Many of you are aware that I hurt myself pretty badly last Sunday night.  You may think that it would behoove me and the gym to down play the injury, hide any symptoms and pretend that nothing happened, so as to not scare anybody away.  After all, I’m co-founder of CrossFit Marin, and I’m supposed to know what I’m doing, instead of going about injuring myself doing our own workouts.  Although this may seem like a reasonable approach, it would negate the opportunity to draw some painful yet valuable lessons from what happened and to share them with you.  It’s not good to “dwell” on the past, but if we don’t analyze our experiences we are much more likely to repeat our mistakes, and after all, CrossFit Marin is an “open source” gym and school of movement.  This is basically a case study of an injury and many of you know how meticulously detailed I can be, so don’t bother reading this if you’re not patiently curious.  So here’s what happened with some pertinent background information:

Late Sunday afternoon, November 22nd, although I had napped for an hour or two at my parents’ house in San Francisco, I was still exhausted when I arrived at the gym to coach my 3:30pm private.  After my private, I was hanging out with Ben who was coaching Tina in the skill training for the 4:30pm CrossFit class.  Ben could tell that I was thinking about doing the workout and suggested that I jump in.  I hesitated, and told him that I was really tired and that I hadn’t gotten enough sleep and that I really shouldn’t.  Ben, naturally said something about me “never getting enough sleep” and downplayed my hesitation.  I declined anyways.  A few minutes later before starting the actual WOD, Ben apologized to Tina for her having to do the workout solo and kind of glanced over at me.  At this point I was starting to feel guilty because I don’t like to let my CrossFitters suffer alone, and I really did want to do the workout anyways, so I shook my head in apprehension and told Ben I’d jump in.  The workout was:

3 Rounds for time of: [ 500M Rows + 21 75lb power snatches]

Since I skipped the warm-up and skill training and I know better, I decided that I would warm up on the first part of the workout.  This may sound silly, but I’ve done this often and it mostly works fine.  I just cruised on the first 500M row and I did the first round of snatches at an easy pace, whereas if I had been warmed up I would have done touch-and-go for all 21 reps in the first round.  A little bit into the second 500M row, I felt warmed up and my body was responding well, so I decided to crank.  I did the second round at close to full intensity doing touch-and-go for almost all the reps.  During the 3rd round, I asked Ben for a time check at least twice and at some point half way through the snatches I realized that if I didn’t put the bar down at all, I would go sub ten minutes.  Well, I caved and set the bar down, picked it up almost immediately and tried to break 10min anyways.  My time was 10:09.  I was pissed at myself.  Although I had the fastest time of the day, I knew that I had mentally set a goal and I let it slip.  Now I was amped and very warm and endorphins were kicking in.  I asked Ben, who weirdly enough, seemed impressed with my time, what he thought he could do the workout in.  He said he thought he could knock it out in 8 min.  Ben and I are very close in workouts like these, and it seemed unrealistic to me.  At this point, since I didn’t feel all that tired, I told Ben that I would do the workout again, for real,  during the 6pm class.  I went to the back to lie on the couch and bask  in the pulse of the endorphins cruising through my head.  The 6pm class was in half an hour.  There was a no-show for the 6pm class, and Ben wanted to go home, so he urged me to start right away.  I didn’t re-warm up, but I didn’t really feel like I had to, because I was still warm from the first time around.  To me it was like a big interval workout.   I like interval workouts anyways.  I told Ben that I would shoot for sub 9min on the low end and sub 10min on the high end, that is I was setting myself a “parameter goal”.  It’s kind of like giving myself a flex time.  Ben made a disapproving comment, I can’t recall exactly, but it might have been something like “…what kind of a goal is that?!”.  I conceded and told him I’d just go for sub 9min.  I cranked hard from the get go.     If my average pace for the 500M rows was about 1:45, that would  mean that I needed to complete each round of snatches in under 1:15 in order to go sub 9 min.  I rowed about a 1:40 for the first round and I did 21 consecutive touch-and-go snatches, well ahead of pace.  I might have broken up the second round into two sets for the snatches.  Going into the last round of snatches I was still on pace, but I started having trouble stringing the reps together.  My sets of four or five dropped off to two or three.  I asked Ben for a time check and I was a few seconds over 9min.  Well, I was only about 6 reps away from being done and I could easily keep it under 10min.  I picked up the bar at about rep 15 and as I started the snatch my back tightened slightly.  I reacted by dropping the bar.  I didn’t even really think about it, I just wanted to wrap it up and put away the workout, so I grabbed the bar again but this time my back really seized up on the failed snatch.  Again I dropped the bar and then glanced over at Ben.   I might have said something about “it’s not going to happen” and walked over to the gymnastics floor to lie down.  What I felt was muscle pain.  I didn’t feel a ”pop” or anything slide out of place.   At the moment I figured I just strained my back pretty badly and I was kicking myself because I could have been hanging out with the girl I met a couple of weeks ago instead of going for a 2nd workout motivated more by my own vanity and pig-headedness than anything else, and that it would take me a couple of days to recover.   After a minute or so I got up to go to the back and lie on the couch and winced under the pulse of the bad kind of endorphin feeling, the one you get when your body is trying to deal with pain and inflammation.  When I got up and tried to walk around I was rather alarmed because my hips were completely and involuntarily rolled underneath in a “hollow” position.  I had to walk around on my toes so as to be able to stand up.  My spine was also tilted forward and to the left.  I think Jonathan Hyslop called it an “anterior tilt”.  From looking in the mirror, it seemed as if I could have damaged my spine or displaced a vertebrae, but I only recalled muscle pain from the actual injury and figured I was standing funny because of seized up muscles, but I started having my doubts.  I iced and took some Advil that night.  I couldn’t turn over in bed without my lower back going into spasms.   I replayed and mulled over the whole scenario in my mind going over the details of the injury.  Injuries are an athlete’s and a gym owner’s worst nightmare, and couple that with the feeling of helplessness and uncertainty that I felt from the thought of having to be dependent on others for basic needs.  The pain of the muscle spasms was trivial compared with the the uncertainty that I might have done permanent damage to my body that would not only affect my athletic performance, but my ability to make a living as well.  I’ve never been on any kind of welfare or unemployment, and I disdain the very idea.  I started thinking about all of my talents and possible work options that would help me cover medical expenses if necessary.  We’re in the process of researching health insurance and at least half of the CFM trainers, including myself, are currently uninsured.  When I managed to fall asleep curled up in a fetal position, I found some intermittent respite from my troubles.  The next day I literally could not get up.  I asked Roger to pick me up something to eat.  I was dreading having to use the toilet. 

{It’s about 1:47am and I’m going to go to bed and finish this blog post tomorrow, so I can give my back some rest. }

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 28th, 2009 at 2:24 am and is filed under Events, Medical. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.