Recovery and Listening

I learned a great lesson this week. Progress doesn’t have to stop with injury. It just requires that you shift the front you’re attacking.

Wednesday morning, my back twanged really bad while in the middle of a deadlift. Just before the injury, I was saying to myself, “My back feels rounded. I think it should be arched–ow!” And then I had to stop working out.

Yesterday, I could feel the burning area where the lats had torn *and* this new lower back twang. I also felt soreness in my left triceps area, and a few other random spots. So, I listened to my body.

I did nothing at the gym today. I did nothing yesterday. I did 1/2 what I set out to do Wednesday. Instead, I’m all for recovery right now. I’m giving my body the opportunity to rebuild. I also upped my protein intake (not that I’m usually light on it), to make sure my body had the right materials to build back muscle.

It’s obvious that I hit things a little too hard. That’s not a big issue, because I’ll just recover and set back to work. That said, I’m glad this all happened now, and not around the time of my marathon.

I’ll just go forward, adjusting some of my efforts, and make sure that I’m allowing for proper recovery between workouts. I think this comes out of trying the fitness test I wrote about weeks ago, and then trying to fix everything rapidly. Just like running, it’s slow and steady progress that brings us to our success.

I’m still feeling powerful and mighty. I’ll hit things Monday with a renewed vigor. Until then, I’ve been focusing on my mental struggles, my challenges with eating of late, and hitting whatever fronts I can hit while waiting for the muscles to recover.

That’s the great part. You don’t have to stop training when you’re injured. You don’t have to shut down all efforts to move forward. Just shift. Move your efforts away from what you can’t do, and hit what you can.

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