercises that I haven't had problems for over a year.

[flyfreshandyoung]

(07-10-2013 04:36 PM)Roosh Wrote:  

3. Lower back. From doing deadlifts. Muscle gets "frozen" if I bend over for a long time and then try to sit up. It's been a month and it's mostly healed.

I had this happen to me pretty badly earlier this year in a big deadlift set. Too much back, not enough leg usage (was starting with hips too high). Focused on getting my hips lower at the start and fixed that almost immediately and it is not an issue anymore.

Also fixed the form in conjunction with fixing my anterior pelvic tilt (addressed in the forum already), which was causing too much usage of an already tight lower back (caused by the pelvic tilt). Zero deadlift back pain whatsoever now.

As for rehabbing that sore back, like Mike said the foam roller is your best friend. I rolled the shit out of it 3-5 times a day, as much as I could, and got over it in a week.

[MikeCF]

(07-10-2013 05:55 PM)flyfreshandyoung Wrote:  

I had this happen to me pretty badly earlier this year in a big deadlift set. Too much back, not enough leg usage (was starting with hips too high). Focused on getting my hips lower at the start and fixed that almost immediately and it is not an issue anymore.

Great point.

Also, if a guy's hips are too tight to deadlife property...

Don't do heavy dead lifts from the floor. Either do rack pulls or trap bar dead lifts with the high handles.

Then do some overhead squats with just the bar to open up the hips.

As the hips get looser, your deadlift form will improve and you'll be able to pull from the floor.

[Roosh]

Each injury seems to have its own unique set of causes. The rotator cuff is from boxing (throwing left hooks, specifically). I trained too hard too fast, and didn't back off at warning signs. Now I'm out for a while.

[WesternCancer]

(07-10-2013 06:00 PM)MikeCF Wrote:  

(07-10-2013 05:55 PM)flyfreshandyoung Wrote:  

I had this happen to me pretty badly earlier this year in a big deadlift set. Too much back, not enough leg usage (was starting with hips too high). Focused on getting my hips lower at the start and fixed that almost immediately and it is not an issue anymore.

Great point.

Also, if a guy's hips are too tight to deadlife property...

Don't do heavy dead lifts from the floor. Either do rack pulls or trap bar dead lifts with the high handles.

Then do some overhead squats with just the bar to open up the hips.

As the hips get looser, your deadlift form will improve and you'll be able to pull from the floor.

I'm definitely going to try out the overhead squats. My DL was best when I was snatching a lot. Now, even with a moderate amount of mobility work, I have the hip flexibility of a 90 year old man.

[thegmanifesto]

(07-10-2013 05:11 PM)MikeCF Wrote:  

You foam rolling bro?

Once you're in your late 20s, you can start to feel your muscles become less supple and more "plastic" like.

Lots and lots and lots of foam rolling.

I spend 10 minutes on a rumble roller (more extreme version of a foam roller) before lifting. Use a lacrosse ball for spot relief/trigger points.

Foam rolling is the greatest thing ever created.

The two most important parts of my workouts and fitness are:

1. Foam Rolling
2. Stretching (I actually stretched twice today)

In no particular order.

You have to do those in your 30's. No other way around it.

[horn]

(07-10-2013 04:44 PM)BortimusPrime Wrote:  

There's a fine line between enough weight to make gains and enough weight to fuck your shoulder up.

Yep, I blew out my first rotator cuff at 30, felt a pain and ignored it like a moron, finished my day's worth of lifting, and the other a few years later. Get to your late 30s and your knees/ankle will start to feel worse, esp if you played organized sports your whole life - tennis, basketball, soccer, whatever. Start praying you avoid lower back injuries, threw mine out once and I couldn't sit or even lie down comfortably for a week and that was on painkillers. [I think I sneezed funny and boom, it went out!]

And you sure as hell don't bounce back as fast....sigh.

You gotta stretch daily, and foam roll for sure.

[TheCaptainPower]

@Roosh For your upper body cut down on the sets. When I was younger I used to bang out set after set of bench press, today after warming up I will do just "2" work sets. Same for shoulders...

Rotator cuff and lower back injuries are a bitch. Rotator cuff is usually from overuse, so slow it down. This monday after stretching my shoulder out for 10 minutes I did the following for chest:

135x10, x 10 warmup
185 X 5 warmup
225 x 12 (set number one)
245 X6 (Set number 2)

2 sets of dumbbell fly's with 50's and 65's. Thats my entire chest workout.

I cut down on sets, and I won't even touch incline's with a barbell. You can also consider moving your hands in slightly on bench press, I used to put my pointer finger on the rings, now I moved it a half inch to the middle fingers

[assman]

Good time for this thread. I've been ignoring my foam roller for far too long. Gonna make sweet love to it right now.

Roosh, on the low back injury from deadlifts, can you touch your toes with your legs straight? I've done an ad hoc 'study' of this by asking guys I've seen with really good DL form if they can touch their toes. 100% of the time, they can.

I think Kelly Starrett said that if somebody can't touch their toes, they have no business doing DLs until they improve their mobility (hips, hammies and calves).

[Therapsid]

You can't forget to exercise your rotator cuff muscles. Especially as you get older.

Jim Stoppani breaks it down here. What happens is that stabilizer muscles fall behind the muscles you're working, and you get injured.

Scroll ahead to around 2:30.

He suggests doing these rotator cuff exercises after your shoulder workout.

[kosko]

^^You should warm up the rotators cuffs up prior -- IMO no sense in focusing on them after when the bulk of the stress (and damage) has already been caused. For my shoulders I spent a good 5-8mins or more warming them up. A lot of older heads say they ...will... eventually turn to shit if you don't take the time to make sure they are warm and loose before you start lifting.

I do this warm up via Luimarco and 3 months in it has helped a lot. I no longer get any shooting or sharpness in my shoulders any more on Shoulder or Chest days:

And for the Adductors.....



^ This Hip-Adductor press needs to be mandatory for all women, but for dudes as well. I've been using this thing for years and it does a really good job to strengthen in very top end of the adductor where it connects into the pelvic.

Deadlifts...

Since your a taller dude Roosh you may need to tweak your form. Possibly your current movements/form may be putting more stress on joint points then necessary, and I suspect this might be the case for your Deadlift.

Here is Hulse breaking it down for taller dudes and how to perfect their Deadlifts:

The form your currently using may have been rounding your shoulders/back over from the discomfort of elbow/back pain with the heavy weight.. leading to more stress and more pain your feeling now.

Go very light for now, heal the pain and keep blood flowing into it, then when you are healed up work back up.

[Hades]

Muscle imbalances in the shoulder is usually caused by a lack of pressing in one plane and being overly tight in the pecs. The guys on Tnation and Rippetoe are going apeshit at this very moment to convince other people to start doing all kinds of overhead pressing to "correct muscular imbalances that lead to rotor cuff injuries".

The way to fix this is to start doing shoulder dislocations. Most guys I know are very tight in the chest and shoulders to the point where they can't do a dislocation even with their hands spread very far apart.
Here's a video on the movement pattern and a guide on how to do it.

You should feel a very intense stretch in the pecs and delts when starting out, so go slow. If you do these in conjunction with bodyweight rows/australian pullups it would likely correct a slouch. The guy in this video is going quickly because he lacks the flexibility to do it properly, though this is fine to start with as long as you keep trying to do it more slowly.

Once you have your shoulder mobility fixed, doing isometric holds like handstands against a wall for a duration of one minute total can help correct a shoulder imbalance. Three sets of 20 seconds would be fine here. You can also do pike presses or hit up a gym and do any kind of overhead work to help out in this respect.

For general mobility, I can recommend Convict Conditioning II's "The Trifecta", which is the L-sit hold, the bridge hold, and the Russian twist. Here's a vid on how to do it.
[video=youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4feVupBxRs
[/video]

If you find that your injuries have healed somewhat, then what I can definitely recommend for elbow health is a maneuver called "the German hang". Here's a video -

The bicep stretch in the hang portion of this movement is incredible. Most people tend to get tendonitis in the elbows because they do too many curling movements and no straight arm movements.

So in short - shoulder dislocations, some kind of overhead pressing (and rowing), CC's "The Trifecta", and 'the German hang' once you get ambitious.

[Veloce]

Great thread.

My own set of common ailments I gotta be careful with, and what I do about them:

Shoulder impingement: Exactly what prophylaxis posted above. I have a chiropractor I see fairly regularly, monthly or bi-monthly that fixes me up good. I know everyone has a stance on chiropractic care; I've seen many and finally found one that can fix me and helps my workout as well. He's part chiro, part sports therapy. Anyway he got me doing band exercises exactly like posted above. Between that, shoulder dislocations and hanging in between military press sets, I no longer have shoulder pain.

Lower back: I've had chronic back pain since my early 20s, when I was doing lots of heavy lifting in the kitchen and zero gym time. Literally was not exercising AT ALL. Major subluxation between my 5th and 6th, and to a lesser degree in my mid back. When it slips out of alignment there's shooting pain all the way down to my heel and my entire back locks up. It's fucking miserable. Hasn't happened in a long time. A few times a year it'll hit me when I'm doing some dumb shit like a really bad lift or if I've been sedentary. Chiro adjustment is the quick fix, after that it's all back strengthening and stretching. Here's what I do to prevent it:

#1: Decompression yoga. By far the most important for lower back issues. Gotta stretch out those disks and get fluid in there. I don't do all the stretches in the video, just some of them.

#2: hamstring stretching. Greatly increased mobility and stability: less lower back stress

#3: hip stretches. I do basic floor stretches. I haven't started foam rolling but I'm going to start. MikeCF on the money here. In general I'm super stiff, especially my hips. When everything's stretched out properly it's like night and day under the bar.

Since I have a sensitive lower back, I IMMEDIATELY know when my form or posture is off. I'm still fairly new to lifting (started stronglifts november 2012) so my body instinctively wants to lean forward during squats and deadlift. Just gotta remember to keep your heels dug in, and before my reps I think, "Lean back". I'm not actually leaning back but it counteracts my instinct to lean forward.

If anything, I feel like having aches and pains helps my form. When my form is perfect there's no pain or discomfort whatsoever and I can push myself to the limit. The second my balance or form is off, boy do I feel it.

[Kieran]

With regards to the shoulder injury, starting strength is very light on upper back work which often leads to impingements. I would begin by adding in lots of strict rows where you're able to really focus on scapular retraction. If you are boxing too, then this is extremely important. I throw thousands of punches per week in my training, so I do a lot of rows and other upper back work such as face pulls for injury prevention.

Second make sure you are shrugging at the top of the press, lots of people miss this portion of the movement, and it is extremely important for preventing rotator cuff injuries and strengthening the rotator cuff. Rippetoe explains this in starting strength so I won't go into it here.

With regards to the deadlift, I would second MikeCF's recommendation of partials. Pulling from 4-6 inches off the ground should allow you to keep your back properly arched. Not only are they safer but I have found them to be just as effective as the full version. You can also perform this version of the deadlift from the top down, lowering only to the point where the plates are around 4-6 inches from the ground, if you don't have blocks to pull from (this also has the added benefit of incorporating the stretch reflex). Andy Bolton himself even recommends partials for athletes instead of the full lift so it can't really come from better authority:

http://articles.elitefts.com/training-ar...-deadlift/

[Kieran]

One other thing, the low bar squat is a lot harder on the shoulders than the high bar version (I also believe it to be far more effective too, but I won't get into that debate here).

[TheKantian]

It's hard to diagnose injuries.

However, I know that anytime I've experienced adductor issues with squatting it's because my gluteals weren't doing shit.

Then the neural pathways get all messed up and even when you think it's healed it's still doing too much work in relation to the other muscles.

You think, well static stretching will help, but then you stretch the muscle but it doesn't help too much.

I think some yoga poses are actually really good. The warrior pose helps keeps the hips open and stretches the adductor while contracting the abductors.

I would definitely incoporate unilateral leg work, e.g. lunges or bulgarian squats.

I'm not an expert, but hopefully these help.