How to deal with first injury while adding weight?

[dinocro]

I'm a 41 year old male in my 16th week of Starting Strength. This is my first experience with weightlifting, and now that I have my first injury, I find I don't know how to proceed.

In my 9th week, I started incorporating chin/pull ups. In my 14th week, I added in dips. In hindsight, I shouldn't have added in these ancillaries, and I'm paying for it now, as I seem to have injured both arms with my second (and too intense) chins/dips workout. (That was the last time I did either chin/pull ups or dips.)

Since that workout, I've had what I can only describe as penetrating aches (like someone's been driving their knuckle deep into my muscles and bones) from my anterior delts down through my biceps and triceps into my upper forearms. They hurt during my workouts, but sometimes at other times, too. There's a lot of variance in which arm, and which part(s) of the arm(s), is hurting at any given time. Sometimes it's just a mild dull ache, other times (like during some of my workouts) it's pretty intense.

I had to skip the bench workout following the injury-inducing workout due to pain during the warm up sets, and I had to bail out of the following two power clean workouts, after a work set or two of each, due to intense pain in the rack position.

But after a few days, the worst of the pain decreased, and since then my lifts have returned to their normal progression—I'm adding weight again. However, the pain hasn't gone away completely, or even decreased at all in the last week or so, which worries me. During today's workout, the pain started during my squats (from loading plates, I think), got pretty bad during my press, then decreased during my deadlift (but didn't seem to interfere with my lifts).

I don't know the proper protocol for rehabbing an injury like this, or even if I should change anything given that my lifts are now going up again. I don't want to waste any of my linear progression time, but neither do I want to increase the damage to my body, or prevent recovery.

Any advice?

[Paul Horn]

Sounds like tendinitis. There's A LOT on this board about this injury but here are the basics:

• Massage: Go get a very hard, very painful sports massage.
  
  
• Ibuprofen: 800mg 4X/day for 5 days. STOP after five days.
  
  
• High-volume Chins: 30 sets of 2 reps w/ 1-2 min rest done once every 5 days for 3 weeks. If possible work your way to 15x3 and 15x2.

I'm dealing with this problem too at the moment and I can tell you that the massage has been a tremendous help.

Obviously, I'm just some legendary dude on the internet. This is purely for entertainment and not medical advice. You should consult your doctor before doing any of this stuff, blah blah blah.

[dinocro]

Hey, thanks for the quick and helpful reply!

And just so I'm clear: while I'm following this treatment protocol, I can continue my normal linear progression on all my lifts without modification?

[Paul Horn]

Yes. This would be in addition to your normal training routine. If benching is bothering you, stick with presses for a few weeks.

[dinocro]

Thanks! Good luck with your own recovery.

[mrcosmic]

Sounds like tendinitis. There's A LOT on this board about this injury but here are the basics:

• Massage: Go get a very hard, very painful sports massage.
  
  
• Ibuprofen: 800mg 4X/day for 5 days. STOP after five days.
  
  
• High-volume Chins: 30 sets of 2 reps w/ 1-2 min rest done once every 5 days for 3 weeks. If possible work your way to 15x3 and 15x2.

I'm dealing with this problem too at the moment and I can tell you that the massage has been a tremendous help.

Obviously, I'm just some legendary dude on the internet. This is purely for entertainment and not medical advice. You should consult your doctor before doing any of this stuff, blah blah blah.

Paul is the theory that the high volume chins force the tendon to remodel as bigger and stronger? I understand that the current theory of tendinosis is that the tendon remodels abnormally (becoming a non-inflammatory condition), and that high volume chins would serve as a great way to make the tendon remodel properly.

[Paul Horn]

Paul is the theory that the high volume chins force the tendon to remodel as bigger and stronger? I understand that the current theory of tendinosis is that the tendon remodels abnormally (becoming a non-inflammatory condition), and that high volume chins would serve as a great way to make the tendon remodel properly.

Tendinitis and tendinosis are two different issues. To understand why we use high-volume chins to treat tendinitis, check out this link.

Here's a key excerpt:

"The driving idea behind firing is that it makes chronic inflammations acute and allows them to heal. When the body responds to the new injury of firing, which is performed over the old injury, it responds in a different way than the initial injury. I feel that until the condition is made acute, it will not heal."

[mrcosmic]

Tendinitis and tendinosis are two different issues. To understand why we use high-volume chins to treat tendinitis, check out this link.

Here's a key excerpt:

"The driving idea behind firing is that it makes chronic inflammations acute and allows them to heal. When the body responds to the new injury of firing, which is performed over the old injury, it responds in a different way than the initial injury. I feel that until the condition is made acute, it will not heal."

Haha, the wiki page describes this treatment as barbaric.

It does seem to make sense. But I have also seen Rip and others here suggest rest for acute inflammation.

The only caution would be tendon rupture. But this should not be an issue for folks engaged in barbell training and recovering properly.

[Paul Horn]

Actual pin-firing might qualify as barbaric, however the alternative for a lame horse isn't much better. I'm not a horse guy, so I can't really speak on the topic. High-rep chins aren't that bad. In fact, back when I was doing bro workouts we used to do supersets of 100 dips and 100 chins for time. Man, that really pumped up the gunz.

[mrcosmic]

Actual pin-firing might qualify as barbaric, however the alternative for a lame horse isn't much better. I'm not a horse guy, so I can't really speak on the topic. High-rep chins aren't that bad. In fact, back when I was doing bro workouts we used to do supersets of 100 dips and 100 chins for time. Man, that really pumped up the gunz.

A pity medical folks don't have the capacity to burn, freeze, or douse human tendons with chemicals to treat tendonitis. Tendons are a damn shame, aren't they?