If You're Hurt, Don't Do This...

So I'm at the gym today, and there are two huge - pardon me, HUGE - bodybuilders training at the same time. I usually see them twice per week. They work hard. And did I mention they are HUGE?

Anyways, they were doing chest today. The one guy, who has to be close to 40, has something wrong with his shoulder. But he keeps training. In fact, I should mention that they didn't do much of a warm-up, and I think they started the workout with incline dumbbell presses at 85 pounds and were soon up to 130 pound dumbbells. In between sets, the guy keeps complaining about his shoulder.

Then they do flat DB press. Just as heavy. After a couple of sets, the older guy says, "I think I pulled something. The pain in my shoulder is now in my chest."

Okay, I think to myself, that's it for him today. But the next thing you know, he's doing heavy chest flies. That's not going to make it any better...and I don't care how much juice you're on, that type of training is going to catch up with you.

So today's lesson is this: If you hurt yourself, don't keep hurting yourself. But you knew that, of course.

In fact, if you feel like you've pulled a muscle badly, get a health professional (doctor, chiropractor, or physio) to look at it. If it's just a small pull, put ice on it for 10-minutes at a time, every hour or so. And do some easy stretching for it on a regular basis. Don't put ice on it for too long or over-stretch it, but just do things conservatively and you can help speed recovery.

I'm a big fan of ART (active release techniques). Fortunately, here in Toronto, there are probably hundreds of chiros and PT's that do it. It's a big help.

But whatever you do, don't keep training hard if you are injured.

Back to my workout...

1A) Medium Grip Bench Press - 245x3x3
1B) DB Row - 120x3x5

2A) DB Chest Press - 85x2x8
2B) BB Shrug - 205x2x12

Then I cut my workout short and went and did this week's TT Member's Challenge, a little Halloween-inspired bodyweight workout, consisting of 502 reps.

You can find out the details on this week's challenge on the forums at www.TTMembers.com

I don't recommend doing it after you do an upper body workout. My pushup performance suffered big time.

Let me know what you think,

Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
www.TTMembers.com