Therapeutic Lifting

Well, I'm not doing as well keeping up with this blog during this Zone/Paleo challenge as I thought I might. Started off with a ball of fire and kind of fizzled over the last week or so. Overall, the nutrition challenge has been going well. I haven't stuck to the no-grain/no-sugar like I wanted to. I have broken down a bit and have had a piece of bread here and there and some oatmeal, also had some white rice when Amy and I went out for Middle Eastern food one night. I am still controlling portions pretty well and I'm not eating rice like I would have in the past...small victories. On the sugar front, my breakdown has come in the form of bars. Some poor planning left me with very few snack options, so I found myself resorting to the Clif Builers, Think Thins and Purefits. I'm not eating pure white table sugar, but sugar none the less. Time to refocus and get a bit more stringent on the challenge. Looking around the gym, I'm seeing some good results come out of this, people are really leaning out and performances are still moving forward.

Now, onto the title of this post. You'll recall on the 5th I posted that I had hit a PR in the CrossFit Total, but in the process I tweaked my back a bit. Wasn't mindful of my midline stabilization during my shoulder press and I felt it as soon as I leaned back a bit and pushed the weight up. Well, that's been over two weeks now and I'm still feeling it. If that isn't enough motivation to make sure you are hitting good form, then I don't know what is. Fortunately it's not a significant injury. I'm not limited in my activity at all, just notice some soreness and discomfort throughout the day.

Yesterday's WOD was max effort push jerk. I knew that I had to be very mindful of my form because my back was already sore due to poor form with an overhead lift. I did pretty well, I thought. There were a couple of reps where I could have been tighter, overall my push jerk needs more work. I did hit a new PR with 170#. Later that evening though I felt my back tighten up again. It was actually more sore than it has been over the last couple of weeks. I was a bit uncomfortable throughout the night, which is unusual for me.

My plan was to get up this morning and go hit an early WOD. I knew what the workout was before I went to bed, so that probably gave me a bit of anxiety to start with, heavy deadlift and burpees (5 rounds of 5 deadlift @ 275# and 10 burpees). When I woke up at 4:55 I, of course, didn't want to get out of bed and I used my sore back as an excuse to stay in bed. I laid there for several minutes and realized that I wasn't going to fall back to sleep, so might as well get up and hit the gym. Told myself that I would take it easy.

Once I got a good warm-up in I actually was feeling okay. I started loading up the bar to warm-up my deadlift and it was feeling not too shabby. I quit loading the bar at 241#. My back felt fine, but I didn't want to push it and 241# is a good weight for me during a met-con WOD. I hit the workout pretty hard and finished in 5:30. Immediately afterward I noticed that I was no longer noticing my back pain. Actually the rest of the day I felt great.

Over lunch I went for a run, 45 min Time Trial on the road. I covered 7.15 miles and my back was still feeling good. Then for shits and giggles I headed over to the gym to perform a lift I haven't done in a very long time...the bench press. After CrossFitting for over a year, I wanted to see what I could do with that lift. No idea what my PR is for the bench press, last time I tried to max was about 19 years ago. Suffice it to say that anytime I have performed this exercise I probably have never ventured much over 155-160# and eaked out a few reps. Today I was able to press 195# without pushing myself to failure. I don't think I was too far away from my true max, probably within 5-10 lbs, but it felt good. It actually felt pretty easy, guess that's what happens when you take the stability factor out of the picture and only have to worry about pushing the weight. Who knows when I'll ever bench press again, but I do have a hankering do to the WOD named Linda (aka "The 3 Bars of Death")

My back is actually starting to stiffen up a bit this evening. Probably too much sitting around. Tomorrow is a rest day, so I think I'll try to hit some active recovery stretching and maybe go to the sauna. Long live the rest day!