Weight: 217.4 (-13.8)
Fat: 31.5% (-7.8%)
Meals: 960 kcal
Exercise: Cardio (Treadmill 30:00 WL5 - 388 calories, 2.20 miles)
Pictures: Front/Side/Back/Flex
Yesterday I posted some information about my treadmill running and I said I would follow it up today with some graphs and things. Sadly, I'll have to delay that post by a day or two because today I wanted to talk about Wednesday's shoulder injury.
That's right, two days back I injured myself doing weight lifting of all things. Running has a far greater incidence of injury, if for no other reason than there's a lot more movement over a period of time. Plus I'm running every day of the week vs. three days a week of lifting. Lifting weights is considered far less likely to result in injury, although poor form can lead to problems on some exercises (see the controversy over squats) and inevitably some dumbass will try to bench his maximum alone with a barbell and end up crushing his neck.
Dumbbells don't have that problem so I didn't think anything of performing a bench press with them. The warmup set and first set went fine, but on the second set I wasn't paying enough attention and brought my left side down way too far. I thought I heard a tearing sound, but that might have been my brain trying to interpret the pain signals shooting up my shoulder into noise. I wasn't in enough pain to stop completely and I actually did another rep before I realized that I should probably stop there.
I managed to finish the rest of my workout. The only exercises I had left were triceps extensions, which didn't require too much from my shoulder, and crunches which were focused completely on my abdominals. The other exercises that might have caused issues, particularly the upright rows, were already complete.
I've been debating what to do about today, I really want to stick to my schedule, especially since tomorrow is a big day and I suspect I'll not have too much time before I have to head out. And Sunday I hope I'll get the opportunity to go out and enjoy myself. But I can still feel some stiffness and a small amount of pain in my left shoulder and I don't want to exacerbate the issue.
Injuring myself further to avoid skipping a workout, and costing myself two weeks or more of workouts (6+) doesn't seem like a good return to me. Better to miss the one which won't have too much effect long term, while two weeks or more will cost me the small amount of progress I've made so far. Skipping today definitely makes more sense.
My other option is to go ahead and work out but skip any exercises that might work that shoulder. I can still do squats, deadlifts and crunches, and consider triceps and bent-over rows since they don't put much stress on my shoulder.
Ultimately my legs get a bit of a workout from the treadmill and I don't want to blow my opportunity to work my upper body just to do crunches, so I'm going to give it a day or two and see if I can't squeeze in a full workout. Again, working out on a regular schedule is more important than missing one or two workouts, so I've promised myself to only work through pain that won't get worse by exercising.
