Yesterday, I went in to my Dr.'s office for a follow up appointment to take a look at how the surgery went on my arm. He said "your biceps tendon was a shredded mess. It was an acute rupture of the tendon, but you had chronic dysfunction at the shoulder joint that caused the tendon to shred." I sat there and digested what that all meant. So, I had been having issues with that shoulder for years and the build up of training that I was doing prior to the Games was just enough to speed up the rupture. Whenever I did a muscle up in a workout, the first couple of reps always made my left shoulder feel really uncomfortable. The dull pain would go away a few reps later, so I never thought of what effect that pain was doing to my shoulder, or biceps tendon. Now I know.
As a result of the surgery, I cannot run for 3 more weeks. I am unable to have use of the arm to lift anything heavier than a cup of coffee for 8 more weeks. The good news is that I can start working out my right arm. I have had plenty of experience putting together training programs for my athletes that have had various surgeries on their extremities, whether it's knees, wrists, shoulders. I will now put that experience to use on my least favorite client....myself. There won't be any P.T. I have free reign there. As soon as I can start running, I'll have a lot more variety on the workouts I can do. One arm rowing, one arm Airdyne, here I come.
My coach suggested that I use this period of time to explore my diet and figure out what works optimally for me. I'm going to delve into the finer points of what I eat and how it affects different parts of my health. Not just the aesthetic. This should be interesting.
Workout #1 starts today.