John’s Ramblings

I’ve been down and discouraged for several weeks now…

Rewind to the Saturday before Thanksgiving. I’d fully recovered from the H1N1 influenza from a couple of weeks prior, and ready to start consistent workouts in order to peak in time for my RKC certification in February. I had a nice kettlebell workout, and finished with some TRX scarecrows (sort of a reverse butterfly kinda thing).

By Monday I was getting pretty sore, and I had a trigger-point thing going on at my left Rhomboid muscle (above and center of the left shoulder-blade. I chalked it up to Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness, but when I attempted to do a Viking Warrior Conditioning / kettlebell snatch workout I could not adequately grip the ‘bell in my left hand. On the downstroke it felt like it was going to fly out of my hand.

For a few weeks, I tried Active Release Therapy, Chiropractor, and Massage Therapy on the assumption that I had a muscular impingement of some sort. All I was really doing waS getting was more frustrated. For the RKC, my biggest worry is passing the kettlebell snatch test, and there was no way to even do more than a couple of snatches with my left hand. My latest fitness and life goal was slipping through my fingers… kind of like a kettlebell in my left hand on the downstroke of a snatch.

I went to my regular doctor, and she took x-rays of my neck to rule out a bulging disk, and she ended up giving me an injection of Lidocaine into the Rhomboid in order to stop the muscle spasms. That was pretty good for a couple of days, but the grip strength didn’t return and the muscle soreness in my back & shoulder soon returned.

After a wait of a couple of weeks, I got in to the physical therapist today. She did a lot of assessing, testing, and stretching of my neck and shoulder. Her conclusion is that I likely had a bulging disk for a time after that initial workout in the vicinity of the C-8 vertebra. The bulge has since subsided, but there is some scar tissue along the nerve to my hand which continues affect the grip. My homework is to 1.) improve my computing posture, and 2.) do a series of stretches that will help to work on the contact-point between the scar tissue and the nerves to my hand & arm.

While this is pretty good news for my long-term prognosis, it is not so good for my goal of RKC in February. I will likely be calling the RKC folks in the next week to reschedule my cert. for a later date as this healing & strengthening process could take weeks (or months).

In the meantime I’m going to dive headfirst into a bootcamp transformation contest that Luka is doing at Hocevar Performance Gym. I just have to decide what’s more distasteful… bootcamp three days a week at 6 a.m., or 6 p.m.

Tags: exercise, hocevar performance, kettlebell, weight loss, workout

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