Roll it out

If you are active in the gym then you have gotten an injury(ies) before, or you are still battling one or worse....many.

If you have an injury it's for one of a few reasons - you train stupid, you don't stretch or you had a freak accident. And I've seen some freaky stuff - someone - who shall remain nameless - pulled a 45# plate off the barbell BEFORE pulling the 35# that was in front of it and smashed their toes to hell and back. NOT pretty....and unfortunately you need your toes to do....well a lot of stuff.

Now I'm not 100 percent sure I've found the best way to train so I am not going to touch on whether you are training stupid - I have my ego moments like most of us.

And the freaky stuff....well that's just being at the wrong place at the wrong time, I can't help you with that either.

What I have become really good at appreciating and doing is stretching. One of my favorite exercises is using my medicine ball as a rolling pin. (I don't have a foam roller and I am a cheap ass - I aqcuired the med ball years ago for $5....so med ball it is...and hell I don't use the damn thing for anything else!)

I developed my love of stretching out of sheer desparation. I hurt my shoulder in Oct 2008 (the day this picture was taken) trying to keep up with the big a$$ gorilla in the picture above. That was the GySgt that was part of my Admin team - great guy - beast of a guy- bench pressed 400# kinda guy. Here was my ego moment.....We had our Admin PT and he decided he wanted to pound out a few bench presses - being the team player I am I said OK I'll play - I threw on 135#s and busted out one rep. My bench press form is historically shitty.

I went down too fast and felt a sharp pain, hmmm...that wasn't good. So like the good idiot...or you can call me simple, I hear stupid people prefer that...I kept going. Later in the locker room my shoulder cooled off at a lightning fast pace and I could barely get dressed or fix my hair.

Keeping true to form I swallowed more motrin and aleve than recommended - truly testing my liver and kidney's ability to process anti-inflammatories, iced, heated and most of all bitched for the next three months. What I didn't do was let it rest. "Why isn't it heaaalllling?" I'd whine to Ray and he being the good husband would just say, "give it time."

I went to see Dr. Ferrero in January - I definitely recommend him if you are in the Southern Maryland area or can drive to see him. Anyways, he gave me a cortisol shot, told me to rest, ice and go get an MRI. The cortisol made me feel better so keeping on the idiot pattern I skipped the MRI and went straight back into the gym.

I think you can see the pattern here...fastforward two years (yeah TWO years) and I am in Dr. Ferrero's office and he says to me...I don't want to see you again, you are your own worst enemy and I can't help you. Well my initially reaction was what an asshole....however you gotta love a guy that doesn't sugar coat shit for ya.

He was right - at this point I wasn't even going to Dr. Ferrero for my shoulder, I had developed sciatica, hip flexor pain, neck and jaw pain and tingling in my right hand. Yeah....I was FALLING APART.

So taking matters into my own hands I found that the Asian's at the Mall gave a great, torturous massage for $30 and if after I worked out I actually stretched....and not just my shoulder...my WHOLE body - the pain would go away....everywhere.

Something else crazy happened...I got stronger on my dead lift, I was actually able to do presses again and even better if I got stuck in crazy DC traffic (which is frequent) I wasn't close to tears when I finally was able to get out of the car because I no longer had that sciatica nerve pain!! Woo-hoo!!

If you want to be a better athlete you need to stretch. If you want to be a stronger athlete you need to stretch. If you don't want to be injured and on the side lines boo-hooing then stretch. Don't make excuses - your muscles NEED to be stretched.

When you lift weights your muscles contract so it's either stretch 'em or tear 'em....your choice.