Note to Younger self…

When you start lifting at the young age of 12, be sure to be careful not to injure yourself early on so that you don’t wind up breaking your damned body to pieces before you turn 50!

I got my start lifting when I was very young, my dad bought a weight set and I used it the vast majority of the time from then on forward, and was bit by the iron bug early on. This started with seeing powerlifting competitions on ABC’s Wide World of Sports way back in the late 70s. Not to date myself and all. By the time I was 13, I was in full swing into working out and lifting several times per week. When you are youthful and lifting, be very careful, which I was, but I made some mistakes that led to injuries. One of my first was partially dislocating a shoulder while doing a straight arm pull-over with a barbell, a bad choice of exercises which I haven’t used since.

Over the years I have done quite a few things but the two things that plague me to this day are the injury to my shoulder and to my knees, which have been messed up since I was 15 and have required two knee surgeries to correct over all issues.

I bring this up because about a week and a half ago I tweaked my shoulder yet again, and decided I would work through it since I am not powerlifting anymore I do more functional fitness, so I was working through it, lowered weights used changed some exercises and figured lets just power through. That obviously doesn’t work all the time, and this time is becoming one of those times. Today I decided I would just take in some full on rest for the next week and a half and use available modalities to finish working through it. So just cardio and some rehab type stuff along with the application of ice and heat and TENS to see if it gets better. The goal is to avoid a trip to the doctor’s office to have it looked at if at all humanly possible being this isn’t the first time something like this has happened.

So moral of the story, no matter your age or your ability to be careful and take good care of your body, because injuries are cumulative: they build up over time, take it from someone who knows firsthand. Try to continuously be good to your body throughout your entire life, don’t wait till you have beat the crap out of it like I have.

Well, that will be it for now, maybe more later.

Originally published at https://iwrite4me.com on March 17, 2021.