2015: New Month, New Injury......Grrrrrrrrrr

    The title change of my blog to "Breaking Banul" has become kind of prophetic.  I have been suffering from an old....old....super old injury on top of my sports hernia this past week.  A couple of weeks ago I strained my back doing Zercher squats with a 115 pound sandbag.  The strain didn't happen all at once.  On the first day I went to use this particular bag I slipped a rib out of it's spinal socket trying to lift the damn thing off the floor into the Zercher position.  I did my sets and felt a pain near my shoulder blade afterward.
    The next day I paid a visit to my chiropractor.  He plopped the pesky rib back into place.  Looking back, I think the rib pain may have masked the initial damage lifting too much weight caused.  Later that day I did hill repeats climbing a little over 3,000 ft. of elevation in about seven and a half miles. At one point in the run I had a slight twinge in the spot but didn't think anything of it. I get these twinges every so often.
     A little backstory:  I fist damaged the disc to my lower spine while playing tackle football when I was about 16 years old.  I was tackled awkwardly and the weight of the tackler came down on my shoulders hyperextending my lower spine.  Lots of ouch.   Then about nine months later I was in the passenger seat of a Ford Mustang that was hit by a freight train.  The impact either aggravated the same spot from the tackle or an area close to it.  These two events created a weak spot in my back that acts up every now and then.  In the decades following these two events, I've had a myriad of things aggravate the old injury.  Lifting tool boxes, violent sneezes, slipping on ice, landing from a big jump, etc....
     For the past week now I haven't been running or lifting weights.  The up and down pounding of running was irritating the injury.  I would feel fine, go for a run, then wake up the next morning with a stiff lower back.  And I mean STIFF !!!!   Then the following day the pain came.  Grrrrrrrrrr.       
       The beginning of my injury coincided with the first major snow we've had in South Central Indiana this winter.  It's a lot easier to miss runs when there is ice and snow all over the damn place. Instead of just laying around I have been working on flexibility.  Stretching my hips and glutes seem to alleviate the pain in the spot.  Turning my focus to stretching and yoga poses has been a habit I have been trying to get into.  Recently at work, if there aren't any customers, I'll drop behind the counter into the pigeon pose.  Doing this has helped the back pain.   I hope to continue the habit after my back has healed. 
      I paid a visit to my chiropractor and he adjusted my spine.  I felt like the injury had healed enough but a spinal manipulation would help relieve pressure off the area.  One "pro" of visiting him is that he is always saying that I am "in tune" with my body.  The manipulation helped.  On the drive home I thought of how I felt like I have been constantly falling apart since mid-December.  One "con" of being "in tune" with my body.  Ugh.... One bright side is that I'm hoping that a nice side effect of this back injury is that my athletic pubalgia injury gets a huge opportunity to heal further.
     So here I am on my day off.  About three more inches of snow was dropped overnight.  I hadn't planned on running or lifting weights today.  I spent about an hour stretching and have been mostly resting.  Doing nothing is kind of nice.  I wouldn't want to make a habit of it.

Thanks for reading.