My training History: I trained less than one year before competing in my first powerlifting meet as a teenager back in 1983. Before leaving the sport partially due to injuries in 2005 I achieved my elitefts status in the 198,220,242,275 & 308 weight class. Throughout these years I did have a 3 year run in the bodybuilding world. I have degenerative joint disease, have had two shoulder surgeries (right shoulder now needs replaced), one full hip replacement, knee surgery, and herniation's in all three regions of my spine, Bone spurs (all joints). I can't even begin to list the number of muscle tears I have had, surgical and non surgical. I am "The Mashed Up Meathead" and this is my story.
You can find my training log archives HERE and my most current training log posts HERE.
My best lifts are behind be but my best training is yet to come.
* Unless otherwise noted the tempo of the work sets is about 1/2 of what most would consider normal. In most cases, if I did the set with normal temp what I fail at with 8-10 reps in training I could do for 20 reps with a normal tempo. This is to keep the joint stress down while increase the stress on the muscle. I have found this to work best for me provided the conditions listed in my training history above.
Wednesday, legs.
Let's just call this the Caddyshack workout. You know that scene in Caddyshack where the Bishop goes out golfing and the thunderstorm starts coming down? Bill Murray's playing, the caddy keeps telling him to come in, and after while, he becomes an enabler and the guy's shooting the best fucking game of his life, hole after hole after hole. Then at the very end, throws his club up in the air and gets fucking electrocuted and dies?
That's like a Caddyshack workout. I haven't had one of these in probably ten years; nah, six or seven years. Let me explain.
I started with leg presses. Last couple of leg training sessions, I started with squats, so it was time to get away from those. Started doing my warm up sets, and I'm telling you, everything was light, super light. From one plate to two plates to three plates; I work up one plate at a time. Got up to about ten plates and everything was just ridiculously light. Got to twelve plates, which was about where my comfort zone was, and the plan was to do 10-15, right around there. My best with that might be 22, so the more I thought about it, I did one set with twelve plates for about 8, and it was super light.
I sat down, thought about it a little bit and figured, "Fuck it. Let's see how many I can do," so I made the next set a challenge set and did 34. I could have probably done more, but I couldn't breathe. When I do leg presses, I wear a Spud Deadlift belt. If I could have got the belt off, I could have got a few more reps, but I was breathing so hard, I couldn't even reach down to get the damn belt off, but it is what it is. It was 34 reps. Stood up from that, dizzy.
Went onto the next exercise, which was ... Man, I forget ... Seated leg curls I think. Usually with the seated leg curls, I use a quarter, two-quarters and then three-quarters, and then do my work sets with the three-quarters. This felt super light as well, so I started with a quarter, then I went to a plate and I ended up doing three plates for 4 work sets at 12 reps. Now mind you, all these repetitions were done with loose form, which thinking back in hindsight, was probably why everything felt really fucking light.
The next exercise was standing leg curls, 3 warm up sets, and then 4 work sets with 235's per side, which for me again, is getting into PR weight, so I figured, "Fuck, I'm having one of them Caddyshack days. Roll with it." The next exercise was leg extensions, which I typically never go over two plates, or the most might be two plates and a quarter. Well, there was already two plates and a quarter on the machine, so I said, "Fuck it, I'll start there." Did a set of 10 there, worked up to six plates with a quarter, and in between each plate there's like a two and a half to make it easier to get the plates off. Did six plates for a set of 10; easy, no problem.
Threw another plate on, got myself set, went to fire up the first rep and pow! Felt a pop in my vastus medialis on my left leg and thought, "Shit, I just got struck by the lightening bolt," so called it there with a leg extension, called it there with any other quad work. Went onto the hip abduction for 4 sets of 10 ... Hip abduction for 4 sets of 10. Glut press for a couple of sets. Then a couple of sets of neck work. Then I worked on my leg with a shot put, basically just drilling down into it, for five, ten minutes or so.
I can honestly say I have NEVER pulled a muscle in my life doing... freaking leg extensions. This is almost as bad as admitting you hurt yourself doing concentration curls.
Have no idea how it's going to feel at this time, because I'm logging this immediately after the training session, so I'll ice it up tonight, see how it feels tomorrow, but lesson learned, man. Even if it's your birthday and you think it's a fucking Caddyshack day and you're a fucking mashed up meathead, keep the tempo under control, because that lightning can always fucking strike. I don't think this is any big deal. I don't think it's going to hold me back. I think at the very most, I might have to back down off next week's quad training session. I may have to do some extra ultra high rep work for my quads for a rehab standpoint over the next week, but at this point in time, being maybe an hour after it happened, I can't tell, so if you want to use this as a learning experience, when you tweak a muscle, you really don't know what's going on.
You can feel in there, see if the tendon's still attached, where everything's still attached, but you don't know if anything's going to bruise real quick. It's usually going to take a couple of hours to be able to know that. If it's a bruising, then you've torn a muscle. If there's no bruising, but there's severe pain and lack of motion, then there's a chance you could have popped a tendon, which tendons don't bleed without any muscle damage. If not, then what you're probably looking at is just a muscle strain.
I'm a big fan of ice, so I will ice it tonight, but I'm only really a big fan of ice post-training and for the first 24 hours after an injury to keep the swelling down, if it is to swell. Now, if I discover tomorrow morning that it's not swollen, then I won't use ice. There's no need for ice at that point. I've become a really big fan of compression. Not a real big fan of heat. I'm more a big fan of compression and ultra high reps. If that is the case, which I don't know at this point in time ... That's to be determined ... That will be decided tomorrow.
THE BIGGEST TAKE AWAY
The biggest takeaway when you do pull a muscle or you get injured, is you can't worry about it, because that stress is going to increase your cortisol, which is going to make it even harder to recover. It is what it is, and I hate to make stupid statements like that. There's nothing you can do to change what happened. All you can do is control what you can control right now. You can't even control what's going to happen tomorrow, so the best you can do is what you can do at this given moment when it's an injury, and that's to keep yourself in good spirits. Take it hour by hour, see how it progresses and go from there.
Worse case scenario, if it's something really serious, then you'll know after three or four days, and then that's when you're going to want to have to see a doctor to figure out what's going on, and to have it looked at further. I've been injured enough in my life to know that this really isn't going to be that big of a deal. It's just a matter of ... I'm interested to know, because it has probably been six or seven years since I pulled a muscle or even strained a muscle in the slightest, and I've never strained this.
It's a new strain, so it should recover really fast. I'm really interested to know what the time frame of recovery for this is going to be, because I am 48, and I know when I was powerlifting fifteen years ago what my recovery time was, so I'm really interested to see how age impacts my recovery, but to counter that, my nutrition now is better than it was then, so perhaps the better nutrition will offset that difference of what the age is going to be. It's going to be an interesting process to follow, to see how it goes, but that's the update.
This was my Caddy Shack Day. If you have one of those days where everything feel REALLY damn good, don't let that fool ya, we're not playing Golf here... wait, the Bishop died.
