Todd_A’s BodyBlog

Well, it has only been a few days since my last post, but I have been lifting every morning still and this week I decided to go ahead and do my shoulder day, but to take it easy… well, sort of…

Shoulder day started with a light warm up then consisted of doing military presses with dumbells with my hands turned inward to avoid the painful position.  For the first set I used really light dumbells which felt fine, so I upped the weights to 25 pounds each for this. Next I decided to do the lift that usually would cause great pain, the barbell milirtay press. Only, I used a reverse grip with my palms facing me instead of the standard palms facing away grip. Again, this caused no pain. Next I did side laterals with 10 pounds each then upped to 15 pounds each. That was all I attempted for the first shoulder day so far.

This morning I did arms.  Since the injury I have avoided doing dips except last week I did some dips off the bench with my feet propped up on a box. This morning I went with regular dips and as long as I kept my elbows tucked against my sides I was fine, but when I allowed my elbows to pull away a little I started feeling some pain in my shoulder, so that was a great reminder to keep the form tight for the rest of the time. The skull crushers and standing barbell curls and the seated dumbell curls did not cause any pain.

Currently the shoulder area is a little tender jsut moving it around because of the dips when I would let the elbows flare out I guess. It should be better by tonight or the morning. Occassionally I will do something to make it hurt and it doesn’t take too long to quit hurting.

The shoulder is definitely getting better with all the babying it I am doing and lifting around the issue and I am happy with the abilities I still have to lift by slightly modifying the tecnique.  I miss being able to bench press a decent amouint of weight, however I have been making my pecs quite sore with the lighter dumbell bench presses and focusing more on the incline press which I can do with good, heavy weight still.

Things are looking up!

Hey, thanks for the replies to my last blog about my issues with my shoulder!!!

Here is the update now after my monday chest workout… The shoulder has been feeling better although I can definitely put it in a position that will cause is to be painful very easily if I don’t watch out and I am not constantly consious about the positions I let it get into. This morning’s chest workout was a mirror of last monday’s workout but I did get to increase the weight a little in a few of the exercises.

As per the advice on the previous blog’s replies (thancks guys!), I did not go below 90 deg. on the bench or incline movements.  Actually I did go past 90 deg. a few times accidentally after one time to see where the limit might be, but I was greeted with a bit of a light version of the pain I felt before, so I immediately changed my bottom point of the movement to stop before that point and it was, indeed, 90 deg at the low point as perscribed.

I did do warmups, but not walking/running. I will try that next time. However I did get a little sewat going with a few light sets of the movements  starting with a very light set in the begining.  

I did a pretty normal set of incline as far as weight goes becuase I can do incline without feeling that pain.  As for bench I did dumbell bench again this week and was able to turn my hands where my palms were slightly facing in, just enough to really feel solid about not feeling that pain and go to 90 deg and back up, again with no problems.

After that I went with pushups with my hands turned slightly to just give me a feeling of confidence that I would not feel any of that pain. I did 1 set of 25 followed by 2 sets of 20 where I almost failed on the last one each time!

Finally I did 2 sets of rotator cuff exercises I found to be pretty popular out there - laying on my side and doing a lift up to about 45 deg, laying on my side and doing an Internal Rotation and an External Rotation. I did both sides and I did 2 sets of 10 with 5 pounds. The external rotation is definitely my weak point in the rotator cuff as it was the only one that began to burn during the those exercises and was noticibly weaker.

Overall, everything appears to be progressing nicely and I am happy with the progress so far.  Also I am cutting and I lost a nice amount of bodyfat this week between the lifting, light cardio and a low carb restricted calorie diet. Hopefully I can get to my bodyfat goals around the same time that I am ready to start lifting a little more weight.