Intercostal muscle strain/tear recovery

[marcf]

I started the program about a month ago, and two weeks into it, I believe I strained my intercostal muscles. It was a little painful, but the pain got worse each day, so I took a week off and still didn't feel any better. Early last week, a few sneezing fits (of all the damn things that would worsen it) caused excruciating pain. It was unbearable and I couldn't walk, so I went to the doctor.

The doctor told me I had no broken ribs, so it was either intercostal muscle strain or a tear. He said that he wouldn't bother doing an MRI to figure out which since the treatment process for both was the same--one would take longer to heal than the other. I was told to hold a pillow as a splint every time I coughed, sneezed or walked, and to take pain meds. I took it easy for the next two days, but was in considerable pain.

Listening to one of the SS podcasts, I heard Rip and another woman talking about recovery and that you couldn't just sit and wait to let things heal--that you had to make a muscle strain heal or risk developing scar tissue or restricted range of motion. So, after taking some NSAIDs and warming up the injury site with a heating pad, I continued on with the program since I wasn't doing much heavy weight, anyway. I'm only 4-5 weeks into the program. I also added in some planks and side planks to try to strengthen the affected area, and I would stop if the pain became too unbearable, which happened only once.

My ER visit was 10 days ago and the pain has almost completely subsided and I mostly have full range of motion now. It'll feel very slightly sore after performing the Valsalva maneuver for my lifts, but other than that my rib/sides feel great.

Was I stupid to go against my doctor's advice of immobilizing it for 4-6 weeks? Maybe. Does it feel great and can I still squat/press/deadlift? Yes. Have I stopped doing those boring planks for now? Hell yeah.

[Jr_Geezer]

When I tweaked my back doing deadlifts about a year ago, I was worried I'd have to take a good chunk of time off from lifting to let things heal. But comments on the forums here and Rip's back injury podcast convinced me to go right back to lifting, only at a slightly lower weight and with strict attention to form. Long story short, it worked. Back was good as new in less than a week with maybe one missed workout.

Earlier this week I was doing my heavy day with squats, bench and deadlift. I'm doing something wrong in my squat because I've developed some pain in my left elbow, so much so that doing my work weight bench press would have been dangerous as I could barely hold up the warmup weights. My deadlifts went good (warmups, set of 5 at 375 lbs, back-off set of 5 at 340), nothing popped or anything like that, and I was tired afterwards but not in any pain. Next day my lower ribs on my right side were sore and the pain got worse as the week went on. My Thursday light day workout was not good, with a failure on the 4th rep of my squat workset due to the pain in the ribs. I did manage another set of three after resting a bit, but I went home after that because there was no way I was going to be able to do OHP and pullups.

Now I'm trying to decide how to treat the rib pain, other than with ibuprofen. Pain is really not bad, don't notice it unless I try to lift something heavy or push on the ribs, valsalava doesn't seem to hurt. I was making good progress on all my lifts (finally got OHP to 130 lbs) so I really don't want to take time off. Maybe I'll try planks and a couple of pullups between now and my Monday workout and then just play it by ear (or rib). I agree that not doing anything is not the right way to go. I'm also going to schedule a session or two with an SS coach as I think my weights have gotten to the point where whatever form errors I have, they're starting to hurt me.

-RJP

[Mugaaz]

I had the same, but less severe injury. I think you are ok to train, I didn't have any issue with squat/dead. I would be careful when benching, even lightly grazing my chest during the set was super painful. I would also refrain from doing dips as they are pretty damn stressful on this area.

[marcf]

Sorry to hear that. Hope it's going ok so far. I've found that naproxen (Aleve) works better and lasts longer than ibuprofen, so you might wanna give that a try. Let me know how progress is going.

[marcf]

So far, so good. I've been able to get through my workouts and expected progression without anymore pain (it only hurts when I cough really hard). The doctor said it'd take 4-6 weeks to heal, but I feel fine. I think in 4-6 weeks I won't hurt when I cough.

The only thing now is the weights are starting to feel pretty heavy, even though they're not that heavy.