My first kettlebell injury took me out of lifting for ten days, but has healed up fine. On my very first set of my very first day of uninjured lifting, I injure myself. This time doing low rep, high weight military presses. I observed good form on my previously injured side, but then banged off really sloppy reps on the uninjured side – I wasn’t maintaining grip strength, nor following the proper press groove. I gave some tendons and muscles a small tweak, catching them in my shoulder. It felt better the next day though, so I lifted the day after. The muscles got even more cranky this time, so I went in for massage therapy and got my shoulder worked on. Got some good advice on how to move the shoulder with proper rotation throughout the military press – my shoulder on the right has a tendency to internally rotate since I use it for moving the mouse with the computer. Shoulder got loosened right up, it’s feeling better again, but I’m going to wait until the muscles are back to 100% strength before lifting again – probably lay off the bells for another week, then start back with turkish get-ups since they’re an isometric exercise for the shoulder.
Getting two injuries in a row made me wanting to proceed with more information, so I ordered ”Secrets of the Shoulder” which has rave customer reviews, and “Resilient“, which gives you 19 drills for focusing on strengthing the weak links of the body from DragonDoor on DVD so I can work on my shoulder muscle flexibility and awareness, and also all around body flexibility – I don’t want to injure my knees or my hips like I’ve been tweaking my shoulders lately!
Earlier in the week, I also bought 12 feet by 8 feet of thick rubber mat from an old gym. This stuff weighs 130 lbs, so it’s really thick, and really does a good job of soaking up the sound of the workouts in the apartment, the only stuff that is noisy now is the jumping. It also works really well for workouts where you have to roll on your back. This makes the spare room a dedicated workout room, so it should make it really easy to maintain daily workouts in the 20-40 minute range. Below is my first workout for the room, and it’s naturally all squats and core work given I want to rest the shoulder.
I’ve been watching Steve Cotter’s Encyclopedia of Bodyweight Conditioning, which has a juicy 161 bodyweight exercises to work through. My first workout felt great, and I’m excited work my way through this series and really learn it so I have a really solid foundation of bodyweight workouts I can do.
Sore Shoulder Bodyweight Workout 1
40 reps of Hindu Squats. Using the rowing motion with the arms, a nice easy warm-up.
30 seconds on, 20 seconds off, 3 sets of Isometric leg raises, feet 12″ above the ground.
25 reps per side of Stationary lunges, without letting the dropping knee touch the ground.
30 reps of Lateral leg raises – the hands spread-eagled, drop legs to side, lift back with the obliques.
10 seconds per postion of two sets of Burning 4, where you hold the squat in four different positions, lowering, the raising, so a 70 second squat overall. This one is a killer for me, I have to do it again. I’d like to work up to be able to do it for at least 15 seconds.
30 on, 20 seconds off of four sets of Scissor kicks. I kept a pace of just under a rep per second.
40 times Plie squats, the “ballet dancer” squat. This one has a good stretching component in it, and opened up the hips a bit. I have to do more of these.
20 seconds on, 10 seconds off of 4 sets of Lateral scissor kicks. These got the core and the legs burning. Good high intensity workout, I just barely held it together for this one.
40 times Lateral squats. In preparation for learning The Pistol, I’m working on the squat strength in each leg individually.
Finish-off with a hip flexor stretch and a hamstring stretch. Took a little over thirty minutes, and was a fairly moderate intensity workout.
