Thursday, January 15, 2009

Count the Creator's Lucky Stars in Life

Do you ever notice one never fully counts the Creator's lucky stars above until one just barely misses one of their greatest tragedies in their entire life? This is me, last night I was at the university gym weightroom, I was performing a regular 225 pound Smith machine Lalanne squat that never gives me problems. However, that night was no ordinary night, as this machine is counterbalanced, stablized and needs for reracking being not, I take liberties, such liberties as instead of letting my shoulders take on the load up to its secured hooking point, moving the bar up manually with my own arms to go above instead.

That would be my big time mistake, one I may not have been able to ever repeat again, but am lucky to say I hope never to in my life.

As soon as my arms reached up with the barbell vertically, the weight seemed to pull backwards and down, like the Olympian this summer who ended up popping out his elbow. As the support gave out, so did the arms, which then proceed to immediately go backwards as though each were still forward, a massive stretch I normally can not do as I am not a acrobat who can contort, is hypermobile or have any real flexibility at all, so this was a complete shock to me. As I snapped, crackled and popped my way backwards, within mere seconds, my arms which still held the weight, now backwards, began immediately pulling up, from the level of my buttocks area, back up to over my shoulder and with more snapping, crackling and popping, made it above my head again to complete the original task.

Looking back now, I subconciously think I knew what kind of a sound it would make if I had dropped the weight, plus I always get hounded for being too noisy with them anyhow, so I made the effort without another thought.

After completing this, I took check upon how my body was for only less than a minute, God allowed me no immediate effect, the snaps, crackles and pops seemed to be natural, no bones had been actually broken, there was a balanced stretch across from top back right out to both arms, from the faces of the girls across the room on the arm press machines, I thought I must have destroyed everything. After I finished my workout circuit, however, I did begin to notice changes, such as massive shaking of the arms, when I tried hard to keep them straight ahead, yet they ranged up and down from head to waist, later this night, there was massive aching just as I was getting into the workout, but no really pain though, yet has stopped me from doing the dumbell operations I usually do over my head, as well as limit my bench press as the muscle around the elbow and joint under bicep affecting the biceps brachii, brachialis, pronator teres and brachioradialis, basically anything under the rotator cuff and deltoid of mainly the left, but also the right arm. This has forced me to change my routine, now going mainly advanced on legs, basic arm workout instead, so I can hopefully get back to it by the ides of March, but we shall just have to see as this was only my first day fully with the injury, something I usually am without, having to work through it and just adapt to it as we move forward. Ironically, my Creator has allowed me grace yet again, He could have broke every bone, tore every tendon and mince every muscle, if He wanted to yesterday, but no, He kept my intact for a purpose yet again only known to Him and I thank God for that absolutely.