So, crap

I'm really kind of annoyed at myself.  Strike that. I'm VERY annoyed at myself.

I let ego get in the way in the weight room, and have messed up my shoulder.  I feel stupid and I think that hurts more than the shoulder itself. 

I really let the aims of this program get to me and perhaps cloud my judgement a bit.  Yes, what I did is my responsibility but when you're encouraged to lift as much as you can and there's nothing external telling you "Uh, genius?  You were using plenty of weight ten, twenty pounds ago - back off!" I guess shit happens. 

I don't know exactly what is wrong, although my guess is a strain to the intraspinatus and possibly some of its neighbors.  I do know I have pain mostly in the upper back over/under the shoulder blade extending in to the arm and neck, plus weakness in the shoulder and left arm.  I believe the cause has been allowing my shoulder to wing out during pressing horizontal pressing activities.  Vertical press is also affected.  Horizontal pull doesn't seem to be affected, nor does vertical pull. 

So, I know what I should do, and I'm not thrilled.  Yeah.  Rest it.  Stop Max. Strength.  OK, the real answer is to go see someone about it, but that's not going to happen just yet.  It gets time off and if it doesn't improve, at least in terms of decreasing pain, I'm going to be seeing a doc about some pre-grad school vaccinations in about ten days, anyway - I'll bring it up then. 

This really pisses me off.  It'll piss me off even more if this doesn't just turn out to be a lesson learned and does turn into a chronic thing.  So - I say to myself - it's time to do the smart thing, and resist the damned urge to finish the rotation, no matter what, because that's what I do.  Pressing it and delaying healing (at best) or making it worse IS STUPID.   It's not worth it.  It's really not.  One look at the shoulder patients I see every day at work tells me it's. not. worth it.

Why is this so fucking hard???  After all, and on the bright side, we seem to be having an early spring and NOT doing this program will give me leave to start running at will.  Given the degree of shoulder weakness I'm experiencing (I can't even do a pushup), it would surprise me greatly if this won't need a good solid four to six weeks or more of recovery time, and I think that's more of an interruption than I can take without restarting this program, since the phases are progressive.  In answer to my question, this is hard because it kills my experiment, at least for now, barring some miraculous recovery.

*Sigh.  So.  Time to reassess and make a new plan.  This is supposed to be an "easy" week at the gym, plus my usual schedule is going to be adjusted some due to my working a 13 hour day on Monday (hey, I'm not complaining, just noting, since it moves my rest day around), so I will probably do some experimenting to see exactly what I can/cannot do in terms of leg exercises and hence what compromises I have to make for now.  If I can tolerate weights for step ups, lunges, etc., I think I'll be fine.  Not sure about squats/which squats.  Full deads are probably a very stupid idea.  Worst comes to worst, I'll have to use machines for a few weeks.  UGH.  For upper body it's all rehab exercises within pain free tolerance/ability. 

Well, this sucks.  But - I guess it's time to just get on with things and stop feeling sorry for myself.  Felt good to write this all out.  Seems to me whenever I feel like shutting this blog down, something pops up and I really need to write it all out to make sense of it to myself.  I could well do that in private, but who knows?  Maybe this will help someone out there who finds him/herself in the same situation.  If I can get over myself enough to do the right thing, so can you!