Injurious night in the gym

[Gearloose]

Tonight was not a good night in the gym...

First, I started with seated chest presses. I always warm up with a light set before starting the serious stuff. No problem--good stretch and felt ok. Moved the stack up to 175. I've been at 175 for the last couple of workouts. Tonight was the third at 175. First set - 8 reps. The last two were pretty danged hard to push out. Set two - 8 reps with the last 3 or 4 all I could do. Third set - 7 reps, and it was a just barely. The last two reps were really burning between the shoulder blades. I don't understand why as chest press is not supposed to involve the back muscles. Now it's been three hours and my upper back is really hurting. This is not normal muscle soreness. The curious thing is that I followed the chest press with seated rows and felt no soreness in my back muscles at all. My seated row is 3 sets at 200 lb. Tonight was 10x, 10x & 10x.

I wasn't finished hurting myself yet. I raised my straight leg deadlifts to 145 lb. tonight. The first set went fine. The second set, I pulled my right Hamstring on the second rep. This happens every time I bump the weight up on the SLDL's. Tonight was a good one, and now I'm limping around with a sore leg and a bad back.

I wonder if I'm pushing myself too hard? I started out this month with seated chest presses at 125 lb and in 9 sessions have increased it to 175 lb. Seated rows have went from 150 lb to 200 lb in the same time frame. SLDL's started the month at 105 lb and I increased to 145 lb tonight.

Am I trying to go too fast? I suspect maybe so. I'll be 53 in a few weeks. I forget sometimes that I do not have a young man's recuperative powers.

Gearloose

[threenorns]

could be, could be - but i suspect you're not allowing enough rest time between sets (because you found succeeding sets difficult to do).

[Merrida]

It's possible, but succeeding sets TEND to get more difficult anyway,...if not we'd all go on lifting all day long.

I'm not a fan of "straight" legged dead lifts, but I am of "stiff" legged dead lifts. And you do straight legs?

How's your form?

DL's are truly (IMHO) one of the most difficult exercises to execute precisely and truly and perfectly. The tendancy most people have is to turn this into a low back exercise, by default or design.

Unless you remember to lean back and use your glutes to sustain the force, your low back will take the brunt of the force. If your bar was too far AWAY from your knees/shins, that's a dead give away your low back would kick in and from there it's easy to over-tax the hamstring in a secondary fashion (to try and recover).

This is one exercise I see a lot of people doing in dangerous fashion. It "looks" similar but it's all about the muscle recruitment and your ability to access, contract, maintain control of, and use those hips to generate your movements as you keep the bar scraping up your shins/and legs.

[Gearloose]

Originally Posted by Merrida

I'm not a fan of "straight" legged dead lifts, but I am of "stiff" legged dead lifts. And you do straight legs?

How's your form?



Unless you remember to lean back and use your glutes to sustain the force, your low back will take the brunt of the force. If your bar was too far AWAY from your knees/shins, that's a dead give away your low back would kick in and from there it's easy to over-tax the hamstring in a secondary fashion (to try and recover).

This is one exercise I see a lot of people doing in dangerous fashion. It "looks" similar but it's all about the muscle recruitment and your ability to access, contract, maintain control of, and use those hips to generate your movements as you keep the bar scraping up your shins/and legs.

This is the exercise I do: http://www.exrx.net/WeightExercises/...gDeadlift.html

I don't use the platform.

I do keep the bar as close as possible to my legs without scraping the hide off. I do touch my shins with the bar at the beginning and end of the movement. I think my problem is grip. A crossed grip is uncomfortable and awkward for me and I tend to start losing my grip with a regular straight grip--forearms cramp up something fierce. In this case, the bar was starting to roll out of my hands. As I wrestled with my grip on the bar, I think I lost concentration on the movement, went down too far and overstretched the hamstring. I'm thinking of getting a set of wrist straps.

Also, I didn't do any warmups. I didn't think I needed any as I was halfway through my workout and had came straight from doing leg extensions. Maybe I should do a few hamstring stretches before starting SLDL's.

Gearloose

[Naturalhit]

I think you are using poor form. 3 sets at 200lbs is alot of weight. If that's the case, you may have pulled or shocked some of the tendons.

I highly recommend you ice it first without moving it around for awhile. Then later on have someone massage it diagonally and laterally and lay down to keep it stable.

Next workout, just reduce the weight and practice good form. Work the muscles and not the weights.

[Gearloose]

Originally Posted by Naturalhit

I think you are using poor form. 3 sets at 200lbs is alot of weight. If that's the case, you may have pulled or shocked some of the tendons.

I'm only using 145 lb on the SLDL's. 200lb is my weight on the seated row machine. I'm very conscious of my form and do the SLDL exercise in front of a mirror.

Gearloose