Today's ETK Heavy Day, and Training Damaged Goods

First, an abbreviated ETK ROP Heavy Day - life intervened and I ran out of time.

Then a soliloquy on training damaged goods. For those of you who don't know me, I had a severe back injury in 1997. That's what I mean by "damaged goods."

ETK: Heavy Day
24 kg Mil Press supersetted w/ 24 kg on alternating feet

The Plan: (1-2-3-4) x 1, (1-2-3) x 4

Actual: (1-2-3-4) x 1, (1-2-3-4-5) x 1

Last week's Heavy Day: 30 presses each side and 30 pu in 5 ladders.

This week's Heavy Day: 25 presses/pu each but in only 2 ladders

On Training Damaged Goods

After playing three shows on the piano yesterday, I came home happy but exhausted at about 9 PM and promptly fell asleep in an armchair. My reward was being awakened by leg cramps in the middle of the night. My leg cramps aren't your usual, not enough minerals and/or overexercise leg cramps; mine are caused by joint distortion in my lumbar spine. McKenzie talks about this - you don't hurt your back playing football at the family reunion, you hurt it slouching on the sofa afterwards. My nap in the chair, combined with a fatigued lumbar spine from sitting at a piano keyboard, was a bad combination.

The only thing I can do when these strike - this happened at 2 AM - is roll onto my stomach (not easy to do because moving isn't easy to do while one of your muscles is locked up) and perform the basic McKenzie exercise (similar to a yoga Cobra). After a while, it works, and I can - very carefully - roll over, try to go back to sleep, and hope it doesn't reoccur. I got lucky last night - only one episode.

What lessons did I learn? First, lay on the floor on my stomach and do that Cobra exercise after lengthy sessions at the piano keyboard, and don't fall asleep anywhere except bed;

Second, to be mindful of what I do with my back in my exercise and the rest of my life. I have, over the years since my back injury, tended to favor extension because a little extension (inward/forward arch in the lower back) is the antidote to overstretched tendons and ligaments. It's only lately that I've been focusing on shortening my abs in the front when pressing, which serves to make my spine less arched/extended. There is, as they say, no such thing as a free lunch, and getting used to having a better, more neutral spine will take a bit of learning on my part. My back hurts less because of the way I've started pressing lately, but I have also noticed that I don't yet really have what it takes to get closer to a neutral lumbar spine and still stay out of trouble. Rest assured, I won't give up - it's the right way for me to go, and I will learn how to handle a neutral lumbar, but bumps in the road like this, painful as they might be at times, are going to occur.