Meana had a difficult training cycle since she was dealing with Costochondritis. “Costochondritis is an inflammation of the junctions where the upper ribs join with the cartilage that holds them to the breastbone, or sternum. The condition causes localized chest pain that you can reproduce by pushing on the cartilage in the front of your ribcage.” This can obviously cause issues with benching and potentially with squatting and deadlifting as well.
I have to admit that I had never heard of Costochondritis before, but did my best to help give Meana time to heal. In order to do this we had to lay off of benching for a while (close to 2 months) as well as to adjust her deadlift training since certain movements would aggravate it. Meana also worked with PT and Elitefts Team Member Dani LaMartina who was a big help.
Here’s how she did at the RPS Showdown at the Storm at CTX on Saturday, July 27th:
Squat warm ups-
135x5
225x3
275x2
315x1
(we didn’t screw these up with the kilo conversion this time, of course the warm us were in pounds).
1st Attempt- 397, easy, good lift
2nd Attempt- 418, missed on depth I recommended Meana just repeat the 418, but Seth wanted her to go heavier. I have to admit I’m somewhat conservative when it comes to meet attempts.
3rd Attempt-430, Good for a 17 lb PR! Seth made a good call on this one.
Meana’s biggest issue is confidence. She needs to know that she’s capable of the weight. I think she’s very much like me when it comes to approaching the bar, especially in a meet. She just needs to focus on the lift, know she's capable, and then trust her body to handle the weight.
Bench warm ups-
95x5
135x3
165x2
185x1
1st Attempt- 215, good, easy
2nd Attempt- 237, only got a couple of inches off her chest and aggravated her Costochondritis. I didn’t think it made sense to have her go for a third and potentially hurt her attempts on the deadlift.
3rd Attempt- skipped
Deadlift warm ups-
135x5
185x3
225x2
275x1
315x1
1st Attempt- 352, good, easy
2nd Attempt- 385, good for a 10 lb PR! (she missed this twice in the last meet)
3rd Attempt- 402, miss. She was gassed by then.
Meana had a rough training cycle, but still ended up with 3 PRs, a 17 lb PR on squat, a 10 lb PR on deadlift, and a 5 lb PR on her total which was good for 1st Place and Best Lifter! She would have been a lot more if she hadn’t had to deal with the Costochondritis.
Meana plans to take a month off from Powerlifting training to just focus on bodybuilding type movements to give her body a break. Our plan from here is to only use the mini and monster mini bands when Meana uses the reverse bands for squats and to incorporate deficit deadlifts (I’m not a fan of these but Meana said that they have worked for her in the past). I also think she plans to incorporate meditation to help with her focus and confidence.
Congratulations again Meana! I’m proud of how well she did and how much she overcame this training cycle. It would have been easy to just decide not to compete in this meet, but she didn’t. She gutted it out and still did very well. I look forward to continue to work with her.
Here’s video of Meana’s best lifts:
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Source: Good ol’ webmd: https://www.webmd.com/pain-management/costochondritis#1
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