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Wellness Wednesday for May 1, 2024

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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On the contrary to the comments below, you should consider your activity overall. Hurting your back rolling over in bed is a sad fact of adulthood for many people, but if it happens after a week of intense back or leg workouts...

No sense in being ashamed. I also don't think you have to totally reassess your summer. However, you need to consider easing into extra training volume or new training loads. That means not going all out, or even moderately hard at first. Your body is going to stop moving optimally before you can't move a weight. Usually that means compensating somewhere else when a weaker muscle gets tired, and something gets tweaked.

The first thing that popped into my head when I read what happened to you is that you were doing a one-sided twisting motion followed by kettlebell exercises. It's easy to overwork specific parts of the body that way. Training volume plays a role in injury, but training while subtly twisting your core or favouring one side is what is likely the direct cause. Taking time to recalibrate your balance and symmetry between those things can help, if you plan on golfing more often. Stretching and mobility is often left by the wayside, but it will help you recover (and prevent those freak accidents while shaving). Warm up to your working sets with mobility, balance, lighter weights, and concern for how your body feels. Numbers are a measure of performance, but performance is what you actully want to improve.

No sense in being ashamed. I also don't think you have to totally reassess your summer. However, you need to consider easing into extra training volume or new training loads. That means not going all out, or even moderately hard at first. Your body is going to stop moving optimally before you can't move a weight. Usually that means compensating somewhere else when a weaker muscle gets tired, and something gets tweaked.

So at this point, I'm pretty confident that it was nothing, in that I'm feeling fine now. Nevertheless, I'm going to be extremely careful for a few weeks yet, so I'm altering my fitness plans somewhat. I'm going to drop the planned Kettlebell block, and move to focusing on Yoga and Climbing for the next month.

The foolishness started with going to the driving range and getting the bucket of 105, because the pricing was such that the first 35 went for $8, the next 35 were $4, and the last 35 were only $2. It seemed foolish not to buy the large bucket, even though I knew I hadn't golfed in months and should go smaller to get back into the groove. Then I compounded it by having lazed around having coffee and making love in the morning, and as a result trying to cram the other things I had planned that day into too little time, so while on my to-do list the driving range and the pentathlon were morning and evening, and in practice they were less than an hour apart. It was pure stupidity on my part.

Glad you're feeling better. As someone who's gone through the misery of back pain, I know the dread and pessimism of a twinge. As long as you don't charge through it with youthful stupidity, they usually bounce back just fine.

Have fun with the climbing and yoga. Both are great options for limbering up (and providing a good dose of mobility humility - easy to forget with strength training).