I have written a few pieces on lifting and I was thinking of covering various injuries or pains or problems though I am not fully comfortable with that as there are many things to consider and it is hard to give good, generic internet advice. Also I am far from an expert on the topic and would not want to give bad advice. That being said I will jot down a few thought. I am not a certified psychical therapy professional and this is not advice. Just what a random guy can gather based on life experience. Do with this information as you will. But my point of view, as expressed in previous posts, is when it comes to working out do what you can and a little is better than nothing; a little more even better.
There are two types of damage, not covering the catastrophic kind: that can be fixed or that can be worked around. It depends on the injury, what it affects, age and so on. Joint injuries tend to be worse than muscle ones, back and knees being the worst. With both bum back and bum knees at the same time making things the most difficult.
In my own injury experience, I want to mention two observations. One is many kinds of injuries rarely get better with rest alone, exercise is important. Both my mom and aunt got knee surgery. My mom took her exercise seriously, and healed well. My aunt did not and needed a second surgery, and even then was never quite good. I have a friend who is a surgeon, and on getting knee surgery himself his main focus was working through the pain to exercise it, within reason off course. My own shoulder issues did not really get any better with just rest. Lowered the weights, increased the reps, progressively overloaded and over a couple of years I was fine – after a setback when I ill advisedly tried surfing for the first time in my life and it messed up my just got better shoulder.
The second thing I want to mention, and this is not medical advice, when it comes to joints or spine, do note get surgery unless absolutely necessary. At least in my experience, the US may be different, surgeons may be a bit eager to cut, may overstate the success odds, understate the risks. Especially with the back. I remember hearing on a podcast a back surgery is often your first back surgery, and at least anecdotally I know a few people who after successful back surgery needed a second.
My father had really severe back problems in his early 50s, to the point that he could not sit on a chair, barely could stand and was in constant pain. He was looking into surgery until a person he worked with who had similar surgery in the past constantly told him not to do it. He listened and started walking to work and back, 6 kilometers each way, and doing light exercise. His back got better, to the point he did moderate exercise. In a few years he was pain free. Another coworker of his, about the same time, got the surgery and regretted it. Steve Kerr, the coach of the golden state warriors, after getting back surgery, ended several interviews by telling people not to get back surgery. I am not saying there are no reasons to get it, but not as many as surgeons claim and not unless all other options are thoroughly exhausted. Just my 2 cents.
My own experience with my shoulder is I went to an orthopedic consult and the doctor after 5 minutes told me you need laparoscopic surgery, takes 15 minutes and your issue is fixed. I was not convinced, researched the best shoulder surgeon in the medical network, went for an appointment and the first thing he said is no way you need surgery at this point. He said that he is the seen as among the best at shoulder surgery and he can never guarantee success. Anecdote, I know, but it made me rather wary of what some surgeons say.
Writing on lifting, I am well aware not everyone can just start heavy barbell lifts. But there are many things that can be done as work around. The highest force on the body in the squat, back and knees, for example, is when you stop the downward motion. You can help this by doing pin squats: you set pins in the rack and then squat until the pins stop the bar. Similarly, you can do pin presses for shoulders. Alternatively, light box squats can help with slowly building up the squat. You have a box or bench on which you put some boards or cushions to make it higher, squat till your ass hits support, progressively remove things to squat lower. This can be done in the gym or at home. I did this with my mom, using a weight vest which would distribute weight on the entire torso, and having her get up and down from chair 100 times. After that she had a heavy duffel bag in her arms for added weight. Up and down the stairs a few times, and so on. If you are in a gym with a belt squat, you can squat without loading your back, and usually the squat stops on the way down without too much knee pressure, if you set it up right.
Walking is good. Walking with a weight vest better. Rucking is also good. An underrated knee exercise is backwards walking. Even better backward walking on an incline. Or if you have access to a prowler, loaded backward walking with progressive overload. I guess without a prowler any platform on which you can tie a rope, load with weight and drag in a driveway or yard works. Just backward walking dragging something heavy, good for knees and back muscles. Farmers walks can be a good overall exercise, with special handles, dumbbells, or just some sturdy buckets.
Deadlifting can be tough from the ground, but rack pulls and block pulls can be quite easier on the knees and spine. For back muscles a lower weight higher rep chest supported row, with the chest firmly on the support at all times, can take the spine mostly out while strengthening back muscles. So would a low weight strict lat pull down. Arms can be fairly easy to train even with shoulder elbow issues. Depending on knee issues one might be able to do either curls or extensions. Lunges are good for knees. If it is to hard on a flat surface, the can be done on an elevated plane, getting lower with progression.
Lifting with pain and injury does mean you need to find workarounds and find what works specifically for you. This is where a really good trainer comes in, should you have access to one or live near a glib-with-a-gym. But my advice is that you should not expect to have no pain. You will probably have pain. And it is not an issue. Most post surgery rehab will include a deal of pain. So will no surgery rehab. The pain should not be too bad, too sharp, and should not be progressively worse. When I train with injury I am thinking to things – it should not hurt worse workout to workout. And it should not hurt much worse the next day. When you are warmed up, you may not feel the pain as much. After a night of sleep you can asses if you did something wrong last workout. Take it slow, but progressive.
YouTube channels with a lot of focus on injury that I noticed and seem to be well regarded are Kneesovertoesguy and Squat University . It is possible to find fixed for a wide array of issues. Any and other advice, comments bellow. Short post as an open topic if you will.
This generally lines up with the current word on treatment of Shooter’s Elbow: https://spinefityoga.com/shooters-elbow/ Essentially, resting doesn’t help, but building up the supporting muscles with regular progressive overload does.
Question – what’s the better short-term treatment for delayed onset muscle soreness, scotch or wine?
Yes
I have insane DOMS and nothig works but i keep trying both
I find that resting very much helps — but resting from doing arm curls/butterflies. Which makes me think they are the actual source of the problem, not the shooting.
“You’ve got to know the difference between pain and injury, son.”
*These days I seem to have both.
Exactly. They talk about the random, inexplicable pains… but you really can’t comprehend until you have them.
Yes. Workouts used to generate more of the good pain and less of the bad.
After I had reconstructive ankle surgery and was able to walk on it I was given a list of exercises and stretches to strengthen it before I started PT.
The Dr. said to do all of them.
My next appointment, I told the Dr. my ankle was more sore than I thought it should be after I did all the exercises.
He said that he had given me a long list because nobody ever does all of them.
Once he understood that I actually did all of them, he cut my list by about a third.
The reason I needed ankle surgery wasn’t any catastrophic injury, I had sprained it a couple times and would start running while it still hurt as soon as I could handle the pain.
The Dr. said that was way too soon and after 16 years in the Marines my cartilage died.
My wife asked me how many Marines did the same thing, I told her “The good ones always did”.
If it was needed it was needed
The surgery was definitely needed, in 2014 I went from limping to being able to run until last year.
I am not limping now and have decided to quit running.
Great series of articles by the way.
I always seem to jump back into action before I should.
A little behind schedule
It’s also his final opportunity to make headway on some of the lofty goals Newsom made when he ran for governor in 2018 that he hasn’t always met.
He vowed to tackle homelessness, which has only gotten worse over his seven-year tenure, despite the more than $24 billion his administration has poured into it.
You can’t judge political promises by traditional measures of effectiveness. There are subtleties involved.
The most important thing is do you feel smug about your politics. So what if a shit-ton of money was wasted on it – that sense of smugness is priceless.
Fortunately, in this case, we can put a price on it, only $24,000,000,000. A bargain at twice the price even if, as the article states, the problem has only worsened.
Imagine how many more concrete pillars to the Gods could have arisen in the Central Valley desert with that wasted money.
I am not limping now and have decided to quit running.
Low/no impact work now? Bike, elliptical, swim?
Yoga, weightlifting, and walking my husky.
“walking my husky”
Phrasing?
Must… Post… Music link…
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=23FHQSbeJLM
https://www.glibertarians.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/20240616_122236.jpg
I would have linked to this for Sensei.
Very handsome floofy boi, I forgot to mention.
Those dogs are purdy.
Not like the junkyard dogs all the meth-heads around me take into my building’s courtyard to shit.
I have shoulder issues. Years ago my family doctor told me that surgery was an absolute last resort, and that the best orthopedic surgeon could open a healthy shoulder, poke around, close it, and it’s completely ruined.
Dad got his second knee replacement (one replacement for each, not a re-do) and isn’t handling it very well. He was focused on ‘miles walked’ rather than flexibility or ‘miles walked well,’ to his detriment. A phys therapist told me what I wasn’t expecting, that hip replacements like my two, are easier to recover than the knee, opposite what I’d been told. (I do not want to think of a re-replacement.)
Pretty much: A knee is pretty easy to ‘fake’ and just dead-leg moving around, while ya can’t move anywhere on a replaced hip without the hip itself getting the rotations it needs to ‘settle’ in, so much harder to limp around, you’re ‘forced’ to move and rotate it ’round.
Tremendous, and unexpected news for hips: Mine are almost 14 and 11 years old, respectively, and I freaked out thinking a new (light) pain was actually the replacements telling me they needed to be redone, which I heard needed done after 10-15 years. I got an injection that helped and I haven’t thought about it since. BUT! I was told mine are ‘new’ (post-2000?) and will last over 20, barring something unforeseen.
For all intensive porpoises, both hips are remarkably well, with no missteps, including The Incident and breaking each femur on separate occasions post-op. (I’d do an ad for my surgeons for free. By free, I mean ‘given ludicrous fiscal incentive,’ but all from the heart.)
“One would almost have to try to underperform the markets over the past two years to earn that poor of a return and you’d have to have a large concentration in a single stock to have that result. According to BlackRock, over the past two years when looking at 13 asset classes, all have provided positive returns with the exception of developed market government debt which had a slight negative return in 2024 of -3.6%,” says Johnson.
I thought the 100% company stock fund was a no-brainer
https://www.marketwatch.com/picks/where-should-i-turn-my-401-k-has-lost-23-in-the-past-couple-of-years-and-now-i-only-have-200k-what-did-i-do-wrong-2be29da5!
Started some basic body-weight exercises on Jan 1st. I ache. But in the right way. Progress I suppose.
Moving a 12 ounce cup of mead from the table to your lips?
That would be free weight training. Already part of the program.
Adding chair squats with a 12 oz mead in each hand.
We have a new guy taking classes at the gym. He’s struggling but we told him he’ll make good progress, just stick with it. And it will hurt a lot for about two weeks, after that it’s definitely not as bad.
Going from nothing to something is what aches the most. I know this. I understand this. I just hate going through it each time I fall off the wagon and then start over.
I figured you’ve done it before. It does suck a lot. For me Ibuprofen and Epsom salt baths work very well.
Epsom salt baths were great for treating minor road rash.
Murmurs from the choir loft to Brother Kinnath testifying.
Once you get through the first couple weeks, it gets better.
Two weeks ago, the first time I did a serious leg day, I was extremely sore for 3 days.
I am sore after every single squat day. But I am unusually predisposed to soreness
Weren’t you the guy talking about stretching being pointless? Hmm, wonder if there is a connection.
I never said pointless just overrated foe injury prevention and it doesn not help with DOMS at all. Most dont strech and dont get DOMS
Fucking incentives- how do they work?
This outcome was no accident — it was a feature. When subsidies rise in lockstep with premiums, insurers have no reason not to raise prices. Consumers, shielded from true costs, have no reason to save money by shopping. Economists describe this as a subsidy-price feedback loop. Politicians then declare (and the media hypes) the “crisis.” They demand more subsidies, locking the cycle in place. Taxpayers foot the bill. Insurers make more money. Policyholders get nothing.
Who wrote these laws? The insurance companies?
*Note the complete absence of any consideration of actual medical care.
Well, their lobbyists most certainly did.
They knew what was coming and tried to shape it as best they could. A few thought they pulled one over and few actually did. But exactly what you’d expect happened when you made a deal with the devil.
I remember when Obamacare passed and the healthcare stocks swooned. Soon after the winners and the losers emerged. Far more losers than winners in the insurance space. And no winners for the American people.
Thanks, this was another good one. I like your list of exercise adaptions. Being, well, me, I have to adapt almost every exercise, but there are always options.
I have had multiple shoulder issues, but I’m with you, I’m avoiding surgery as long as possible. In addition to exercise, I would recommend stretching/mobility work and band work. My last shoulder injury was a little more than a year ago, and adding those things have made a major difference. My strength is almost back to pre-injury.
My wife and I are very active and we’ve both had our share of injuries. We are lucky to have a PT who is top notch and is now a close friend. PT is a much better option than surgery IMO.
If you are in a gym with a belt squat
Any hack squat machines in Romania?
Yes. But hack squat is still some back support of the weight. The belt squat mostly loads hips.
Speaking of health/injuries, I just had a kind of surreal experience with my benefits company.
I tried using my HSA card to pay a medical bill. It got declined for insufficient funds. I logged into the website, but I no longer had the phone for the TFA. So I called customer service.
This is where things got weird.
To verify my identity, they started asking me questions, apparently scraped from social media and/or credit reports. I got most of them wrong, including things like “which of the following people do you know?” “Which of these hospitals is closest to you?” and “What year was the BMW that you owned [two vehicles back].” Ones I got right included the state I lived in between 1983-1987, streets I had lived on, the square footage of my house and the address that my parents used to live on. I eventually got enough of them correct to begin the change the TFA process which will take a couple of days to go through.
That’s common. The wrong answers are intentional as well. It’s a statistical exercise where they combine the right and wrong answers.
Wait, you’re saying they give answers the expect me to fail? It blew my mind that they listed three names which I did not recognize, and a “none of the above” which I chose and I got it wrong. Would they have thought I was a bot with access to their database instead of a person with an abnormally good memory if I had gotten it right?
Old people should not be subjected to that kind of interrogation. It’s frustrating enough to get DOB right the first time.
“If I get it wrong to get a second chance”
Worst is the pictorials, “Check all the boxes with creepy politicians” should be a gimmee but no…
Yes – these services intentionally provide wrong answers and the “none of the above” choice. They also use primitive AI to create answers that are close, but incorrect.
It’s done across financial services for verification purposes. You can’t truly “fail” it. Eventually they will mail you a bunch of stuff that you’d have send and have notarized, for example, to verify your identity.
This cuts down on this possibility and is cheaper and less work for the provider.
🤦🏻♀️
Thanks, FDR.
That’s bonkers. I have never been subjected to anything that intense.
Some years ago I recall being asked about past addresses and such but I don’t remember in what context. Certainly nothing like “do you know these people”. That is creepy AF.
As an officer in my volunteer fire company I had to get screened by PA to make sure I wasn’t a child abuser. They asked for information that the feds didn’t even ask for when I got my security clearance.
The idea that a private entity would demand such would be the end of my business relationship with them.
ji:
In these cases, the company asking is trying to verify your identity quickly and without requiring a lot of paperwork and PII being sent.
While I was initially skeptical of Trump kidnapping Maduro, I am starting to come around on this. 1st, the top guys never have to pay the price for their misdeeds. It’s always the employees who bear the brunt of it. Finally, a ‘Top Man’ getting his. 2nd, this was better than even a short military conflict from a sanctity of life perspective. 3rd, what if more people started abducting politicians. What a wonderful place thr world could become.
relevant:
https://x.com/Marczeller/status/2007595835459317977
55 people killed, Cubans and Venezuelans.
If that happened to Minnesota Somalis there would be outrage and justifiably so.
Grenadian War, 19 US military (116 injured), 24 civilians, 24 Cubans killed
Yep, the idea that assassination of foreign leaders is wrong is not a standard I subscribe to.
23 American servicemembers killed to secure Noriega IIRC. And even without taking our own casualties, we inflicted some. That is not nothing.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I still think Maduro is going to end up in cushy exile, like Idi Amin.
I’m surprised that a Dem judge hasn’t ordered him returned.
*Checks watch
10… 9… 8…
At least in my experience, the US may be different, surgeons may be a bit eager to cut, may overstate the success odds, understate the risks. Especially with the back.
That’s what happened with me. I went with cortisol shots and another round of PT. I’m doing OK as long as I remember to keep my core braced and back neutral when deadlift and squat. I slip up… ouch.
A belt really helps to remember bracing
I finally took the advice to try a belt. I don’t use it if I’m at or under 75% of my maximum weight. When I’m above that, I notice the difference and it helps.
The downside of a belt is that your body comes to rely on it.
You need a road to go with that belt, comrade.
You haven’t worked there since Obama’s first half-year, so who in hell asked you now?
https://www.10news.com/health/former-cdc-director-warns-vaccine-changes-will-fuel-confusion-mistrust
Speaking of AI slop…
Youtube has fed me a couple of world cup ski races recently; women’ slalom and GS from I know not where. The audio is what I can only assume to be an AI translation of the German(?) announcers. Very weird and not-human sounding, but it’s actually pretty funny.
I have a grumpy back, have had four knee surgeries, and I’m trying to keep my right shoulder from blowing up. Nothing matters more in my situation than proper body mechanics and not lifting too heavy. Because when you’re lifting too heavy, you’re breaking body structure and impacting body mechanics, making yourself more prone to injury. If you have injuries, especially chronic ones, focus on a healthy body first and foremost. I will never be where I was when I was working, but at 62, I can keep myself in pretty good physical health, as long as I listen to the warning signs.
Dumb shit,
https://x.com/i/status/2008622075754287298
Speaking of Venezuela and “I’m surprised some Dem judge hasn’t ordered him returned”
This is yet another hint that the CIA guys finally came to an arrangement. We started with the destruction of their slush fund machine in USAID… but then… the gutting stopped.
Epstein stopped. The democrats started screaming for the files. Why? Because they knew stuff had been planted?
He stood down the neocons on going to war with Iran…
Now this?
And he is talking like they had some sort of deal with the government of Venezuela. They hinted at all sorts of incredible intelligence capabilities.
So… now they are confident that no deep state judge is going to cut them off at the knees? They have a court all lined up?