Ahem

Right. I DID say I was going to start posting again. I WILL have to transition away from the weightlifting a little for a number of reasons, one of which is that it's a subject that is a little depressing to me right now. I'm pretty weak, and it has nothing to do with my pec tear. That's completely healed. Right now, the big problem is my knees, and work keeps me from getting the kind of sleep that I really need (that is, adequate sleep) to get into my best shape.

I had a conversation with an acquaintance of mine who is an orthopaedic surgeon. He suggested taking ibuprofen three to four times per day for about two weeks. I have always taken it pre-workout to control the amount of pain I have to deal with during training. But lately, with or without ibuprofen, the pain has been to great for me to push myself hard enough even to maintain the kind of leg strength I need to move even moderate weights. In fact, this past Wednesday I was surprised at how difficult I found it to back squat the very same weight I clean-and-jerked not quite one year ago! So, as far as weightlifting goes, I'm in a pretty serious slump. Someone asked me about which brand of glucosamine I use. (Actually, it's a glucosamine and chondroitin combination.) I think it's "Nature's Best," but I'm not sure. I don't take fish oil, but I'd like to try it. I've heard it takes a couple of weeks before the benefits of glucosamine will be noticed. Personally, I don't notice the benefits until I stop taking the stuff: a couple weeks without glucosamine and my joints are noticably stiffer. I'm not sure it does anything for my tendonitis specifically, but I think it's a worthwhile supplement, even if all it does is prevent any further degradation in my knees. For example, despite the pounding my knees have taken, I don't yet have any cartilege problems, knock on wood.

Interesting side note for those who saw me at the picnic this summer. At one point while playing football, I fell and caught myself on my left hand. I didn't think anything of it at the time, but I'm pretty sure I fractured my wrist. I've now got a big calcium deposit on the back of it. It's pretty much completely healed now.

Fortunately, I'm very happy with my job right now, even though it's taking quite a lot of my time. I've made a couple new friends at work, and every Friday a bunch of us go out to happy hour. I've got a little bit of a crush on the new science teacher. She's cute as hell.

Personal Best Clean & Jerk: 140 kg (308 lbs)

10.30.2004.j140crop, originally uploaded by Captain Advil.

Hey, I had always meant for this to be a weightlifting blog. So here's a photo that my coach Jim Schmitz took at the Golden West Open in October 2004. As the title explains, it's my p.r. clean and jerk. Here's a funny story. When I was in college, and I had first tried cleans, I quickly worked up to 245 lbs with very bad technique. I remember promising myself I'd clean 300 lbs by Christmas. It took fifteen years for me to actually reach that goal. So I'm going out on a limb here: 400 lbs by next Christmas!

Yeah, that'll happen.

Left-Handed No More

One difficulty with having your right arm strapped to your abdomin is that you can't write on a chalkboard--or a whiteboard as the case may be. Since I make my living writing on the whiteboard, and since I am accustomed to doing this with my right hand, I was presented with a sinister dilemma.

So I became left-handed for a month. It was actually a lot easier than I expected it would be. Sure, my handwriting looked a four year old's--a four year old that could do calculus, baby! It was kind of fun actually, a sort of challenge. For the first week, while I was wearing the "immobilizer," I really had no other choice. I didn't have much choice in the second week either, when I was in a sling (for the first couple of days) and then out of the sling (but couldn't really move my arm much). The third week was exam week, so I wasn't really working on the board. This week, after my physical therapist stretched my arm into a nearly vertical position, I think I might be ready to try writing right-handed again. It's really true that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone: I actually missed my normal handwriting.

Still, having to write on the board left-handed wasn't the hardest part of day-to-day life. Here are some things that are really hard to do with a dead right arm hanging at your side: putting on or taking off a shirt, tying your shoe-laces, washing your left arm, brushing your teeth (really!), putting the car in reverse (ya gotta reach across), and carrying anything heavy or bulky. That last part made moving a royal pain in the ass. But I hired a couple of my students to help me. It only took eight hours! And it was raining like in the Old Testament! Seriously, I think God is angry with California.

The only other difficulty I had in the first two weeks was that I had to sleep on my back all the time. In the middle of the night, when I would normally change positions, I would wake up stiff and in pain, and have to get up and move around before going back to sleep in the same position again. This would happen at least half a dozen times a night. I had thought the vicodin might help me sleep through the night, but it didn't even come close. I might as well have been taking children's aspirin. Again, I have to say that vicodin is way overrated. Eminem and Rush Limbaugh can have mine. Once I had the green light to take good old ibuprofen again, I was eating them like skittles.

The ibuprofen helps my knees too.

On the Recovery Trail

I admit it. I'm pretty feeble at this blogging business. I'm just not very good at the introspection thing anymore. I guess I'm happiest when I'm not thinking too much.

Okay. It's two-and-a-half weeks post-surgery, and I'm feeling great. Last weekend, I went back to the gym for the first time since before surgery. I worked mostly legs. I'm going again tomorrow for more of the same. I started physical therapy yesterday. My PT didn't do very much with me on this first day. She just manipulated my shoulder joint a little to determine my range of motion. Of course, my range of motion has gotten a lot better since I stopped wearing a sling, and the pain has almost completely disappeared.

Every time I tell people about my surgery they ask, "How long did it take?" I really have no idea. The last thing I remember is the anaesthesiologist telling me that she'd just given me a "cocktail." I think the last thing I said was "Excellent!"

I woke up what felt like a moment later, and I was lying in a hospital bed in a room with a bunch of post-op patients. I noticed that the doctor had put me in a shoulder "immobilizer," so I couldn't move my right arm very much. Not that I wanted to. The nurse came over almost immediately and asked me if I was in any pain. It was the first I'd thought about it, but yes I was! Morphine, please!

Ah, that's BETTER! She also got me a diet 7-up, which is very refreshing right after surgery. I took a look around me and saw the machine with all my vital statistics to my left. I amused myself for a few minutes breathing in very deeply and watching the respiration graph shoot up, and then blowing all the air out of my lungs and watching the graph plummet. That was fun. I only wish I'd had the presence of mind to try holding my breath to see if my nurse would come running.

Soon I was wheeled to another room, where I was allowed to get dressed and wait for my ride home. The doctor gave me a prescription for vicodin (over-rated!) and strict instructions not to remove the immobilizer or the bandage for a week! What a shitty week that was. But I'll leave that story for a later post.

2004 USA Weightlifting Nationals

This morning I had an MRI of my right shoulder to determine the extent of the tear. My orthopaedist, Dr. A. wanted to see me right away afterwards, in case it would be possible to arrange a meeting with the surgeon today. Unfortunately, it turned out that the surgeon was booked solid today, and that the earliest he'd be able to fit me it would be Friday. However, Dr. A. told me he had looked at the MRI images, and he surprised me by saying that pec appeared to be almost completely detached from its insertion in the upper arm. He seems to think that surgery to reattach the muscle as soon as possible is the best course of action. The bad news is that the recovery time from such a procedure is long. He said it would be six months before I'd be able to press really heavy weights again. Assuming that it would be the same amount of time before I could jerk heavy weights again, that means I would probably not be able to go to the Nationals this year.

So what has any of this to do with the 2004 Weightlifting Nationals? Nothing. My main reason for starting this blog is to keep records of my lifting, not to document the pec injury. Thinking about missing the 2005 Nationals reminded me that I should post the results of the 2004 Nationals. That was probably my best weightlifting performance ever. It was the last time I was able to squeeze myself into the 69 kg class. I was in awesome shape! I went 6 for 6 and finished in fourth place with a 110 kg snatch and a p.r. 130 kg clean and jerk. Even weighing much more, I haven't been able to snatch much more than that 110 kg. That was an awesome lift for me. Here's a picture of it.



Also, through a strange quirk of fate, I got my picture in a local newspaper.

Ask me about my Bench Press!

Congratulations to me! This is my historic first post on Captain Advil's Tall Tales of Weightlifting. It explains the mysterious origins of Captain Advil and why I chose this time to begin keeping a record of my weightlifting exploits.

Well, I did something stupid (again). A couple of my students (I teach high school) challenged me to a bench press contest, and I accepted. It was to be the total of their combined best efforts against mine. Now, they issued this challenge in the proper manner, throwing down the glove and everything, but I would only have two weeks to prepare. So I encorporated the bench press into my training, but since I am a weightlifter (i.e., my main focus is on the Olympic lifts, the snatch and the clean-and-jerk), I would have to do the bench press last in my routine. Don't get me wrong: it's a great exercise, but it is at best a secondary exercise for a weightlifter.

So I was able to train bench press four times before the big date, and I lifted heavy twice. On the heavy days, I used a simple 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 pyramid, where I would start with 90 kg (198 lbs) for 5 (after a warm-up set with 60 kg), and increase the weight 10 kg for each of the sets to follow. I was pleasantly surprised that the first time I tried this, I managed to get up to 110 kg for 3 reps. I got the first of the 2 reps with 120 kg, but missed the second rep. As I lay there with the 264 lb bar tattooed to my chest, I realized that this was very good. A strong single with 120 kg at the end of a tough workout should translate to a good 125 kg (at least) when I was fresh.

Two weeks later, I'm warming up. I didn't actually have any proper weightlifting clothes. I bench pressed in jeans and a sweater, which I actually thought was a good idea. The sweater would help me get warm up quicker, and I always feel more comfortable benching in long sleaves. I do my usual 60 kg for 8 reps, and 90 kg for 5. Then I finish the warm up with a 110 kg double. Everything feels very light, since I'm totally fresh, and the weights are flying up. I start with the singles: first 120 kg (264 lbs), which was ridiculously easy. So I'm thinking that I may actually have a 130 kg (286 lb) bench in me. Keep in mind that my best ever bench press was 315 lbs, but that was eleven years ago, when I was still a powerlifter.

I then put up 125 kg (275 lbs). Again, the weight moves up easily enough that I know I have more in me. So we load up 130. I lie down under the bar, which is loaded with big York bumpers so it looks like I'm about to lift about 800 lbs. I take the bar from the racks and ease it down slowly, under control, the way I always do. The bar is about four inches from my chest when it happens. There's the brief, deep sound of tearing heavy fabric or velcro, and my right arm suddenly gives out. Luckily there are three spotters ready to take the weight off me.

There was a PG-13 moment of cursing, and I quickly got up, took off my sweater, and pulled down my t-shirt to look at the damage. It might be my imagination, but it looked like my right pec was almost immediately swolen to twice its normal size. There was not yet any bruising, and I gently tested my arm to see if I could move it: up and down, forward and backward. I seemed to have complete mobility, so I guessed that the tear might not be complete. But there was no question about it. The muscle was definitely torn.

Well, that happened almost a week and a half ago. Of course, I went to the emergency room, and four days later I saw my orthopaedist and got my shoulder x-rayed. On Wednesday morning I'll get an MRI, and hopefully, speak with the surgeon. I may even get to have the surgery Wednesday, which would be great, because I could recover while I'm still on break.

I thought that this would be the perfect time to begin keeping some kind of record of my lifting, since I won't be in regular training for a few (maybe several) weeks. A week after the injury, I was able to do deadlifts and front squats, both pretty heavy. So I can at least keep my lower body in shape. I've also been doing a lot of housecleaning in the past couple of days. Scrubbing shower tiles, the bathtub, and the floor, sweeping, and mopping are excellent exercise! I'll have to remember that because it's the only way I'll ever convince myself to make a regular habit of housecleaning.

One surprising fact: the pec tear hasn't been nearly as painful as I would have expected it to be. The initial tear was painful and unpleasant, but as long as I keep my upper arm close to my torso, there's never been more than a dull ache since then. And Ibuprofen (God bless it) takes care of that very nicely.