Defiantone.com

I went to the doc - something that I loathe doing - so that I could get on the road to recovery.

His assessment - wow, your muscles are really tight. If it’s still bad in a week come back and I’ll try to stretch it out. Take some anti inflammatory meds for the next few days and see what it does.

He tried to stretch it today but was unable - it was beyond stretching. He asked how I was doing with the pain and in my typical macho/stubborn/stupid way I responded “I’ll manage”. I somehow see my grandpa King answering a question like that in the same way. When asked if he wanted some dessert his typical answer was “I suppose.” I’ll manage doesn’t seem like it would have been that far of a stretch.

Boredom will force you cause you to make foolish decisions. My latest foolish decision was to go to the gym for the past 12 days without a break. If I was a normal, healthy individual this wouldn’t be that big of a deal but I’ve got problems that don’t respond well to repeated abuse.

My latest problem started when I decided to squat too much weight for far to long. I took some serious time off my leg workout to give my lower back time to recuperate. I redesigned my workouts to reduce the stress on my back and continued exercising daily. My lower back has taken a slow and painful beating. Muscle pain, in my view, arrives in two different formats. The first is muscle pain - this pain is intense and comes regardless of what position you place your body. It feels as if your bones are attempting to separate from your muscles and that your entire body is trying to tear itself apart. This is excruciating - I deal with it 4-6 days a week. I do not take ibuprofen - I “tough” it out. The second type of pain we’ve all experienced - muscle soreness. If you stress a muscle and later stretch or move that particular area you will experience some discomfort - I rarely feel this as pain in the prevalent experience.

So - my back has been feeling fine lately. I have been stretching and doing some “yoga-esque” things to make the pain go away. My hamstrings and hip flexors cause the majority of problems. These muscles will NOT relax. I have tried for days to stretch them but they will not release one iota of pressure from my back. Today, my common sense defeated my strong desire to go to the gym and push through it. I’m taking the day off - I’m not really sure what to do with the time other than to write a series of random blog posts. I guess boredom will do that.