This morning I had a Consultant’s appointment to get the result of my MRI and Arthrogram for my shoulder injury. Previously I’d been diagnosed with a PASTA lesion, which is a tear of the supraspinatus rotator cuff tendon, and the MRI was to look for a SLAP tear as well, which is where the cartilage cup inside the shoulder socket (the Labrum) which connects to the bicep tendon, comes away. Here are the findings:

1. The PASTA lesion that he identified with an earlier ultra-sound didn’t show up on the MRI.
2. I have a “not obvious” 1.5cm SLAP tear.
3. Also there’s a small Inferior Glenohumeral Ligament (IGHL) tear.

The PASTA tear may or may not be there and the SLAP tear may not be as big as 1.5cm (which is small anyway) as he said that MRI’s are not great at showing up tears (missing maybe 40% of tears) and where they do, they tend to exaggerate. It seems there’s nothing that can be done about the IGHL tear.

At 39 I’m too old for a normal suture and anchor SLAP tear repair!

However the big news was that apparently at 39 the likelihood of success of normal SLAP tear repair (suture and anchor the labrum back into place) is not good, and so he would do a bicep tenodesis instead, which is where they simply cut the bicep tendon away from the Labrum and anchor it to the humerus (the upper arm bone) instead and bypass the shoulder altogether. That doesn’t sound like much fun!

But it gets worse as the bicep tenodesis has risks of life long shoulder stiffness, or frozen shoulder syndrome and that’s on top of the more obvious risks of infection, the operation simply failing or the tendon rupturing. Either way my Consultant reckons that recovering 75% pre-injury capacity from a bicep tenodesis would be a good result, and that’s after a year or 2 recovery period.

I’m able to do more and more things, e.g. push-ups and burpees

The issue is that I’ve been careful not to make my shoulder injury worse and through exercise and some home base physio, my shoulder has improved to the point that I’m 99% pain free. In fact this morning before my appointment, I actually couldn’t find any shoulder or arm movement that caused me any pain! Now it’s true that I’ve only been going to the gym say once a week, and only been doing a small subset of exercises, e.g. nothing overhead, but I have found that I’m able to do more and more things, e.g. I can now do push-ups where I couldn’t 4 months ago, and I can do burpees too where I couldn’t before. And a weekend full of martial arts recently didn’t give me too many problems.

So this leaves me with something of a dilemma. Do I elect not to have the surgery and keep up with my own recovery and stay 99% pain free through normal life, but maybe will never be able to do some exercises or workouts (no more butterfly pullups for example!)?

Or do I go for the surgery and get a proper repair done, albeit my bicep tendon now won’t be connected to the normal place, but after enduring a long recovery period, there’s still a significant risk that it’ll make the situation much worse than it is now?

I’m to get my butt back down the gym and see what my limits are

It’s a tough decision. Fortunately the delays of the NHS mean that I don’t have to decide today. The current plan is that I’ve booked in the for the surgery, but as there’s a 4-5 month waiting list anyway, I’m to get my butt back down the gym and see what my limits are, starting slowly and working up of course. I have 4 months then to decide if my current ability is sufficient for my needs for the rest of my life, and I suppose if it gets worse again later, I can always get the surgery then.

These things are sent to try us, as they say. But as my father pointed out when I told him: “At least you’re not coming back from Afghanistan with an arm or leg missing!”

Given my rotator cuff tear of the supraspinatus I very nearly cancelled going on this weekend’s CrossFit Olympic Weightlifting certification. Boy am I glad I didn’t! I of course had heard that Coach Mike Burgener was, apart from being quite a character, a great Olympic weight lifting coach, but that doesn’t do the man justice.

To be honest I’m rather struggling for the right words to describe him, without sounding like I’ve been caught in the cult of Burgener! That would be wrong though because Coach B certainly doesn’t have the ego for it. In fact one of the first things he said was that what he teaches isn’t the only way, it’s just his way. Frequently throughout the 2 days he reiterated that many things he was saying were not cast in stone (my words) but would be right for 90% of athletes. This was backed up with videos showing world class weightlifters using differing techniques. It’s all too easy for experts in any field to tout the line: “It’s my way, or the high way!” which is not something Mike Burgener does and you can only respect him more for it.

When the arms bend, the power ends.

One thing that surprised me was the amount of work that was done with just a PVC pipe. But this is a reflection of Mike Burgener’s focus on fundamentals approach. After all, what’s the point of practising the wrong thing? As he said: only perfect practice makes perfect. So the entirety of day 1 was spent on snatch drills with the PVC pipe. Don’t make the mistake of thinking this a bad thing however, it’s a very good thing, and there was plenty of opportunity for people to lift weights under Coach’s expert eye over lunch. Indeed many people pulled off impressive jumps in their personal best lifts, and yes, I’m very jealous I wasn’t able to be one of them!

Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.

Day 2 saw a review of the snatch work from day 1, then clean and jerk drills, this time with an oly bar, though the most I saw being used was 50kg. Sadly I couldn’t participate in about half of the jerk drills due to my torn supraspinatus but that’s no bad thing either, as I was able to focus on my coaching skills, which was the main point of the cert after all. It is frustrating to know that there are so many mistakes in my own form now that I can not only identify, but know how to correct, and yet it may be a year or more before I can work on them. That’s life though.

I’m not going to go on too much, other than to say, if you have any interesting in Olympic weightlifting, as either a weightlifter yourself or as a coach, you can’t go wrong attending one of Coach Burgener’s CrossFit weightlifting certs. Well worth the cash. And of course you come away with a shiny certificate like this one, which is always nice!

Yay Burpees!

For no good reason, other than to learn a new skill, I made learning to do butterfly pullups one of my goals for 2011. If you’re not sure what I mean, these are butterfly pull ups (or sometimes called cyclic pullups, or butterfly kips):

So when an open skill session came up at the gym, I spent 1/2 an hour working on getting them. At the end of the session I could maybe 3 reasonable butterfly pull ups in a row and felt things had gone quite well. It was the following morning however, when I couldn’t even scratch my head with my left arm due to the pain my shoulder, that I realised all had not gone as well as I’d thought.

Still I’ve had shoulder tweaks before and always 4-6 weeks or rest has sorted it out, sadly not this time. I haven’t trained in 4 months now, and that sucks. I had to cancel a CrossFit Gymnastics cert I was booked on, and now with the Olympic Weightlifting cert coming up, things were not looking good. So it was off to the quacks to see what’s what. Long story short, I have a sub-surface / partial rotator cuff tear as diagnosed by ultrasound. This is not me, but a pic I found on the net which looks exactly like my ultrasound:

You can see the tear as the black area above the humerus (upper arm bone) and below the rotator cuff (a set of 4 tendons that hold the shoulder in place). The main symptom is a lot of pain when doing a very specific movements, typically with my arm extended out horizontally, e.g. reaching to pick up a drink (curses!).

After showing the consultant the video above showing a butterfly pullup, he told me that the injury is very similar to those suffered by rock climbers who loose their footing and their weight drops onto their shoulders, which typically means I also may have a SLAP Lesion (Superior Labral tear from Anterior to Posterio) which is another kind of tendon tear. This possibility is supported by 2 other symptoms: a dull toothache like ache, and trouble sleeping when lying on my left side. This means I need an MRI to check for a labral tear too. A rotator cuff tear is bad enough, but a labrum tear would be seriously bad news that definitely requires surgery!

The good news is that the rotator cuff tear is not full thickness (a bit of internet research (we’re all internet Doctors, no?) puts a name to it: PASTA Lesion, which means Partial Articular Supraspinatus Tendon Avulsion) and as the quack said, it’s “not a gross injury” so there’s no reason not to go on the CrossFit Olympic weightlifting cert. The chance to learn from coach Burgener (US Olympic weightlifting Coach CrossFit subject matter expert) and is not to be missed. However I doubt I’ll be taking part in many WODs and certainly not going for anything close to a max lift (not that 4 months of no training was going to help that anyway!). I’ll have to get myself back down the gym and workout what the hell I can / can’t do before next weekend.

In summary then, I’m rather unhappy about butterfly pull ups. I was just beginning to get my mojo back after last year and this has not helped. To be honest, had I realised the injury risk they posed, I probably would never have tried them. I’m knocking on 40 and have no aspirations for major athletic improvement. I train to not suck at life and getting injured makes me suck at life! So unless you’re a competitive CrossFitter (i.e. CrossFit *is* your sport and you have CrossFit Games aspirations) the butterfly pullup is just not worth the injury risk in my opinion.

In the new year, it’s never a bad thing I think to look back at what you’ve achieved last year to objectively decide if you think it’s been a good year or not. It’s something I try to do every year, and I did last year.

To be honest I felt last year was pretty torrid, at least that’s how I felt. But I put that down to doing a job I wasn’t enjoying and living away from home all week. In fact, if I look at what I achieved last year in terms of personal advancement, 2010 was a pretty damn good year! So, in chronological order:

March 2010 – British Masters Weight Lifting Champion

It took a couple of years of trying (I came second in 2009) but I did manage to become a British Masters Champion in a recognised Olympic sport, which is pretty cool. There’s some video here. Of course focusing on the weightlifting, my CrossFit and all round fitness suffered. And if I’m honest, despite following a Hungarian weightlifting training program, I got pretty bored with weightlifting. It’s just simply not as much fun as CrossFit workouts or exercises!

June 2010 – Personal Defence Readiness (PDR) Fundamentals Coach

This was a life changing event for me. Not only has my own feeling of personal safety gone through the roof, I am now helping others learn how to stay safe whilst out and about, and that’s a precious feeling indeed. Already one of my students survived a real life abduction attempt whilst on holiday in Bulgaria! (I hope to get a video interview of that up later this month.)

June 2010 – BWLA Level 1 Assistant Club Coach

June was a busy month. After all the Olympic weight lifting I’ve done, it seemed silly not to get a recognised coaching qualification from the British Weight Lifting Association (BWLA). You can see a review of the BWLA course here.

August 2010 – CrossFit Kids Trainer

It was an absolute pleasure to have the whole Martin family over from CrossFitKids.com to put on a cert in Manchester. They are a great bunch and a real testament to what CrossFit has to offer the young generation. It really spurred me on to upping the training my daughter gets and as a CrossFit Kids Trainer myself now, I am better placed to help her.

October 2010 – Self Defence Federation Level 1 Instructor

Needing some UK insurance for the PDR classes that Karl and I put on on a Monday evening, I joined the Self Defence Federation, which is now a division of the All Style Martial Arts Association (ASMAA) and became a Level 1 Instructor in Basic Self-Defence.

October 2010 – CrossFit Level 1 Trainer

Actually this is a bit misleading. I became a CrossFit Level 1 trainer over 3 years ago at the first CrossFit certification ever outside of North America, and personally attended by Greg Glassman. However since then, they have introduced a test to the certification process. Not only that, they back-dated the requirement to take the test! So I had to take and pass a test for a course that I’d done 3 years ago! Not a trivial exercise I’m sure you can imagine, but pass I did, so I now have a spangly new CrossFit Level 1 Trainers certificate with another 5 years on it.

So all in all, it appears to have been a rather productive year and I can’t really complain now can I? It’s important to note however, that the goal of life is not to simply badge collect. By which I mean, certificates, diplomas, titles, qualifications etc are nice and all that, but ultimately labels are meaningless and the pursuit of them for their own sake is a vanity I’m glad I have little of. This post and the certificates I’ve collected tell a story of personal development and that’s what I enjoy. I don’t expect to ever stop learning, even the day I die, I’ll be doing something I’ve never done before!

Excitingly 2011 looks like being another good year for personal development too. On top of my New Year’s Resolutions, coming up this year already is:

• Another PDR certification, and training with Tony Blauer (this was last weekend, and was awesome all over again!)
• A CrossFit Gymnastics certification
• A CrossFit Olympic weightlifting certification

It’s going to be another fun year!

This morning’s Crossfit workout was rough: Murph. Which is:

• 1 Mile run
• 100 Pull ups
• 200 Push ups
• 300 Squats
• 1 Mile run

And if that’s not bad enough, it’s all done with a 10kg weight vest! At least you can partition the gymnastic moves as you see fit. Most people do Cindy rounds: 5, 10, 15 of the 3.

Well that’s the “as prescribed” workout. I’ve seriously neglected my training this year and am not nearly as fit as I was a year or 2 ago. Fortunately Crossfit scales to everyone’s ability, so I did 1/2 Murph with no weight vest. Even that still took 38 mins 11 seconds and I suspect it’ll be a few days yet before my pecks forgive me the 100 push ups (press ups if you’re English that is).

Certainly I want to be on form for Grace tomorrow. I’m planning on popping down to Crossfit Tameside for the Barbells for Boobs Charity event (Grace is an all olympic lifting workout and it’s going to be done for Breast Cancer).

Not to leave the boys out, November is being officially renamed to Movember in which, in the aid of Prostate Cancer, members of Crossfit3D will seeing who can grow the best moustache possible in one month! Do you reckon I could manage this in a month?

I’ve not had any facial hair for years, so it should be fun. I plan on doing a daily photo and stitching it all together as an animated gif when I’m done. Tee hee. It might end up more like this though, leather gear is mandatory of course:

Timothy Ferriss certainly seems to think so, in fact he claims to have done it:

If you’re not aware, Tim Ferris is author of the best selling book: the “Four Hour Work Week” (click here for the US version) which I have just finished reading and can say is a very inspirational book. I may just flip back to the start and re-read it immediately again, which would be a first for me.

Anyway, back to the point. As I said, Tim claims to have put on the muscle shown in the pictures (along with lose all his body hair and gain a tan! lol) in just 4 weeks. He says that his own study of muscular hypertrophy led him to:

“Follow Arthur Jones’ general recommendations for one-set-to-failure from the little-known Colorado Experiment, but with lower frequency (maximum of twice per week) and with at least 3 minutes between exercises.”

However I suspect the key factoid about how he did it is tied up in this step:

“Perform every repetition with a 5/5 cadence (5 seconds up, 5 seconds down) to eliminate momentum and ensure constant load.”

Which (I think) sounds very similar to the cadence prescriptions defined on the Optimum Performance Training blog which I know some Crossfitters are following, with great strength results.

Which brings me nicely to the germain issue, at least from my perspective: is this sarcoplasmic muscular hypertrophy or myofibrillar muscular hypertrophy? To be clear, sarcoplasmic muscled growth increases the size of your muscles, but does not increase their strength. Weird I know but true. Whereas myofibrillar muscle growth increases muscle size, but has a corresponding increase in strength.

Personally I don’t have a lot of interest in increasing muscle size. I’m not a body builder and have no intention of wasting my life working out for aesthetic reasons only. I’d rather be thin and strong, than big and (relatively) weak. So it’s a shame that Tim hasn’t supplied any strength figures.

But all that aside, is it even possible to put on such a huge amount of muscle in such a short period of time? Tim models himself as an exceptional person, which is his selling point, and maybe he did it. Certainly I’m not going to discount his story out of hand, but I doubt I’ll be following in his footsteps to see for myself. Would you?

I completed the British Weight Lifting Association’s (BWLA) Assistant Club Coaches’ Course this weekend, and thought it would be nice to write up a few things about it.

It was a 2 day course, all day Saturday and Sunday, and teaches you how to coach the basic Olympic Weightlifting lifts, specifically the Snatch, Clean and Jerk. Whilst it is predominantly a practical course, it doffs a cap to health and safety obviously, a bit on stretching, warm-ups and downs and scheduling (or programming if you prefer that term). As I said though, it is mostly a practical course with some time watching demos of the lifts, plenty of time to personally practice the lifts in small groups of 3 or 4, and a lot of opportunity to coach others.

In terms of assessment, there was a practical test where we had to stand up in front of the group and go though the BWLA method for teaching the Power Clean, including a personal demonstration and also coaching a student. Additionally there’s a 90 minute written exam at the end, which has been sent off for marking, so I’ll have to wait to hear back on how I did on that. It didn’t escape my notice that I was the last to finish the exam! The point being, that this isn’t just a “Certificate of Attendance” course; t is assessed both practically and academically.

We were very lucky to have as our instructors, 2 very experienced lifters who have both lifted on the international stage and refereed at a world class level: Suzy Trebillock and Eddie Halstead. It was a privilege to benefit from their experience.

It was a useful course and I do recommend it. As a Level 1 course it gives the basics of how to breakdown and teach the Olympic lifts. There is a follow on Level 2 course, which is the full BWLA Club Coaches’ course which is over 2 weekends, but that is more theoretical, looking more a physiology and programming rather than practical hands on coaching.

I’m looking forward this weekend to attending the British Weight Lifting Association Assistant Club Coaches Olympic weightlifting course, which is being hosted by Crossfit Manchester.

Whilst I’m not sure I have any specific ambitions to become an Olympic weightlifting coach, it’s certainly a skill that’s worth having, and as the course is happening on my doorstep it’d be pretty stupid not to take advantage of it. It should be a good couple of days. I’m hoping that learning to teach the Snatch and Clean & Jerk, will also have a knock on affect on my own performance and ability to coach myself, as and when I find myself lifting on my own

It’s also possibly going to be an opportunity to use my new Pulse LiveScribe smart pen. I mentioned these marvellous devices a month or so ago and finally got round to buying one. It’s fair to say that everyone I’ve shown it to so far has been suitably impressed and can immediately see its appeal and a myriad of uses. I predict that in 10 years time, every student will have one, maybe even every salesman and every manager. I can honestly see a market that stretches to 100M+ in size. It truly is that revolutionary. I’ll let you know how I get on with it.

Here’s the video I took at the British Masters last week:

Sadly I only got the first half as the video camera died half way through, grrrr.

Thanks for all the messages of support, I can confirm that I did win my category at the 2010 BWLA British Masters Olympic Weightlifting championship finals this weekend.

I was expecting to be lifting against Anthony (Tony) Down, from the Empire Club in Bristol, but it turned out that he came in overweight for the 77kg category at 78kg, which left me lifting all on my own. (I weighed in comfortably under at 75.9 kg.) All I needed to do was get a total and I was home and dry. To be clear then, here are the relevant rules:

1. To qualify for to be able to compete, you must lift the qualifying total in a BWLA officiated (3 judge panel) competition in the previous 12 months. I did this when I lifted a 165kg total in the Northern Masters Weightlifting Competition in 2009, which is the qualifying standard for Mens Group 1 (35-39) in the 77kg body weight category.
2. On the day then, you must open within 15kg of the qualifying total, so I had to open with a minimum of 150kg.  I opted for easy openers of 65 Snatch and 90kg Clean & Jerk.  I could/should have opened 5kg higher on each (70 and 95) which was my plan had I been facing Tony, but there was no point risking it.  Especially after my recent shambolic training performances.
3. You need to get at least one Snatch and at least one Clean and Jerk to make a total.

That’s it, all I needed to do was get my openers and I was the winner.  Sadly I started the video camera too early and it ran out of juice (I may try to send it back as a full charge only lasted 70 minutes!) so I only got a video of the snatches, which I may upload at some point.  I’ve pondered whether this default win detracts from the occasion? But the way I see it, it means I actually won it back when I lifted 165 at the Northern Open, as I was the only person (apart from Tony) who made the qualifying weight, I just didn’t know it yet!

The snatches went very well and I easily power snatched the 65, then the 70 and finally did a full squat snatch (though had to chase it across the platform!) for 75. Which considering my body weight of 75.9, was less than a bag of sugar away from a body weight snatch. To be honest, now with hindsight, I regret not opening at 70 as I’d originally planned, as I reckon there was a snatch PB in the offing (current PB is 77).

C&Js didn’t go quite so well.  The 90kg opener was trivial, but then I made a mistake and jumped straight to 100kg.  It seemed like a good idea at the time, 100kg is an =PB lift for me, and 95 meant nothing so going for it seemed the right thing to do.  In reality, the 10kg / 11% jump in weight caught me off guard and I dropped both my 100kg attempts.  Note to self: 5kg increments only in future.

So I finished with a 165 total (70 + 90).  But I suppose the real question is, how would I have done if I’d been facing Tony? Tony it turns out is a very nice fella.  Well of course he is, he’s a 5 year Crossfitter!  We shared a warm up platform and generally encouraged each other throughout.  It is hard to say what would have happened as it turns out that his personal best total of 177 is exactly the same as mine!

Tony got a 70kg Snatch and 100kg C&J, and he was competing against a Scotsman in a close run race, so on the face of it, he would have beaten me.  However had we been competing, I would have started at 70 snatch, which I got, as I got the 75 and reckon I would have got a new PB of 78.  Similarly I’d have started at 95 C&J which should not have been a problem, and I reckon the smaller 5kg increment would have seen at least one of my 100kg lifts come off which I’ve got several times before, giving a 178 total.  But then, maybe Tony would have lifted differently if he was against me?  Who can know, it’s all academic.

I do know several things though. 3.5 years ago I was a fat couch potato who hadn’t done a jot of exercise for 15 years and now I’m British Champion at an official Olympic sport. How does that happen?!? Here’s how, and I owe a debt of gratitude to all involved:

1. I decided to change my life, but I didn’t know how.
2. My mate Ian Sturrock put me onto Crossfit.
3. Mark Beck and Karl Steadman opened Crossfit Manchester and filled it with a great bunch of supportive people.
4. They got me on the Zone Diet which has morphed into more of a Paleo Zone.
5. Mark especially has coached my weightlifting form over the last 3 years and always selflessly gives his time to coach me when I’m at a competition, and generally be helper extraordinaire. I am very grateful and would definitely not have done it without his help and support.

So what’s next? I think I’m going to take some time off the weightlifting focus and get back to more regular Crossfit for a while.  Crossfit is a whole load of fun, dropping snatch after snatch whilst training on your own (when I’m away from home) is not.  As a result, I’ve left the gym I go to in Cardiff: Aspire Fitness, especially as my contract should be finishing up shortly.  They’re a nice bunch down there, and I’m sorry to leave them.

There are 2 things to aim for I think, one is the European Masters Championships.  I need a 182 qualifying total so need to get my snatch up to 80 and clean and jerks up to 102.  But it irks me that both the 2 biggest Masters competitions of the year: the British Masters and the Northern Masters, are outside the qualifying window for qualification.  That’s bad planning!  Also there’s the simple fact, that if I wait a couple of years till I’m in the 40-44 category, the qualifying total comes down to 172, which is much more doable, lol!

The second thing is the the English Indoor Rowing Championships (EIRC), which I’ve had my eye on for a couple of years, but always chosen the weightlifting in preference, as often they are both on the same weekend. I’ve got my eye on the 500m title, which if I can make the 75kg lightweight category, I could win easily. Judging by this years numbers my personal best is 7 seconds faster than the 1st place time! So I need to be good this Christmas and not pile on the pounds if I’m going to make 75kg by 3rd week in Feb.

Anyway, it was an exciting weekend and I’m currently very chuffed.  I’m sure the feeling won’t last long.