I call this the excuses page because injuries can become really convenient excuses.  I don’t want to minimize the pain that many people go thru, certainly there are some debilitating conditions that make it impossible for someone to exercise, but for the majority of us there are chronic conditions that we can’t allow to take over our lives.  My 21 yr. old son recently found out he had an injury that would be a lifetime condition, his Dr. explained to him that in his opinion Chronic conditions don’t have to paralyzing, they may inhibit performance, but it doesn’t mean that we stop living.  That we need to recognize productive from unproductive pain and figure out how to work through the unproductive pain.  I like that verbal packaging — what I took him to mean is that there are pains that are not telling us to stop — we have to recognize those pains and work thru them.

Knees

I injured my left knee when I was very young.  There’s big bone sticking out the front, immediately below the knee cap.  Every once in a while my knee cap “slips” and pops out with horrible pain.  Over many years of playing basketball competitively and recreationally I’ve really wreaked havoc with my tendons as well.  The bottom line is that I have to avoid high-impact moves on my left knee.  There are some p90x moves, especially in the plyometrics routine that I have to modify to accommodate the pain and the potential for futher injury.

Lower Back

The lower back seems to be a common problem for guys over 40.  Especially those of us that allowed ourselves to get so heavy and out of shape as I did in my past.  This is a constant pain that just sits there every day, every second reminding me that I should have made better choices.  Now the thing is, I can sit and feel sorry for myself or I can figure out how to work thru it, and how to work smartly so I feel better.  Re-inforcing my abdominals and strengthening and stretching the spine do wonders to help me feel really good.  With exercise I have been able to stay active and enjoy almost every activity I’ve wanted to do.

Right Shoulder

I’ve always had weak shoulder joints — I remember as a y0ung kid trying to throw a baseball and my arm hurting like crazy just doing that motion.  So I abstained from Baseball, but I had fun doing Track, Football, Basketball, Volleyball and everything else in between.  I totally love sports!  During my last fitness craze I hooked up with a couple of big boys who were training for the Strongest Man competition.  They took me under their wing and decided to turn me into a “mini-me” for them … these guys were behemoths!  They were benching 500 lbs., squatting with cars and throwing anchors like they were sticks.  The difference wasn’t in muscle mass, it was in body mass, these boys were large, and I’m just this small-framed guy.  So during one of our heavy lifting sessions I tried to push the limits with my shoulder press, my shoulder moved, but my arm stayed.  I tore out all sorts of little tendons and muscles.  It turned me into a living weather machine, I can tell you almost 24 hours in advance of any storm moving in by the incredible pain.

Those are the biggies.  There are days when I have to take an ibuprofen to get the pain low enough to work thru, but most days it’s just fine.  I don’t like taking Ibuprofen often because it’s so hard on my kidneys.  The moral of the story is that we all have injuries and we can either let them disable us or we can figure out how to modify our routines to help us get the best workout possible.