Since today is a rest day I'll take this time to tell you about my injury earlier this year. Basically I tore my right pectoral by being stupid. What happened was I had been doing Crossfit at our gym in Albuquerque but it wasn't a Crossfit class. A friend of mine had introduced me to the
http://www.crossfit.com/ website and we would copy down the workout for the day that was posted then do it at the gym. This was my first serious attempt at getting back to the gym after like 3 years or something like that. Anyway, my body was responding well to Crossfit and after like a month I felt better physically than I had in a long time. The only thing was, we didn't do a lot of benching, it was mostly push ups when it came to a chest workout. Well after a grueling Crossfit workout one day I figured I would get on the bench and put some weight up, just to see how much strength I had gotten back. So I warm up with 135 then slap on 185 next. No problems. So far so good. Then the real test of 225 comes and I rep that bastard like 12 times. Effortlessly. Right about now I'm thinking Crossfit has made my body invincible so I throw on 275, a weight I had not done in years. Mind you before this if I did a weight I couldn't lift I never got injured. It just meant I couldn't lift it and it would sit on my chest or shoulders until someone helped it off of me. So I had no fear while putting the weight on. Either I would lift it or I wouldn't. What I wasn't prepared for was that there was a third possibility. Pain.
While lifting the weight up I felt something explode in my right bicep. The pain was incredible and thank God one of my wife's coworkers also happened to be working out that day and was spotting me. I couldn't breathe and felt like I had to throw up. I was rolling around on the bench then on the floor. I was f---ed up.
Anyway, the next day I had bruises on my right bicep and right side of my ribcage. The doc said I tore my pec and unless I got surgery it would stay torn. He held up four fingers and said "this is what your pec muscles used to look like." Then he held up two fingers and said, "Now they look like this." Basically I ripped half of them. Great.
So now I take it slow when I bench of course. I've put up 225 again but I'm afraid to go any heavier. I posted a pic below of the bruising from back in March. The moral of this story, take it slow and do it right. Some of these gym injuries are no joke.
