MasterStrongman’s BodyBlog

Over the past decades, I have a learned a thing or two about sports injuries.  Each of the following is true and, except for the current one from this morning, I have recovered fully from all of them.  Here are some of my favorite:

10.  When you train in the gym, if you wear only socks then your toes will break when you drop a 45 lb plate on them.

9. When you are benching, if you do not tuck your chin in you will leverage the weight with the crown of your head and strain your trapezius so that you cannot look from side to side while you drive.

8.  When deadlifting a car, or anything else for that matter, if you get cocky and start showboating by turning your head to the left or right under load to talk to someone while holding the heavy weight like it is nothing, you will bring your spine out of alignment and fall flat on your stomach writhing and screaming, "Oh, &#(#&!! Oh, *#(*@!!"  Bring on the degenerative disc disease!

7. On a DE squat day, if your hands are too wide you can smash your finger into the squat cage and be able to gross out all of the girls you know when your pinky fingernail falls off.

6. If you flip a tire dynamically and end the movement with a split stance, you may strain your plantar fasciitis and be unable to walk.  (This is the most recent!!)

5. Preacher curls that are too heavy will give you bone spurs in your elbow.  Now, as far as injuries go, this one was lame.  But, dear reader, there is it.

4. Biceps tendons are delicate and subject to tear. Except when they break off entirely. Then the doctor will give you some good Rx after the surgery. Hurray Flexeril!! Fat bars have no use in civilized society.  They are cruel devices of biceps torture.  I spit on them.

3. When running, make sure you are on a flat surface or else you will twist your ankle and fall down… in front of everyone… that you just met…. and who you are trying to impress.  (A codicil to this: when you wrap your ankle at night like they tell you, remember that it will swell in the middle of the night inside the bandage thereby causing you to scream for a handsaw so that you can just cut it off and be done with it. Also, this story happened on a boat in the Bahamas, so I was sunburned and overserved.  Sexy man!)

2. Excessive chain dragging leads to puking.  This isn’t an injury so much as a medical condition some of us are striving to achieve.

But the number one injury that I have ever had is….

1. The injury to my pride, to my resolve and to my psyche when my body won’t do what I want it to do.

We are all looking to increase our intensity for our training.  We all know that the level of effort we put into out workouts will dictate our rewards.

I have found a lot of intensity on Bodyspace.  Watch Layne Norton’s videos.  That boy has intensity! He can get his mind into his training!  That is only one of hundreds of examples I have found.

I know that I am training with a greater degree of urgency than I ever have had before.  I think it is because I know that on this website, everywhere I turn I run into a world class athlete.  I see that if I want to succeed, I have to pay my dues with sweat. 

I keep hearing in my head that at my next contest, someone may beat me, but they won’t work harder than me.