Sudden loss of strength in right arm, nerve impairment

[Piotrek]

Hi,
About 4 weeks ago I had a neck injury. I missed racks after doing OHP in a way that I hit the hooks and the barbell stopped my body, however my neck was pushed forward. Somewhat similar to being rear-ended in a car. I had a stiff neck for two days and some trapezius stiffness.

After that I started losing strength slowly, but surely. At the end of March I suddenly couldn’t press 50kg for once, but 3 weeks before I had been able to press 60kg for 5 reps.

Week later I did some bench marking and it was pretty obvious that I had lost strength in my right arm. I couldn’t press 9.2 kg dumbbell and wasn’t able to do one rep of lateral raise.

I went to my father’s neurologist friend two days later (Tuesday) and he recommended that I should get MRI and during examination with a reflex hammer he felt some abnormality in nerves in my arm.

On Friday I was prescribed some NSAIDs and muscle relaxers by a second neurologist (national healthcare) and the strength got a bit better and got a referral for cervical MRI. He didn’t feel any abnormalities in my hand during the same examination.

On Thursday I did another benchmark with the dumbbell and it got a bit better could do a few lateral raises and presses.

On Saturday I had MRI. Here’s a plot twist - no disc herniation, my discs are completely fine, the only thing that was mentioned was the absence of cervical lordosis.
When I turn my neck right I can still feel some pain when I push it completely to the right. I still feel some weird tingling in my fingers.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Sounds like it's healing up. Carry on.

[Piotrek]

Okay, so today I managed to hit a bench press PR which safely indicates that my right arm is safe and sound. I started with 60kg/135 lb bench press and worked my way up consistently. I post it because I know there might be people in future struggling with the same injury and it was pretty hard for me to find information whether people manage to come back to their old strength.