A Pain in the Neck 2

You'll never guess what... I pulled my neck again.

That's right! Remember me bragging last week about how much rest I had taken? How smart and sensible I was being with my workouts? How confident I was about ensuring it was fully healed before returning to trap workouts? I mean I even talked about how the worst possible thing would be returning to heavy workouts too soon and pulling the muscle again...

Well in spite of how hard I tried, and how much I bragged, I still messed up. The annoying thing is that I had only done one back session in two weeks and even when I wasn't working out my traps, it still went.

Now, I understand that the muscle will still contract during other exercises, and even when just moving weights around to prep for a set. But this was during a chest exercise - cable flies - where I should never be engaging my traps.

Maybe this is not only a lesson about rest and recovery, but also about form...

I've always thought my form was pretty good, but when a muscle you're not even targeting gets injured during an exercise, you're definitely doing something wrong.

So, I'm back to craning my neck round to cross the road and lying flat for most of my evenings.

I know I said this last time, but I am actually being sensible.

I took 3 days off after the re-injury, and I've vowed to only train arms, legs and cardio, and importantly, only do exercises that isolate those muscles. This means no bars across my shoulders - so no squats - and no exercises like overhead rope extensions (where prepping for a set involves moving weight around while I reposition my back - not smart).

I reckon it'll be roughly a month or so before I tackle anything shoulder or back related.

But to look on the bright side, at least I'll walk away with massive legs and arms (hopefully) and much much better cardio too.

Lesson learned. Maybe...