Regrouping Completely Sucks

‘Tis a lesson you should heed,

If at first you don’t succeed,

Try, try again;

Alright – let me get a few things straight before I get started. I am not complaining. My life is fairly grand compared to the vast majority of humans on the planet. I have a loving family, a nice home, and a well-paying job. But let me tell you this – trying to regroup when you have an injury completely sucks. I had an earlier post titled Regrouping Made Easy – a brilliant read if you want to take a second to go back and check it out – I’ll wait……………….(10 minutes into the future) and we’re back. For those of you who have already read it a few times and might need a little refresher on the general flow of what I wrote, I’ll give you a quick synopsis. I banged-up my knee training for the Society Hill Mudder last year, decided to do a double mudder (e.g. about 24 miles and 45 or so obstacles) on top of that injury, and as you might guess I left some of my knee on the course. Brilliant – I know. 

What is more brilliant is that I still haven’t been to the doctor. I get enough crap from those around me so save all the doctor comments. Yes I should go to the doctor, and I will (if it doesn’t get any better – which it already has started to do by the way but we’ll get there). But my principal focus was to get ready for the Miami Mudder this March, so what do I need to do to keep working out?

This is where my regrouping efforts came in. I’ve read a good many bad ass blogs that have all said to keep working out. Find a way to make it work for you. Plus I knew if I quit I would lose all that I have worked for in terms of cardio and overall strength. Not something that I am going to do easily given that I’ve been working on this stuff for the better part of a year now. 

So I decided to regroup and think of some ways that I could keep working out, really find some ways to keep the cardio going – I get all the strength training I need from P90X – and I had the great idea of turning to the pool. Well to make a long story short – I’ve completely shredded my left shoulder. (Again – not trying to moan – just stating some facts. Hopefully not in a moany type way.)

This gets a little into my tragic backstory from my youth (que the Heinz Doofenshmirtz music). I’m a lefty. A damn proud lefty at that. The only one in my family except my niece, so I take a lot of pride in it. With that said, I was discovered fairly early in life. No I am not a triple threat or anything like that, but I can throw a baseball over the plate and am a fairly intuitive athlete when it comes to mental games with those competing against me. What I am really referring to is what a pitcher goes through during a game – trying to outguess the batter – throw something they are not expecting – control the game – all that power trip stuff. I was fairly good at it. Let me rephrase that – I’m still fairly good at it. 

The problem though – I was a lefty. Not many of us out there in Junior High. My coaches loved that I was a lefty. I never threw the ball particularly hard (if I did my shoulder would probably be in better shape). But alas, I threw a lot of junk. Let me rephrase that – I threw a lot of junk for strikes which of course always made the coaches happy which kept me on the mound probably more often than my young arm needed to be. 

Oh yeah – I have fairly par mechanics. I mean from the legs down it is great. Short back step – good balance – strong leg kick – but terrible arm motion. Just bad mechanics on the throwing arm. I spent hours standing up against fences trying not to get my arm to slam into it when I pulled back to throw. (I hate fences but that is for another post!)  So to make a long story a little shorter, my arm basically turned to crap. Had to take an entire season off when I was 15 and focus on physical therapy and cortisone shots for tendonitis in the elbow and basically learned to thrive off Tylenol and Motrin in high school – didn’t really like to go to the doctor back then either if it meant possibly not playing. I guess not much changes as you age in some respects. 

Everything probably would have been OK, if it wasn’t for me learning about adult baseball, forgetting about what it means to throw everyday as a pitcher, and how it is a bad idea to simply walk out to the mound and start throwing the ball as hard as you can. But I won’t bore you with that episode, I’m still angry about that idiocy myself. (A great 3 innings though – struck out five – look at me the power pitcher, but of course couldn’t feel the entire left side of my chest for the next 3 days.)

So now I can still throw. I’m good for a game of catch that lasts 15 or 20 minutes or so, but after that things just don’t feel great, and, yes you guessed it, I don’t want to go to the doctor. So I usually just stop. 

Back to the present – regrouping made easy – start swimming – keep working out at something that is non-impact on the knee. Got my swimming pass, starting getting up in the morning and getting in the pool, and all was going well. Knee felt good. Getting a great workout. And I mean what – it is only a little tingle in the shoulder. I can push through that. I haven’t used these muscles in awhile right. The next day a bit of the same – a little twinge. A couple of days off – back in the pool for 3 more (really not that fond of building up slowly as you might be able to tell) and gradually that little tingle, that became a twinge, starts to hurt like hell.

Haven’t swam in about two weeks now. Actually haven’t tried to do anything with my shoulder at all. No pull ups. No curls. Just me and my P90X family doing pushups (can still get by with some of these), Yoga (shoulder doesn’t feel particular great after this but I still don’t want to quit my Yoga – stuff is addicting by the way especially after you nail the crane position a couple of times – and lots of core work. Back on the Motrin and in general back to the drawing board.  

So regrouping completely sucks. You can image that I’ve been pretty bummed. Watching my other team members keep pushing forward isn’t easy, but I’ve had to just keep my head up for opportunities. And that is why I think regrouping is supposed to suck. Regrouping essentially means you are not doing what you originally intended. You’ve hit a detour and you have to decide what to do. The road ahead could be too much and you can turn around for home or you can take it easy, keep looking forward and just do your best to enjoy the ride. I am trying to become a very class half full kind of guy!

For me things have started to work out. My shoulder is still shredded. I’m honestly just trying to stay off that now but I’ve gradually gotten back on the trail running circuit. The pain in my knee has become more tightness than anything so I get a good warm up, don’t start off like the Road Runner, and try to get a good workout. A decent knee brace also helps just to make sure everything stays in place. I actually am back to 5 miles fairly quickly and now running at a fairly good clip – 5 miles right under 50 minutes. Thanks to Brian for getting out there with me and keeping me going. Nothing like a mudda brudda you can run with – especially when we both don’t really like to run. I couldn’t be more pleased. After a run, some more stretching and the best cure-all of all time – a healthy bag of ice. 

So I’m running! Doing my Yoga! Working the core muscles! And tomorrow I am going to give it a go on my chest and back exercises. Not going to jump right back into pull ups, but going to try to do some negatives and just hang there…

So I’ll say it again – regrouping completely sucks, but there is nothing, absolutely nothing you can do about it. Everyone hates detours! They take longer. But you also might get to travel down a road that you have never seen and who knows who you might meet on the way. I’ve met Mr. Icy Hot but I have no idea who might show up next to help get me down the path to my Tough Mudder.  

I guess the lesson from this post is keep all that in mind. Whatever Tough Mudder you are training for – be that Mudder simply starting a new routine, eating better, using a new piece of technology in the classroom – there will be turns in the road. How you respond to them is critical because it is really really easy to quit and go home.