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Anyone have advice on tendon recovery from exercise? Something's clearly wrong with me but I don't know what. I'm a male, ever since I was 15 or so (I'm 22 now) when I push any set of any exercise to failure, I get tendinitis from it. I assume that's not normal? For example, my muscles are not tired at the end of a set of max rep pushups, it's one of my tendons (tricep, or sometimes pec) that hurts instead, I feel like my muscles could keep going. This is the same for all exercises, been this way for years, and briefly by course of good luck and planning and pushing almost to failure but not quite, I have managed to do things like weighted dips, weighted pullups, etc. before developing tendinopathy from those and having to scale back.
If I workout even further away from failure, like legitimately easy intensity, I'm fine painwise but don't make any progress in muscle or strength. I've tried dialing back volume, I just regress to being able to handle less volume and the same problems pop up.
At age 15, when this started, I did have a bunch of weird issues pop up: I had a growth spurt where my scoliosis went from mild to severe, then I got a really bad flu, then I went from sleeping 8+ hours a night every night at age 14 and prior, to sleeping 5 hours in broken intervals at age 15.5, unable to sleep more no matter what I do (I'd just keep waking up too frequently). Ever since then, I have slept the exact same way, once a year I sleep 7 hours and feel a difference, but I don't know what I did to sleep that long so I go right back to the pattern.
When this started, I felt very unrefreshed with a lot of brain fog at age 15.5, this is also when I had a relapse of anorexia (which was on/off from ages 9-20, mostly on from age 9-12 and 15.5-20 however). Then somehow my brain adapted to this amount of sleep, the brain fog and tiredness went away, and I actually started doing better in school than I had before all this despite no sleep improvement. But I was left with these exercise issues. Part of me thinks I am sleeping enough for my brain, but not enough for my body, yet the brain is what has a drive to sleep, so if my brain has figured out how to get it done on less, it just isn't going to have the sleep drive to match my body's needs. So I need a way to force deep sleep.
Nobody has been able to tell me exactly what caused these issues; was it the sleep? Was it the anorexia? I will say since recovering from anorexia, I was able to get way stronger than before recovery. But "way stronger" is still weak by human male standards. I had a brief period when I first recovered weight quickly at age 19.5-20 or so, that all my joints actually felt amazing, and I was sleeping 5.5-6 hours. But after that it went away (maybe in part due to a legit episode of bad insomnia at age 20.5, happened to coincide with onset of some GI issues that have only recently resolved) and now I'm stuck feeling almost the same way I did before recovery, but just at a much higher strength level than before and more overall capacity for exercise than before, but still the same feelings now of not being able to push to failure without pain, anywhere in the body. Somehow, at age 21.5-22, I pushed heavy weight for the first time with really low reps and low intensity (reps in reserve), and made a ton of progress again despite not feeling like I could recover from a serious workout with less reps in reserve. But then I got pain from it and had to regress again, I think I got up to a 100lb split squat, 50 lb weighted pullup, and what's probably the equivalent of 160-180 lb bench press (dips at 125 lbs bodyweight with 70 added pounds) for low reps before needing to regress.
I know my wrist size is only 5.2"/1st percentile for men, ankle size is only 7"/1st percentile for men, and limb lengths are 1st percentile for men despite 10-15th percentile height, and despite 50th percentile height parents and everyone in my generation of the family is at the 75th percentile in height. I also have osteoporosis from the anoreixa.
The one thing that grew normally is my shoulder width and pelvic width and that's largely post-recovery from anorexia that it started growing again from below average to average/even 60th percentile. I have a feeling all of this points to growth stunting from anorexia; is a 1st percentile frame size somehow mean I already reached my genetic natty limit at 100 lb split squats and 180 lb bench press? Can't be right, there are people who are much shorter than me who can build more muscle than I have so far, right?
Some question I have too that could help others with my problems (and myself obviously):
Are there any binaural beat or breathwork techniques for inducing delta wave states consciously, to mimic deep sleep and release HGH? Does anorexia stunt your tendon development as much as it stunts bone development? Does HGH help you build up your tendon tissue? Does this sound like anything you've heard of? How much does psychological stress affect your tendon recovery independent of other bodily systems?
How much does mindset matter in this? I feel like when I was making progress last time at age 21.5-22.0, I really believed I could get stronger, and then I saw some videos of people hurting their tendons and got kind of scared, and at this same time was when I seemed to get tendinopathy again. Could be a coincidence, but it was kind of spooky how that happened. Now I'm falling back into some old beliefs I had about something being fundamentally wrong with my body (part of why I justified my eating disorder to myself, after the joint pain started at age 15, my eating disorder worsened because I justified it to myself as I was genetically inferior, which ended up not being very true because I had some really good periods of strenthening post-anorexia as I described above, and I'm still way stronger than I ever imagined I would be at age 15, but it's still a beginner strength level and I want more if at all possible).
I wonder, if as a result of that limited mindset, I'm not making much progress? Even though I'm equally motivated to exercise, something about the mindset must be changing the fundamental quality of my muscular contractions (more apprehension perhaps) and this develops tendinopathy in those places? See a video of someone hurting themselves, get apprehensive, area gets strained due to less-coordinated contractions, you get hurt? Is that even a thing?
I know my testosterone level is at 500 on the nose. I have osteoporosis from the anorexia too, but it seems largely due to small bone diameter (stunted appositional growth) and only slightly due to low volumetric bone density, that is the bone quality itself seems to be good now (post-recovery) but the bones are small enough that the 2-dimensional "areal" density is very low. I still am about 0.5 to 1 standard deviation less in "true 3-D density" than normal, but not as bad as my DXA scan makes it look. Actually, if someone knows of a way to boost appositional growth of bones at this age, that'd be interesting to hear. I assume HGH could do it? And I assume I should keep gaining to BMI of 21 or 22 just to see if that would help (I'm at BMI 20 now).
Sorry for the long rambling post, thanks if anyone read through it or has any advice.
Look I'm just going to drop this here, and you can reach out to me if you have more questions or are open to this idea but...
I had major RSI and tendinitis and other issues all throughout my body for years. Had to leave work multiple times on medical leave, at some points could barely talk or use my hands because my muscular pain was so bad.
Turns out it was all psychosomatic or 'emotional'. The mind and the body are far more connected than most realize.
Just a thought, but your issues strike me as less of a mechanical issue and more like something I had. If you're curious about how I worked through it feel free to DM/ask.
Interesting, thank you, I will send a DM.
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That is kind of crazy sounding. We obviously need more details! How did you aquire such problems and how did you fix them!?!
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There is way too much going on here to offer an answer that’s in any way complete, but just two cents offered from a few decades more experience than you (I’m in mid-40s). Life has chapters / seasons. Weirdly, something that (a) happens without reason or (b) was achievable in one particular season/chapter just reverses or becomes (or seems) impossible in another. It’s desperately hard to do, a million times easier said than done, but I’ll say it anyway. Try not to sweat all this too much. The mind is an instrument of a type of power we’re scarcely beginning to understand, so the way you’re thinking about all this is almost certainly having a massive influence on your reality. Practice breathing. Practice recognising joy and beauty (more than proactively seeking them out). Practice present moment awareness (because every past moment and every future moment are always colored by the present moment that’s actually thinking about them). And good luck. 🙏
Thanks, I really appreciate the advice. I think you've answered it better than anyone I've asked, in that I should probably be putting more focus on how I'm thinking about this (and NOT thinking about it too much) versus trying to figure out every little detail that explains everything. I have been trying to do some breathwork lately, so we'll see how that goes. Good point on the present moment awareness...I have tended to suck at that, so that's something to work on for sure.
Good luck with it all. You’re so young (I know you probably don’t feel that, but you are … I remember when I was 22. I might have projected knowledge and certainty but looking back I was completely clueless about myself and everything around me.)
I’ve always been bad at breath work too. It gets better when I realised that one of the main points of breath work is present moment awareness. And you can get to present moment awareness without sweating the breath work too much.
Running is my breath work. The breathing happens as a side effect of the running so I get the benefit without the mind restlessness.
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The purpose of this point is to mostly share in my body horror.
So, I recently picked up a hunting camera. You know, to place it in spots I think I might find game in and come back later to review the video and see if it's worth getting up at 3am to watch the sunrise in that spot later while clutching a rifle.
To test the camera out, I set it up in my house and let it run overnight.
Annoyingly it produced .AVI files that
ffmpeg(viampv) can't view. But I installed VLC and that plays it fine. Whew.Anyway, I watched the overnight footage and mostly caught myself on camera while not expecting to. Unposed, from unflattering angles.
Yikes. Nothing like watching yourself amble about in your underwear in the middle of the night, on grainy surveillance camera quality video, to give you a mini crisis about how your diet, exercise and posture is going.
I do have fairly large mirrors in my house so I can't escape a glimpse of myself if I'm getting too obese, and that's helpful, but surveillance camera style footage is next level. Seeing yourself from the back, looking around confused,how often you totter around limp-wristed, how your butt moves and what your gait looks like is quite a wake-up call. Especially when you're not expecting it.
I suppose actors and other professional look-gooders-on-camera eat, breathe and sleep in this desert of the real. But for average mopes like me it's crisis-fuel.
Annoyingly, I do exercise regularly, both lifting and running, and do intermittent fasting. I don't look terrible but I definitely don't match my residual self-image + whatever not-posed-but-still-actually-posed mirror shots show.
To spin this positively(?), I do wonder if my physical appearance would be improved overall if I was regularly seeing videos of myself like this?
I don’t hunt and I don’t record hours if footage in my house during the night, but all the rest of this resonates with me massively. I don’t have an answer to your ultimate question but a few things that seem to have worked for me for several years (with intermittent falls off the wagon which underlined how much they were working):
I also run, which does at least as much and possibly more for my psychology as it does for my physiology. Periods of solid running always coincide periods of better body self image and better mental health. None of it is cracked though. Every day the clock resets and the challenge starts again.
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Anybody got any idea on how to improve executive function? I'll take even the most esoteric advice....
In general the consensus view is that you can't meaningfully do that, outside of chemical intervention.
The primary advice is not to try to improve executive function itself but reduce your reliance on it.
Engineer an environment where you depend on outside execute function, turn monotonous and boring activities into more fun one by using things like audio entertainment and rewards, create solid routines that you can maintain without using executive function for every individual task, etc.
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Off the top of my head:
This is all you need.
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My broken record, all-purpose advice for everyone everywhere all the time is to pick up endurance sports, take training somewhat seriously, and compete somewhat regularly. The ability to hold a precise, difficult pace during for a 6x800 meter set of repeats translates surprisingly well to other parts of life. If you can decide to push through the immense cardiovascular suffering of an all-out 5K, you can make the decision to clean up your room. In the event that running isn't feasible, cycling and swimming are great options.
I used to do endurance running/skiing a lot. Doesn't transfer to problems with work discipline or something at all. (I competed at 5K and 21K)
Yeah this has also been my experience. I don't think discipline or willpower have ever been helpful frameworks for me (as opposed to, e.g., making sure I was doing something I actually wanted to do.).
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Meditate for 45+ minutes every day. Follow the instructions closely.
I was going to add this. Pretty good if someone is chronically mentally fatigued by their lifestyle, or has mild ADHD symptoms from too much screentime.
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Paul Harrell, the actually competent firearms videoblogger, is dead after losing to pancreatic cancer. His prerecorded farewell message is up.
Cancer and Alzheimer's are two things that scare me the most about aging. How do you cope with the idea that you or your loved ones might not go gently?
Gone through this a couple times with family unfortunately. To be honest the prolonged degradation of these diseases twisting your loved one into a mockery of their former selves makes their actual death come almost as a relief. With Alzheimer's, pretend the victim's normal personality and mindset is like a radio station one is driving away from.
At first, it's all fine. Then there are occasional static bursts in the signal, small things you can dismiss as a fluke. She'd forget what year it was or not recognize an old friend. Then bursts of static interrupting the song you know and love. She started occasionally calling me the name of her cousin who was killed during D-Day.
You realize that this is really happening, and the signal is failing. She put dirty dishes in the microwave to clean them. The further out, the more static and less signal. She tried to plug an electrical cord into a water faucet. Eventually it's almost all static and you just hear some pieces of the song coming through. She could not remember her husband's existence and would repeat the same words over and over in a loop.
Then just a roar of static with an occasional pop that might be caused by the original song. She recognized almost no one and was near comatose, just had a vague sense we were connected and called us all by the names of the dead. It's like a perverse ship of Theseus where at some point so much has rotted away that the person you knew is gone. She would lay silent, glassy eyed and drooling for hours.
My other close relative who died from it had a quicker progression, but it made him act out of character in a very aggressive and violent manner to the point he had to be institutionalized because he kept trying to kill my aunt and caretakers. It can degrade people unevenly; his body stayed strong for a long time after his mind was destroyed, while the first person I described lost both simultaneously.
Somebody dropping dead of a heart attack is something you deal with the sharp pain of, but the mind can switch to categorizing them as gone, it doesn't consume the lives of multiple relatives taking care of them, and memories of the dead aren't tainted by a cruel decline. With these degenerative diseases attacking the mind, it's like your loved one becomes an animate corpse with just enough scattered fragments of their old self resurfacing to torment everyone around them but not enough to comfort them or bring the victim happiness. The death process takes ages and drags out everyone's pain. When they finally die, there is grief but also relief that their suffering is over.
With cancer, usually their mind is intact but they get twisted into a miserable, pessimistic version of themselves from all the pain and drugs for a couple years until giving up. Opioids help greatly with pain but make them zombie-like. I am not a doctor, but from what I observed marijuana edibles and tinctures are very helpful for mitigating low-medium level pain and delaying when the cancer patient has to start taking opioids. It made the difference between them being unable to sleep well due to itching sensations from the cancer and reducing that enough to sleep through the night.
If diagnosed with Alzheimer's, dementia or an incurable cancer I would strongly recommend writing up some memoirs, recording tapes for your family and friends then committing suicide.
If someone you know is in the early stages of Alzheimer's or dementia, I'd recommend surreptitiously recording your conversations with them and asking them a lot of autobiographical questions. How they met their spouse, their favorite songs, their first job, travels, funny stories, etc. The audio will be of great comfort to you and other relatives later. People remember to take pictures but almost always forget to preserve someone's voice. Also, with degenerative brain diseases IME older memories endure the longest, and you can have almost lucid conversations with them pretty far along by sticking to topics from decades ago. Playing their favorite songs also tends to bring their mind back together for a little bit.
I appreciate your writing this post.
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I've been thinking about this topic a lot recently. My fiancee basically lost her entire 20s having to be a stay-home caretaker for her grandmother, who had (and has) Alzheimer's. While she frames it as a choice that she was happy to make, from talking to her family, I really get the impression that she was basically the one who was sacrificed so that nobody else would have to address the situation. Honestly - I think it's an atrocity, and I can't listen to her talk about those years without boiling up with anger.
I love my parents, and when they get to that point, I want them to be safe and well cared-for; however, I'm not going to value their wellbeing above the wellbeing of the other members of my family. I grasp that there will be sacrifices to make, but the rest of us deserve a chance to live too. Furthermore, I don't see that any of the adults on either side of my family are making the appropriate preparations for their old age, and I intend to defend my nuclear family from potential consequences of this.
I am aware that my attitude about this is very hard and negative these days, and it may soften with time. I can't say I have a specific plan. I try to cultivate my material prosperity and physical strength all the time, because I think I will end up needing them.
This comment resonates with me. I come from a culture where elders are respected almost to a fault, and people are expected to defer to the whims of the oldest people in the family at all times.
This kind of setup was probably fine and maybe even made sense for most of human history, but now that people are being kept alive into their 80s and even 90s with ease, it leads to a lot of material and emotional burden on the rest of the family.
To give an example, I live in an apartment with my wife and my mother is the landlord. My mother charges me MARKET-RATE RENT with the stated reason being to help her support my grandfather and pay for his rent and living expenses. In a previous post I mentioned family planning with my wife, and the fact that we’re paying rent to support my grandfather is a non-trivial stressor on our discussions about having kids. Now what kind of fucked-up arrangement is this? The family unit is sacrificing its future material prosperity to care for somebody who probably shouldn’t even be alive except for modern medicine and is an active burden on the rest of the family?
Until me and my generation, essentially nobody in my family has had to worry about supporting their grandparents in old age (not just financially, but emotionally and in the sense of having to defer to their wishes and antiquated opinions) and often their own parents would be dead by the time they became productive members of society ready to build wealth.
At least from my anecdotal perspective this kind of absurd arrangement of transferring wealth from the young to the very old and infirm (I haven’t even mentioned social security and medicare) is a major cause of declining birth rates. How many more families would we have if people died at a natural age, they passed on their wealth and estate, and the next generation could focus on building wealth and supporting their own children?
Ugh this boils my blood. We are going through a similar situation with my future Father-in-Law, had to argue tooth and nail to get below market rate rent at the house we're moving into.
Despite the fact that my fiance has put in literally hundreds of hours of unpaid work helping him renovate that damn house. All because he 'needs to be able to retire this year'. He just turned 60.
Makes me furious too, and she wants to care for him if or when he gets dementia. I'm a hard no on that one.
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Oh, man, this sucks. Harrell was a solid dude.
Pretty basic; I assume my loved ones love me.
I'm dealing with this right now as a child. Parent's are past the stage of "ha ha senior moment!" forgetfulness, but can still operate on their own mostly. They aren't forgetting to eat or bathe and aren't getting in fights with strangers. But, multiple times over the past year, one has been pulled over for driving at night with no lights on.
The best way to take care of them is to take care of them as far as they'll let you, and then be willing to fight for that extra 20% that they don't want, but you know is necessary. The love comes in being willing to fight that fight and not build resentment towards them.
The useful thing I was surprised to find is how much going through photo albums or other "memory media" helps both parties. Long term memory often stays intact well into Alzheimers and dementia, so the mom/dad feels familiar and safe when talking about 20,30 years ago. For me, it helps reinforce the concept that even though they are deteriorating now, they were, at one point, like Superman and Superwoman to me and the facts of the past are still very much real.
The next big mental hurdle I can see is when the required care becomes too much and we have to go assisted living. Trusting your loved ones to strangers is ... trusting your loved ones to strangers. That doesn't sit well with me at all right now.
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