I live with a defect in my spine known as a Pars Defect. It is a fracture in my lowest vertebrae right at the front that causes my entire spinal column to shift forward and because of it, I love in pretty much chronic pain.
So guess what? I was doing deadlifts on Friay. Everything was going fine it was my last set of five and the weight was not even particularly heavy. My form was pretty good bud I must have had a little bit of excursion in my lumbar spine beceause There it was "POP!" I knew instantly what had happened. I dropped the bar with my usual stream of profanity which seems to unconsciously spew forth whenever I tweak my back, and hit the floor, lying on my back bringing my knees up to my chest in order to stave off the inevitable tightening of the muscles around my lumbar spine. As always I laid there for 10 minutes repeating to lyself "I don't thinks it's as bad this time" over and over as if I can convince my lower back to just relax.
It is now Saturday and I have been lying on my back on an Ice pack for the last twelve hours contemplating the fact that I may never be able to do heavy deadlifts again. This is heartbreaking to somebody who spends there days extolling the virtues of barbell training as if they are going door to door trying to convince the masses that a barbell will save them from eternal damnation.
It sucks but I am not going to lay down and fell sorry for myself. I don't do it and I have little to no sympathy for others who choose to. I caught myself lying there, feeling like shit, so I decided to get up and go for a walk to the grocery store to get a chicken. After moving around for a bit in the sunshine, I started to feel better and my back was starting to loosen up a bit. I started to feel a little better at this point and decided I'm not going to take any time to sit around and think. I'll still be at the gym this afternoon doing muscle ups and air squats.
I am now looking at all the other possibilities. I could always specialize in bodyweight training and become a master of my one body like this guy
I have always been fascinated by feats like this and other impressive feats of body weight mastery such as those featured on beastskills.com. I have to perfect body type to specialize in gymnastics too. The problem there is that whenever I start to specialize in one type of training I start to miss the others. All crossfitters such as myself and those of you who follow my posted workouts specialize in non specializing. We are jacks of all trades. I love heavy barbell training. I love power lifts. I really love olympic lifts. I have a bit of a gift for gymnastics and bodyweight training though and the thought of mastering these skills sure is appealing.
I will have to take some time off from barbell training for a few weeks though and I may not be able to do max effort deadlifts ever again. When I do get back under a barbell I have to resolve myself to always using a good weight beltI refuse to sit around moping though. I'm going to dedicate myself to gymnastic training for the time being. I have done this last time I hurt my back, shortly before christmas, following the gymnasticbodies.com daily WOD with great success. This time I won't be stupid though and will avoid rushing ahead to pick up anything too heavy. Who knows, maybe this time I'll find a specialty and decide to stick to it. Only time will tell.
On a final note, I finished my walk and got back onto a bag of ice and found a very inspirational video of one of my heroes reflecting on a long career in his sport. Talking about injuries and being thankful for all he has recieved in his life and how he has never given up. After every injury he has come back stronger and learned from it. It is subtitled as he speaks Portuguese and you have to overlook the cheesy inspirational rock and roll soundtrack. Take a few minutes and watch it though. It is definitely worth your time
