On my daily bike ride with my dog yesterday, I ended up taking a spill over the handle bars of my bike. I blame Penny for darting after a squirrel, running through my front tire and sending me shoulder-first into the ground. My shoe came off and I was bleeding from my thumb, and I immediately felt like my shoulder was effed up. I was pretty sure I tore something bc my shoulder got really swollen and I could barely walk/open a door/sit up/stand up without it hurting. To be honest, all I could think about is how this will set me back in my training and I was upset that I wouldn't be able to do "Nancy" 5 rounds of run 400 m, 15 ohs at 95 lbs. I stayed home yesterday and continued icing it throughout the day. After laying around all day, I thought I'd give a substituted Nancy a shot - 5 rounds of run 400 m, 15 jumping squats, 15 air squats. As I was warming up, even getting into a squat position and doing a light jog hurt. Throughout the wod, I just pushed through the pain; during the wod, since I wasn't focusing on any shoulder movements, any pain I felt was more of a nagging/chronic pain, as opposed to being really sharp and painful. The time I got was 19:45. I was okay with this given my situation. Most of all, I was pleased I didn't quit on the running.
I went to a shoulder doctor this morning. He took an x-ray, no MRI. He thinks it's just a sprain of the AC joint in my shoulder which connects the collarbone to the shoulder blade. It can take anywhere from 2 weeks to 2 months to heal and no longer be painful. I was pretty relieved that it's not a tear. Generally, I need to let the pain guide what I'm able to do, but he did specifically say that any pushing movement (bench, pushups, shoulder press) is going to be extremely painful/limited for awhile.
Anyway, I've already decided that I'm going to buy a 45 lb. dumbbell so I can do one-armed ohs, snatches, thrusters, etc. I'm looking for an airdyne on craigslist so I can keep biking too. I'd appreciate any thoughts you guys have on movements/wods that don't require a working shoulder. Obviously pistols, squats, lunges, situps come to mind. One-armed pullups with a band, one-armed pushups, maybe deadlifts, kb snatch, turkish getups. You guys have any other ideas, I'd really appreciate it.
Man sorry to hear that, however...now is the perfect time to get crazy good at squatting! If your bar placement during squats give you no pain, just squat all day every day.
ReplyDeleteAlso i'm of the humble opinion that doing a lot of unilateral stuff like one armed pullups/kb snatches etc will throw you out of balance...
ReplyDeleteyeah, it's definitely a good time to focus on lower body and running, which are probably my biggest weaknesses. i'll have to check if i can load the bar without my shoulder hurting...i really hope so.
ReplyDeleteinteresting you say unilateral stuff throws you out of whack. i could definitely see why that would be the case. is that just your experience from doing uni stuff or have you read that somewhere too? i read on the cf discussion board (admittedly not a great source) that doing unilateral stuff like ohs, snatches, thrusters, can still increase the strength of your injured side. again, not sure whether i can trust that, but it's not like i have any other options, either.
I've read that as well, but I'm pretty sure the strength increase of the untrained side is less than that of the trained side. This is an extreme obviously and just serves to show that one side will get somewhat stronger given enough time doing unilateral exercises:
ReplyDeletehttp://do-while.com/arm-wrestling-champion/