Geezer's Long March Toward the Elite Sneaking Up On the Finish Line

[bob g]

Bad news, Mark. The thing is, if the Doc doesn't amputate you can do what the old dinosaur coaches said and, "spit on it, tape it, get back in the game" - at least for the seminar.

[Mark E. Hurling]

Heh, sounds like my high school football coach, John Perucca bob. A page right out of Lombardi's playbook. It must be an Italian thing. Anyway, I have an MRI on Monday morning and my GP's follow-up Monday afternoon. He's been humoring me and tending to my ills for over 20 years and is not one of those who simply says, "Well don't do that, and for God's sake quit squatting." He's always amused and bemused when I come in with my latest owwie from MA or lifting or just plain age and helps figure out how to negotiate with my body and current abilities.

I've been in contact with Stef a couple of days ago declaring that I'm not ready to throw in the towel and whine for a refund. I may be unable to squat, power clean, or deadlift. I'll just have to see what the doc says and what my knee feels like. But I think I can still get a lot of valuable information even sidelined for those lifts by watching, listening, and doing what I can. I'll gut out the overhead and bench pressing. I can't imagine that will be an issue. Likewise many of the auxiliary exercises if those are covered. I've done that before as have others in our dojo when in the hurt locker. So far Dearly Beloved is behind that plan. We'll see how the next days and weeks develop.

After the ill-considered move of not having taken a vicodin last night to assure some sleep I woke up at 1:30 for several hours and along with rather knotty work problems began planning what kind of lifting I can still do. Substituting good mornings for deadlifts might be just the shit hot ticket. Squats or anything like them just now are just not in the picture what with Mr. Knee feeling this way and unknown damage lurking in the background. The X-ray showed what looked to me like a 1/4" gap between the femur and tibia. Doc says that's not good. Not sure what that means or why it isn't. He also asked if the inside of my knee hurts because there's floating bone chip between the femur and tibia. Nope doc, that's never bothered me. Except maybe as a sophmore in college when my knee got dinged from a tai otoshi in judo on a locked out knee. That hurt for while. He also has been telling me for the last 15 years that I have huge calcification of my cartilages in the shoulders, wrists, and knees and is surprised I don't have more arthritic joint problems than I do.

But I am not tapping out just yet.

[Mark E. Hurling]

Weight: 247.5

I drove up to the dojo in Northridge, about 48 miles one way to play spectator this morning. I was discussing my injury with Master Bellman who had torn his meniscus years ago. From the description of his problems then and now once in a while it sounds like maybe I "lucked" out and just tweaked mine too. Hope so because the people at work watching stump around with my cane like Ahab have said better that than an ACL from their own knee injuries. But what will be will be, and once I know what's up I'll figure out what I can do and then test the boundaries of what I'm told I should avoid. But the swelling was down last night and this morning and I can move along without the cane to slow me up. I just look like Chester from Gunsmoke without the high whiny voice.

So while we're talking I get paged from work. Something has to get moved and it isn't clear to the guard who paged me just what it is, so I ask for the engineer to get on the line. It's a rather very important something that they should have coordinated with two other branches of security besides me to attempt to move. Which from the stuttering and stammering produced from some terse and direct questions I posed to the 23 year old engineer didn't appear to have taken place. So I declared a hiatus to moving anything until I got there to review in person what it was and what was going on. Of course I didn't have my access control badges or emergency call up numbers with me to speed things up so it took nearly an hour and a half to drive home (48 mileson LA freeways) and then into work (10 miles on South Bay surface streets).

Note to self: henceforth and forever more hereafter never let your backback with all the information (AKA the football) needed to get into or do anything get more than 30 feet away from you at any time. Even when you're in the car.

So here I sit at work pissed off beyond belief, having ascertained that most of the other Security branches had been contacted to help work this issue. Just not the guy in the one who can actually get some rather large doors opened. I'll try to get into the gym later to stretch and maybe experiment with some good mornings. (grumble)

[JohnRoman]

Chester from Gunsmoke

You are showing your age my brother. I doubt 1/2 of the members on this site know about Chester or Gunsmoke. If they research it, I'm sure it will be lame compared to the offerings now. I hope the knee gets better soon.

[Mark E. Hurling]

Thanks for the good wishes John. Good joke too, I make these kind old references all the time to cause the young 'uns to use google and amuse the elderly.

[Mark E. Hurling]

Weight: 248.5

5 minutes warmup on the elliptical. The bike pedal's range of knee flexion was more than my metal reinforced brace liked. (Heavy Day)

Standing Overhead Press: 165 x 1-2-2-2-1. Total of 8 reps, 1 more than last week but now a reset is certain. I was doing better when I got out all 3 reps on one huge valsalva. I find that resetting and breathing between reps disrupts everything. But I think I have my hand spacing figured out now.

Pull Ups: Bodweight x 5 x 3.

Deadlifts: 3 reps each at 95-135-185-225-275. After a lot of searching and reading up on knee injuries and rehab here yesterday, I discovered that the brace lets me bend my knee enough to deadlift. I stopped at 275 just to not press my luck too far. Dearly Beloved would have a chunk out of me if she knew I was doing these.

GXP and I was out of there. Knee feels OK. Ran into the engineer who liked my spreadsheet a week or so back. He joshed me while I was using it to calculate my average HR (119) about the security people crawling out of the Stone Age finally. Amusing guy, too bad there aren't more like him where I work.

[tertius]

Damnit Mark, I stop paying attention for TEN MINUTES, and you go and fuck up your knee. TEN MINUTES!

Wrap it up and take care of it. I suspect your correct that deadlifting is still doable, since you should be doing it with hips high and minimal knee bend. And you still MIGHT be able to squat, depending on how it responds to a good tight supportive wrap.

[Mark E. Hurling]

Weight: 246

No 5 minute warmup today to make sure nothing gets out of line with the knee. (Medium Day)

Bench Press: 225 x 5-5-5-5-4. I was pleased with this even having missed the last rep of the last set. I wasn't certain I'd do this well. In an attempt to get my successful breathing pattern back for the standing overhead press I sucked in a lot of air and managed 3-4 reps on one lungfull.

Curls: 110 x 5 x 5. Done but ugly. Time to stay with this weight for a while.

Claw Grip: 217 x 2 x 5. Another increase over the last run with 215, but I'll wait until I hit 220 before I declare a new PR.

I experimented with light squats (empty bar and 95 lbs.) mainly to get a sense of the depth I can hit with my knee brace. I think I'm there, but the metal hinges resist allowing that depth pretty hard. Most encouraging was that it didn't hurt. Except for where the hinges dug in to my leg and the ultra-heavy duty velcro felt like a wood rasp on my calf and hamstring.

As for this injury, I look back over the years and this knee has bothered me on and off that I can recall for at least 20-25 years. It would hurt for a while and go away and a couple of times I'd see a doc about it, get some anti-inflammatories and all would be well for a few years. I think it all stems from that damn tai otoshi that I had my knee locked out on when I was 19.

For those who may get an MRI I can advise this. If you're claustrophobic, make sure you admit it. I'm not, and I was only in the donut up to about my sternum and I have to say it was a little confining. I don't know that my shoulders would have fit if I had to go in further. I got my choice of music to listen to on some really great Bose headphones and I picked Steely Dan. Great music to get a quiet and relaxing drunk on with. Then there's the part where you can't move for 30 minutes. Not a finger or a toe twitch even. Pretty hard to do especially when the noises the MRI is making are loud then go quiet and come back again with a different kind of noise. Very hard to stifle the old startle reflex.

[Gwyn Brookes]

I experimented with light squats (empty bar and 95 lbs.) mainly to get a sense of the depth I can hit with my knee brace. I think I'm there, but the metal hinges resist allowing that depth pretty hard. Most encouraging was that it didn't hurt. Except for where the hinges dug in to my leg and the ultra-heavy duty velcro felt like a wood rasp on my calf and hamstring.

This is great! Good luck with the MRI results!

[BillBrownley]

Mark--I have had issues as you describe and found that while I could not cut and run, or dance (some would argue I could not do that anyway) or really any torquing movements, I could squat and dead lift fine. Probably something about the musculature protecting the joint in a predictable movement pattern.

Just do what you can do without significant injury related pain (sorry about the brace pain) and keep working.

Let me know how the seminar goes--I wish I could do one--thanks, Bill