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When you exercise or participate in sport type activities there is always the risk of injury. Everything from a hurt finger to monumental accidents can happen. As you get older you get smarter (hopefully) about what to do and what not to do. But there will still be the occasional accident. If you don't live life then you won't get hurt but that's no way to live right? So, I have had my share of lifting incidents; most have hit me due to stupidity but not all. The most recent one hit me from a blind spot. I don't know when it happened or what happened; one day I had a painful shoulder. It didn't hurt all the time, just when I lifted my arm straight up in front of me and rotated slightly to the left. Many people offered that it was a rotator cuff injury and may need surgery. But I was sure that it wasn't. I could do everything; even lift heavy as long as I didn't put my arm in that one specific position.
So this injury plagued me for months and months until a couple of weeks ago. I was doing light flies, where you lie on your back and basically fly with weights. I'd only done them once the week before; testing the shoulder to see if all was okay and it seemed good. So having finished I went to get up; but two guys had decided to take up the spot literally 3" from my feet to chat; so I was unable to get up properly. I had to do a twisty type thing instead, not good. (Another chapter for Gym Etiquette) Anyway when I did I felt it popped and I heard it. I was sure that I'd screwed myself for a year of more pain. I was fuming at these guys who had caused it. I grabbed my arm in sling position and head for home, brewing.
It hut, it hurt really badly; but as the days passed I forgot about it. Until one day as I reached for a glass in the kitchen and realized that it didn't hurt anymore. The shooting pain that was associated to the very movement I was making was absent, gone. I moved my arm around, testing the weak spot that I had grown accustom to over the last months and it had vanished. So I've done some thinking. Was it a tendon that had slipped out of place and slipped back in on that fly day? After much research I think that I had an impingement that wiggled free somehow. The pain I felt was exactly as described, but is now gone. I do still have a very tiny weakness there that I am very aware of. I am ultra careful when lifting anywhere near it.
Not everything needs surgery. So many people will jump to a "you need surgery" conclusion. A couple of years back I had injured my shoulders when I first got back into lifting. I lifted too heavy too soon, it was all my fault. I visited the Dr., had an MRI and she told me that I had an extra piece of bone on each shoulder that needed shaving off. She said it was rare but something I was born with. That extra bone was causing all sorts of problems, including pain. Well, I'm not a take advice from Dr's., type of person so shook my head and left. If I had always had it then why was it just now bothering me? I rested, really rested my shoulders and presto. It did take about three months to get them back to normal but I'm fine and feel no pain there anymore.
That extra bone point was a turning point in my lifting. From that moment I took extra precaution when lifting, form and poundage. It was my lifting "ah ha" moment. The moment I realized that I was no longer 23 and lifting. :)
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