Nagging Training Pains

When I first started to train as a teen, I would walk in the gym, load up some weights and start to lift.   I had no concept of a warm up, stretching, or mobility.   This went on for at least 10-15 yrs of my training life.  I am 100% confident that this has lead to a repetitive  movement dysfunction and nagging training pain that continue to creep up today.   Over the last 5 yrs, I have become more and more interested in movement quality and have paid much closer attention to the way a movement makes my body feel.   I am very body aware and test and retest different movement patterns to ensure I am moving in symmetric ways.   I am interested in both if my right and lift joints move to same end range, and if my muscles are tighter on one side versus the other.  When I notice a difference in these things, I start to figure out why and think about biomechanically what this means in terms of my lifting, so that I might make a small changes to keep muscle from locking up.   Remember I have no expertise in physical therapy, biomechanics, but I am a scientist, so I use critical thinking skills to do self assessments.  I use the information I come up with to help explain issues I am having with my physical therapist, the real expert.  I am confident this allows me to get more accomplished when I have an office visit.

My first piece of gym equipment that I built for my house was a plyo box. Not because I love plyometrics and box jumps but because I wanted a box to do various stretches.  This is a great tool for doing things like elevated pigeon pose.   It was about this time I was reading Kelly Starrett's book "Becoming a Supple Leopard".  This is an amazing resource to have on hand for when a nagging issue pops up.  If  you have a tight shoulder, look in the book and you can find many possible solutions to help loosen up.   You test these exercises and find the one that will relieve the pain.  If tight hips are your problem, well the same applies.  Pick this resource up to determine how dysfunctional your movement patterns are in you day to day life.

For years I have had three recurring nagging issues: my right shoulder, my left hip, and my adductors.  These are not the only issues but these are the most chronic.  My body awareness started when I was flying back and forth from ABQ to ATL.  I could comfortably sit with my right foot propped on my left knee, but if I tried to switch it to my left foot propped up on my right knee, there was no way I could sit this way. My left hip was so restricted I could barely get my foot to my knee. It is now about 5 yrs later and I am still working on issues with this hip.   If you want to move well on a day to day basis ,and you are lifting heavy daily, it take a lots of work to stay mobile, especially if you waited 15 years to start to care about moving well.   Little things add up to help stay mobile and don't add to the fire of tight muscles.   I try to stand as much as possible at work.  I am lucky that both my desk in my office and lab is set up to stand or sit.  I park further away from my office so that I get to walk a little more during the day.   Most importantly, throughout the day I spend 1-2 min performing various stretches, and try to spend part of my day sitting in the bottom of my squat.  The days that I am more deliberate about taking the 1-2 min breaks to get some stretching in are the days I do better in the gym.  My body is primed better to get after in the gym compared to the those days I just sit all day in front of the computer.  

Over the last year, I have made amazing progress on many of my nagging training pains.   The first is my shoulder, which I have written previously.  I had a cortisone shot for a torn labrum in December of 2018, and I have not had any joint pain since.  Since there is actually a problem with my right shoulder, it still gets a little tighter than the left side.  I can not thank my PT, Dr. Lamar Frasier,  enough for taking care of all my issues by dry needling on visits.  Georgia Sports Physical Therapy always gets my shoulder back in working order.  Another issue I have not been able to get 100% under control yet is my left hip and adductors.  If you take a holistic approach to the body, then they are  the same problem.  This is my thought on it and my physical therapist thinks this is possible, but he may just be humoring me.  My left hip has limited range of motion compared to my right, so when I squat, I toe out on my right side slightly more (not intentionally) than my left, and as I get to the bottom of my squat I get a slight hip shift to the left.  This leads to more torque on the my right adductors.  The result is that my left hip gets tight and my right adductor gets tight.   Then as the adductors tighten up this leads me to get a valgus knees when doing more dynamic movements like snatch and cleans.   This leads to the problem getting worse over time.  I am very aware of this issue, which is why I am so worried about my movement quality through the day.   I try to be very careful when squatting to line up my feet, but on things like snatch which require me to move my feet during the rep, my body will find the path of least resistance to get the job done and a lot of time this is where I don't get a symmetric stance in the bottom of my catch position.  My physical therapist is a life saver when it comes to getting my back in working order as nagging training pains pop up.  I get my adductor needled almost every time I go to the PT and as painful as it is for the 30 sec I am getting needled, the results is life changing when I step back in the gym. He also has provided me with many great priming exercises and mobility tools to help correct the issues.  Although during my last visit to the  PT, the issue was not my adductors, but my psoas and iliacus muscle caused a pinch in the bottom of my squat.   This mean the maintenance mobility is working. 

Another little issue that has come up which doesn't effect my training, but has been caused by my training, is a little bit of numbness every once in a while in the my thumb and fingers.  I notice when eating and have a bent elbow my fingers start to go a little numb.   It turns out that my radial nerve is sending these signal and down the path that I have tight muscle in my shoulder, tricep, and forearm.  My last visit to the PT resulted in some dry needling along this path coupled with Electronic stimulation to help relieve this issue.   See the picture below of the three needles in my arm. This is the same type of needling that happens to my adductors, psoas, iliacus muscle to relieve some my other nagging training pain.  I highly recommend you reach out to my PT if you are having nagging training pains and are in the Atlanta area. 

Recently , I started to looking in a systematic approach to doing mobility and stretching to help my squats and address this issue to help extend the time between appointments to the PT.  It is much cheaper to preform self maintenance mobility than rehab/physical therapy. There are many great resources out on the market.  Kelly Starrett has mobilityWOD , and another program is called RomWod and I have heard great things about both.   A while back I heard about GotROM on one my favorite fitness Pod cast  Strength and Scotch.   I stumbled on to GotROM again during my search for mobility programs.  I really like the idea of targeted programs instead of the general mobility programs.  I reached out to the owner, Shane,  based on my nagging training pains to determine the best program for me to start.  He suggested the 45 day Deep squat program.   I am currently about 41 days into the program, and I have made some ridiculous progress on my squats and mobility.  This has helped address many of my issues I mentioned above.  Although it has not completely eliminated the problems,  it has help significantly and extended my time between PT appointments.  This program has givien me many more tools to help address my adductors.  These are picture of my day 1 squat barefoot and compared to the day 41 squats barefoot.  This program comes with a list of soft tissue exercises and stretches for beginners, intermediate, and advanced, and a large library of videos.   You are really paying for the video library, which has more videos than are in the program.  

I am also showing my pancake split stretch on day 28 and day 41.  This is 10-100 time improvement over my day 1 pancake split  I am planning on finishing out this program and moving on to another one of the GotRom program, Super Shoulders, to see if I can better self address my nagging shoulder issues.  Even if these program only save me a few PT visit a year it is worth it because the cost of the programs is less than a single trip to the PT.

Overall if you have your own nagging training pains, it is worth getting some resources to educate yourself on what could be causing these issues pop up.   You should try to do some self assessments and mobility drills on your own.  I would also say if these things don't resolve your problem go to a professional PT.   Like anything, not all physical therapist are created equal so do some research and find a good PT in your area.  You can also try to find systematic approach to resolving the nagging issue, by paying to a mobility program like the one I found through GotROM.  Nagging issues should not keep you from getting in the gym even though they can easily lead to negative gains if they are not addressed.  Listen to your body but never give up on making progress toward your goals.