Partial Pec Tear surgery

[str8flexed]

Originally Posted by cuts

Great to see you smelling the steal again. Use this time to bring up weak points. I am going to attempt to train chest on the hammer st. tomorrow. I would do every diffrent variation of movments as possible with the lower body. Stay focus!

Yea absolutely Shaun, I'm looking at this as a chance to bring up my legs, lord knows they need it. I only worked out once after I tore my pec and I had to really play around with it to get comfortable, but the one thing I could do without feeling weird was using incline dumbbell presses and lowering it down almost like a close grip bench press with my hands facing each other. If I tried to flair them out like a normal press it felt uncomfortable as hell. Try narrowing your grip on stuff and see if that helps. I'll be watching your comeback closely.

[str8flexed]

Injury update: Yesterday I went in for another check up and this time I actually got to speak with the surgeon. He felt around on the tear area and was very pleased with the progress. He said he believed I was healing ahead of schedule. He thinks I may be back lifting heavy in around 6 months which is great news. I also got to talk to him more about the actual tear itself. He told me that the lower head of my pec completely tore away from my tendon. I had always assumed it was merely a partial tear, but in fact I had completely separated the tendon from the muscle! Additionally, when it tore, the tendon snapped back and landed up against my deltoid and had actually scarred onto my delt. He had to seperate the tendon from the delt and then suture it to the entire length of the muscle. Crazy. The doctor told me that he honestly was worried that the sutures would not hold, but now he is very encouraged because it seems to be healing well. In his words "we're holding that thing together with shoe laces and bubble gum man." He wants me to keep the brace on my arm for another 3 weeks to ensure that I do not tear my sutures away. After 3 more weeks I'll begin physical therapy and start to get some of my function back. As you can imagine, I am thrilled to death with how well everything has gone.

-Layne

[GABRI]

Glad that you are healing ahead of schedule!
and I'm confident about your surgeon and about what he said

[shoot1]

Excellent.

[str8flexed]

Well tonight was one of my 3 leg days/week i'm doing and all I've been doing for quads is leg press, extensions, and bodyweight lunges... and I was so sick of it. I had to squat... I didn't care if it meant only using one arm on the smith machine... so be it. It felt so good to squat. I could have easily gone heavier but I didn't want to be stupid with it. It just felt good to squat again. Had isabel stand there to make sure the bar stayed across my back.







oh man did I miss squats :D


-Layne

[BodybuildingUniverse.com]

Dude, that's plenty heavy. Don't let your enthusiasm get in the way of your recovery. Take your time, ease back in and get better. The weights will be back in no time, don't rush the recovery

[str8flexed]

Don't worry, I'm not. The doc cleared me to do legs and anything that doesn't jar my upper body. This actually felt much better than one legged leg press as I didn't like lowering the weight near my chest.

[bigoso404]

man....I would love to show that picture to people who make a million excuses about why they CAN'T workout.....good job!

[cuts]

Way to go get it bro!

[str8flexed]

thanks shaun, on saturday I hit 5 sets of 20 reps with 225 on smith and supersetted the last set with leg extensions and then ran back to the smith and banged out 10 more; then ran back to the leg extension for 5 more. Then did leg extensions, hams and calves to finish up. Felt great to squat in some form and even better to get a good pump and sweat going. You just can't compare leg press to squats... not even close.

[str8flexed]

Well my safety squat bar came in. Did my first squat workout with it. 5 sets of 8 with 295 (the bar weighs 65 lbs). Felt great. Wanted to workup slow since the pad does sit on the spot where I tore it, but so far no problems, felt great.







-Layne

[Aaron]

Man, that's inspiring to see you still gutting it out in the gym. We need another trip to Mongolian BBQ!!!

[dread]

truly inspiring layne,there are always ppl who try to find excuses for not going to gym but you aint one of them,keep it up x)

[lamp24]

those pics are insane

[str8flexed]

thanks guys, I dunno, I love bodybuilding and I don't see anything that crazy about it... I'm just doing what I love to do and having to find creative ways to do it. I just know that sitting at home and feeling sorry for myself damn well isn't going to help anything LOL.

today i had a real great day I did single arm smith squats with
-225 X 20
-225 X 20
-225 X 20
-275 X 15
-275 X 20; then immediately dropped to 225 for 10, then immediately jumped to 10 reps of leg extensions... nice burn on that. finished up with more leg extensions, calves, and hamstring curls. Legs are up about 1/4" now. Pretty happy about that!

[str8flexed]

Ok got back from the doc today

He says I am healing great. We are still touch and go though according to him, I'm still being held together by "superglue" LOL. He said at 8 weeks post surgery I'll "start to have tissue that's worth a damn." LOL. So we won't be doing any loading for 2 more weeks. BUT he did take my brace off... OH MY GOD IT FEELS SO GOOD TO MOVE! I cannot stress how much we all take our daily functions forgranted. We really do. Not being able to reach with your right hand, or play sports, or even hold Isabel with my right arm... it sucked. He gave me some stretches to do and said I'm already pretty flexible compared to where he thought I might be so that's good.

I also talked to him about my leg workouts. He said he wants to wait 2 more weeks for the safety squat bar; said he's concerned about it pressing on the tissue, so that's out for 2 more weeks; but that's ok. He said one armed smith machine is totally fine so I'll be hammering lots of those. I just feel so blessed that I'm pulling through this and it looks like I just might get out with nothing but a scar. Once again; I know these things are not life and death, but I love bodybuilding and am so excited at the prospect of being able to continue to do it. I didn't take pics today but I am going to take some tommorow. My right arm is down just over an inch, and my right pec is now visably atrophied... still not as bad as I thought it would be. But I have gained some size on my legs... I'll take it!

-Layne

[str8flexed]

Ok, here are the pics. 6.5 weeks post-op. These are really hard for me to post. I guess when it goes away slowly you don't see it, even looking in the mirror I didn't see it; but damn, there sure as hell is noticeable atrophy. Especially having my right arm in that brace for 6.5 weeks just killed my right delt. This camera/room/background just does a brutal number on the flash and washing out but whatever. I'm sure some people will take these pics and post them up on various sites making fun of me like they already have and that's good. Go ahead and get your shots in while you can. This isn't going to keep me down. Nothing will. Heck 7 weeks ago I was being told by the surgeon that they would likely not be able to help me, that there was "50/50 chance that we will open you up and not be able to do anything but stitch you back up." I'm just grateful that the surgery worked, and what's better, you can't even see the scar from my surgery hardly in the pics. The size will come back, I can handle the ridicule. People been talking shit on me for years and it's never stopped me, only made me better. This injury will be the best thing that ever happened to my bodybuilding career. Write it down. On the plus side, I'm quite sure I can notice the added leg size, and absolutely my calves look bigger on the back pose, so I'm really happy about that.

Ok, here goes:

relaxed


back relaxed


side chest left side


most muscular 1


most muscular 2




-Layne

[ironmudd]

Be thankful for muscle memory, dude. You'll get it all back quickly, just take your time and be careful with it. The fun part will be comparing these pics with the ones you take 9 months from now.

[plang]

legs look vastly improved from the last time i saw pics of them.

[str8flexed]

thanks plang... i'm glad you say that and I'm not imagining things. I know the atrophy will subside and it will all come back but, it sucks I have to look lopsided for my honeymoon in the Caribbean