Ouch ouch ouch ouch! A little incident today sparked this post. I was doing some heavy pushups and pushed hit pretty hard. On my very last rep I went a little too deep and on the way up RIP! Soon as I got up I could feel my shoulder and left trap tense up pretty good. Lucky for me it feels like I'll only be hurting for a couple days, but this could have easily put me out for much longer. What went wrong?
The primary reason was intensity. You'll probably read a lot about intensity here and other places "Push harder harder harder! Hurry, hurry hard!". When you get to the point where you push so hard you start endangering yourself it's time to re-evaluate things. Intensity is important but it's not worth an injury.
The other reason I came up hurting was because of form. Never let your pride get in the way of form. It was my last rep of my last exercise and boy oh boy was I tired. I let my hips sag a little and tensed my neck and back to compensate. BAD. Very bad Wade. Instead I should've had my abs flexed and kept my neck a little more loose. This would've given me the support I needed to keep proper form. Good form applies to all exercise; it's so important.
Good form
Bad form
Who can say what's wrong and right with these forms above?
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Dude. I hurt my back today helping friends move. It freaking kills. I have a feeling I was deadlifting too much this past week, and then today something just went.
ReplyDeleteLucky for me the friend I was moving is a physiotherapist and she took a look at it for me, did some acupuncture on me, and I'm going back tomorrow to have her take a look at it again.
I did ice it a bit tonight and took an epsom salt bath, so hopefully it'll feel better tomorrow. I'm supposed to do full body's MWF and I've got volleyball on Tuesday and ball hockey on Thursday, so I really hope this feels good in the morning...
Yikes. Backs are a really dangerous one to hurt. I haven't tried acupuncture before. What's it like? Were the results good?
ReplyDeleteIf you don't feel 100% tomorrow I'd skip the workout. I've taken a week off after a pulled muscle and felt pretty good only to find out midway through a workout that I wasn't fully healed.
What part of the back did you injure?
Yeah, it's still pretty tender today, so I doubt I'll work out. I have a feeling volleyball will be a no-go tomorrow too. I'm not too sure if the acupunture helped. Yesterday she just did it on my legs to help with some of the pain, but I'm going to go back today and I think she's going to do the back. It didn't seem to hurt it, so we'll see.
ReplyDeleteShe was saying it looked my L5 - so lower back, just above the bum.
Hey. What kind of settage should I do for pushups when I start up again next week? Should I just do one set until failure, or 3 even sets with the final pushup of the third set being the failure one?
ReplyDeleteAlso, do you have any suggestions for exercises/lifts I can do to specifically target the lower back - to help strengthen it?
Hey Suneil,
ReplyDeleteI'd suggest doing 3 sets to failure. If you drop down each set that's fine. So if you do 10 pushups to failure your first set, it's fine if your next is 8, then 6. That definitely means you're working hard!
Check out this guy's advice on pushups:
http://scoobysworkshop.com/chest.htm
He explains it really thoroughly and offers some good variations.
For lower back, the glute bridge found here:
http://www.tmuscle.com/free_online_article/sports_body_training_performance/dispelling_the_glute_myth
will work your lower back a lot. Same with pushups and hamstring hip raises. ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PwOB0kEOHg )
I don't think you should spend any time focusing directly on your lower back. You'd be better off to incorporate it into your other exercises (deadlifts, glute bridge, puhsups). You'll really feel it in your back when doing all of these.
Cheers