Injured? Hooray!

photo: I Can Has Cheezeburger

By Crabby McSlacker

So yeah, this is me trying to do the whole positive reframe thing.  Can I stop whining for a few minutes and attempt to consider that having a back injury is not something to kvetch about? Perhaps it is even a wonderful growth opportunity in disguise?

But no worries, fellow crankypants skeptics. I'll excuse you for a moment if you want to step outside and barf. (Just remember for the sake of your coworkers or loved ones to mop up afterwards, and be sure to brush your teeth).

The weird thing is...  this is not just some a total bullshit attempt to cheer myself up.  I can actually see both sides: When you want to be active and are sidelined, injuries suck! And yet injuries can also lead to really freakin' good stuff.

The trick, I'm thinking, is deciding whether to cope with injuries in Typical Dumbass Ways, or try to be more Clever and Sneaky about it. Having tried plenty of the former techniques, I thought it might be time to experiment with something different for a change.

Whoops!

Photo: Noel A. Tanner

So I had one of those "Oh f@#k!" moments this week at the gym.

I'd actually been having a great workout, fueled by excessive amounts of caffeine and awesome tunes, and I'd cruised through my cardio and most of my weights in fine spirits.

I'd just finished doing some shoulder presses and was returning the weights to the weight rack when, like a total dumbass, I broke one of the fundamental Gym Safety Rules:

Bend Your Knees, Not Your Waist, When Lifting or Lowering Heavy Weights!

Duh. I know this. But I got careless. I bent mostly from the waist to put the weights back and not enough from the knees and then....



Owww. Followed by the sinking uh oh feeling you get when you know you've "done something" to your back.

As it happens, I've had some previous experience with this sort of dumbassery before. I've had a couple "episodes" where I could barely move for a few days, and the recovery period lasted almost 6 months. (A doctor speculated that I probably have a herniated disk, but since I'm not gonna do anything surgical even if it's true, I've never had an MRI to confirm).

The bad news about this history is that I knew this most recent injury could end up being a Big Freakin' Uncomfortable, Inconvenient Deal. But the good news was, my previous cluelessness had taught me some helpful lessons on what to do next!

And rather than waste perfectly good stupidity, I thought I might pass on some advice to those who have not yet been through the "Acck, My Back!" experience before.

IMPORTANT NOTE: I am a lazy blogger, not a doctor. Consult an actual physician if you have injured or are preparing to injure yourself.

So you've heard of the acronym "RICE?" Well, it's a helpful reminder about what you're supposed to do in the wake of a painful and possibly debilitating sports injury. But it leaves some important things out.

Let's elaborate a bit, shall we? Now while I'm generally a proponent of whole grains, I think this situation calls for some WHITE RICE. So here's what to do immediately after you've injured your back:

W: Whine.

Whether this is going to be a couple of uncomfortable hours or many months of a chronic injury, you are only going to have a few short minutes of optimal sympathy from your family and friends. Might as well take advantage of it while the injury's fresh! Chronic injuries may be painful, but no one wants to hear about them. So milk it while you can.

H: Halt

After you have hurt yourself, STOP YOUR WORKOUT. This seems so obvious that no sensible human needs to be told this, right?

Well, the first time I injured my back, I clenched my teeth and finished the remainder of my workout, because I had things left on my list! I avoided only the back exercises.

Do not be this dumb! Whenever you've clearly "done something" to your back (or your calf or thigh or neck or whatever)... Adios. You're done for the day.

I: Ibuprofen or other anti-inflammatories.

Obviously not if you can't take these because of allergies, sensitivities, stomach problems, or other reasons. But my big mistake the first time around was not keeping the inflammation under control because it seemed more "virtuous" to keep the pills to a minimum. When I finally went to a doctor, I discovered that I'd needlessly prolonged my symptoms and could have returned to normal functioning much more quicklly if I'd just taken a few pills.

T: Teach Yourself Injury Prevention Techniques

Once you've hurt yourself, all those warnings you've been blowing off about strengthening certain muscles and stretching others and moving and sitting properly? These suddenly seem a lot more relevant and important. The trick, however, is not just to do these things for a while and then start blowing them off again once the injury fades from your mind.

Alas, it seems I have not mastered this "trick".

E: Experiment With Body Positions That Don't Hurt as Much

When you're back's messed up, you may not be able to just plonk yourself into your regular chair, or sleep in your normal position. You may feel dorky standing up when others are sitting, or tilting back in your chair, or lying down for a day when you have things that need to be done, but try to do what you can to irritate your injury as little as possible.

Your injury needs to heal, and it's not going to do that very well if you're putting constant pressure on it. Tell your boss to go to hell if he doesn't like you lying on the conference room table during staff meetings.

Er... or maybe not.

R: Rest

Seriously, take it easy. Depending on how severe your injury is, you may need to hunker down completely for a day or so and it might then be a long gradual easing back into activity before you can resume all the hard ass stuff you did before.

But "rest" does not mean remaining immobile for weeks! They used to advise people to stay in bed for absurd lengths of time with back injuries; now it's much more about walking around and getting gentle exercise back into your life, which can actually help healing.

I: Ice!!!

This seems to help me a LOT. Right after I injured myself this time, I went home and used my Moji. Even though it's designed for knees, it worked great! (If you don't have one, ice or bags of frozen vegetables work too). I iced 20 minutes at a time, 5 or 6 times that first day, and that plus the ibuprofen really seemed to calm things down.

C: Compression.

I have absolutely nothing interesting to say about this, but it's supposed to be a good thing when you have an injury.

E: Elevation?

Really? This is part of the standard "RICE" advice, but how the hell do you elevate your back above your heart? Are you supposed to spend the day upside down? Instead, I think they must mean Elevate Your Mood!

So if your doctor doesn't prescribe painkillers with any entertaining recreational potential, I discovered that a big glass of merlot works very well as a muscle relaxant, pain reliever, and mood elevator. NOTE: This is probably not actually medically advisable, so check with your doctor first and don't try to sue Crabby if you burn holes in your stomach or start seeing green unicorns flying through your living room. And always check labels of any drugs you are taking to see whether you can safely combine them with alcohol.

The Happy Ending:

Turns out this was not one of those Bad Back Episodes; I discovered pretty quickly that it must have been a minor strain. I have kept moving but have avoided anything heavy duty; I'm about to ease back into my normal routine but will be very careful.

Where You Can Get Actual Medical Information:

Mayo Clinic has a whole bunch of information on back injuries. (And specially for you hypochondriacs in need of something new to worry about, there's a section on rare and serious conditions related to back aches).

And Because it's Friday

I have a little extra silliness to squeeze in at the end of this post!

First up, the weekly Juice Quiz! Don't worry, this week it's only one question:

Why does Crabby have so few friends?


1. She has an unconventional theory about personal hygiene that she'd love to tell you about;

2. Crabby does not actually exist; she is a software program dreamed up by the folks at Google to subtly dissuade people from getting fit so they'll spend all day at their computers instead;

3. Crabby has an irrational fear of a common communication device;

4. Crabby has all the friends she needs! So what if they all live inside her head?

The answer is revealed here . (Oh, and there's a new giveaway too, this time it's one of those cute little Flip Camcorders.)

Pity The Mutants

And next up, our pal Pubsgal mentioned a funny website in her comment yesterday, and I went there and spent quite a bit of time giggling over it. It's called Photoshop Disasters, and it collects examples of commercial photoshop abuses, both subtle and not-so-subtle. I couldn't help feeling sorry for those models with freakishly big heads or long limbs or short necks, extra or missing fingers, or heads screwed on backwards. But the mutant children are particularly poignant.

Photo: Photoshop Disasters

Have a great holiday weekend, and try not to injure your back or let your arms melt into your pool toys!

Don't want to get shorted? Then exercise!

This is a short post. Probably because I'm short.
(Height, attention span, patience...)

Do you realize that tall people get to weigh more? When you're short, you can't carry off a few extra pounds they way tall people can.

That's another reason to exercise. So that you don't get any shorter.


Don't look at me like that. I can back that up.

To quote the illustrious Dr. Mirkin, "the bones of your spine are separated by pads called discs. As you age, these discs dry out and become smaller. However, regular exercise compresses and relaxes these discs as you move up and down. This helps to keep the discs from shrinking and maintains your height.

"Regular exercise also helps to strengthen bones and keep them from bending or being crushed. One study from Israel showed that men who exercise regularly lose only half as much height as men who never exercise -- just 2.6 centimeters compared with 5.5 centimeters."

As Crabby pointed out yesterday, the older you are, the more perilous your sense of balance. This is not the time of life to start learning how to wear platform shoes. Plus, if they're out of fashion you're going to look pretty silly.

Yes, one day even this will be out of fashion...

Do you feel shorted by a short post? The long and the short of it is that this study encourages me to get moving, and I hoped it might encourage you too.

Do you feel more motivated to work out now?

Would that be 'stretch'-ing the truth?

Or do you merely 'long' for me to stop with the bad puns?

Photos:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hobbs_images/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

http://www.flickr.com/photos/skullyfm/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Cranky Fitness Declares A New Holiday!

No, this new holiday is not in honor of taxes being due. That's a sucky reason for a holiday.

Nor is it a celebration of this being the Two Year Anniversary of Cranky Fitness.

Photo: Valerie Reneé

But it is somewhat related to the fact I've been blogging for two solid years--and have spent a boatload of hours in front of a computer monitor, nearly motionless and hunched over writing about the need for us all to go out and get some exercise.

So here at Cranky Fitness we are rechristening April 15 as:

National Get Off Your Ass Day!!

Seriously, I don't need you sitting on me all day.
Photo credit: coscurro

Now this doesn't mean you have to go out and do anything strenuous (though that might be very good for you).

Here's all you need to do to celebrate this new Holiday: if you are sitting in a chair and have been stationary for more than say, a half hour: STAND UP! STRETCH FOR A SECOND! YES, THAT MEANS YOU, MAGGOT!

Whoops, don't know what got into me!

OK, you can sit down now. That wasn't so hard, was it?

Over at That's Fit, Bev directed me to a very helpful Chicago Tribune article detailing the many reasons that sitting in a chair for long periods of time is bad for you.

Among them... "Sitting puts nearly twice the stress on the spine as standing; slouching while you sit increases the pressure even more." Also, "the disks in our vertebrae are important shock absorbers. When we're locked in one position, we're starving the disks of nutrients...there's no vascular or nerve supply to the disks; they get their nutrition through movement...if we're not moving, everything stagnates."

And who wants a stagnant spine? There were a whole bunch of other bad things too, like blod clots and flabby butts.

Suggestions for preventing problems include simple things like standing up every 15 to 30 minutes and clasping your hands behind your back, as well as more challenging endeavors like switching to a treadmill desk.

Now normally I might plagiarize pass on more of these suggestions, but you know what? I think I'll keep this a short post for once. Instead, go check out the relevant articles at That's Fit or the Tribune. Or better yet, take Rupal's awesome cartoon diagnostic posture test over at 101 Exercises!

Because I'm going to celebrate the Cranky Fitness second Blogiversary, as well as National Get Off Your Ass day, by... getting off my own ass and out of my desk chair for a good part of the day!

Note: thank you ALL, awesome readers, commenters, guest posters, followers, Stumblers, friendly bloggers, most wonderful co-blogger Merry Sunshine, and everyone else, for a wonderful two years!!!!

Oh, and speaking of Merry, don't worry, I haven't had her kidnapped and stashed away just because she's been consistently writing better posts than mine and showing me up. I'm used to that. She's been on a blog break and should be back soon.

So do any of you find yourselves sitting for long periods of time, or are you pretty good about taking little stand-up-and-stretch breaks every now and then?

Confessions of a weight-lifting wimp

Note: the names have been changed to protect the pusillanimous. Any resemblance between the narrator of this story and the blogger writing this post is absolutely, positively, and in all ways completely and utterly spurious and coincidental, and any insinuations of a putative resemblance will most probably be referred to the Cranky Fitness lawyers, who haven't been fed for awhile and are definitely not vegetarians. So there.

Insert stereotypical lawyer joke here... if you dare...

The "back" story

Where I work, there's a break room with a filtered water dispenser. They call it a "water cooler," though the water's not all that cool. Still, the guy comes and delivers huge clear plastic jugs that weigh ... well, a lot. People wander in to the break room and fill up their tea cups or water bottles and wander off to pretend to work. As the day progresses, the amount of water available gets lower and lower until it's gone. It's like some kind of lottery, to see who's going to be the one faced with the empty water bottle.

If you lose the water cooler lottery, you have to replace the jug of water with a full one. Full ones are heavy. They are also on the floor.

To replace the empty water jug, you have to pick up a full one and then, while holding it at waist level, rotate the heavy jug 180 degrees and place it on a pedestal. I tried doing this once, long ago. The lifting-the-heavy-jug-from-the-floor part went fine. When I tried to rotate the jug, which involves the use of my arms, my back convinced me it was a very bad idea. I figured it was because I was a wimp. So, I played the feminine card, waiting until someone of the male persuasion walked by and batting my eyelashes plaintively until he replaced the water jug for me.

The moment of truth

That worked fine until one day when I was waiting for a handy man to walk past, and this tiny female co-worker walked into the break room. "Oh, is the water out?" she asked, and quickly upended a full jug and put it in place.

Now, not only is this woman several inches shorter than my 5'3, she compounds this offense by being very nice, very thin, very fine-boned and several months pregnant. I was put in my place, but good. (Not by the very nice co-worker, by my conscience.) It was time to find some exercise that would strengthen my back.

Push ups don't strengthen the back

Fast forward a few months. I've completed the 100 push up challenge, albeit in the modified 'girly' form. (Hey, I do what I can do.) And lo, there came a day when the water jug was completely empty, as was the break room. "Hell," I told myself. "I can lift this body 100 times with my arms; I can raise this water jug. So I did. And my back complained for several days afterward.

So what can I do to strengthen my back?

The 200 sit up challenge would strength the muscles around the waist/abdomen area, but what hurts is higher up, above the waist where the ribs start. What challenge would help with that?

The back says "Ow!" right where the polka dots meet the skin :(

I've looked at weight lifting sites. I even looked at the Body for Life book. Got kinda scared. I mean, all the people who take the Body for Life 12 Week challenge do end up fitter by the end, but they also seem inexplicably to become very blond and tan -- to the point of being orange. That scares me. People may laugh, but Tanorexia is becoming prevalent among the celebrity set these days. And where the celebs lead, people follow. I'm expecting next to open a magazine and read that the new trend is... orange babies...



Are there any exercises out there that are specifically designed to strengthen the part of the back that's just above the waist?

If so, could someone share them with me? Without charging $24.99 a month in three easy installments?