Shit.
I had decided to enter my first bodybuilding contest, the 50 and over category.
I met personally with a coach who trains some amateurs and pros. He did not want to take me on (said he was completely full, but I translated that in my head as perhaps not up to his level of acceptable client, LOL!). He did, however, look me over and give a good assessment. He said, let's see quads, abs, etc., and then volunteered how many more pounds of fat I had to lose so that I could figure out how many pounds how many weeks out, etc. Then he showed me a picture of his own client, who was in an over 50 amateur contest (and won) and said, "You would wipe the floor with this guy, no problem." He encouraged me to do it.
I have been hard at it, and cutting, while training hard. Oddly, I am not doing any cardio right now (thought I would add it in as I got closer), but things have been going very well, until . . .
Ouch!
I seriously think I have a partial tear of my pectoral tendon where it inserts into the humerus.
I actually think I have torn it before.
Folks here probably remember me complaining about my "Shoulder." Yet shoulder surgeons could not find the cause of my pain.
I was doing a plate loaded lever type chest machine. I had appropriate weight (working in the 10-12 rep range category), so I was not doing super heavy very low reps or anything like that. I was not showing off. I was doing my usual sort of workout. In fact, this was my second heavy chest press exercise for that day. I had the "normal" sort of light pain I always have when pressing with my working weight, pain I have come to tolerate over the last 8 years or so.
Then, on my second set of the second exercise, second rep, ouch! It really felt like something tore, outside of the pec leading into the shoulder . . .
I set the weight down immediately, but I have been in a lot of pain.
I did a lot of serious thinking about how this has happened three times (first time on bench press, second time on incline barbell press, although that one was no so much an acute injury as something that built up over time and became intolerable) and now this time on a machine. I had 3 plates and a 25 on each arm, but, like I said, that is in the 10-12 rep range, and I had already done one set without incident.
Every time it happened it was a chest exercise, nothing to do with shoulder. In fact, in spite of the pain today, I did front raises with dumb bells, pretty much pain free. Moving my arm using my chest, however, pushing forward or rotating my arm inward, is very painful.
So I started researching anatomy pics and pectoral tendon tear pics, and dammit if that tendon does not insert into the upper arm bone right under the front of the deltoid. So all these years I have assumed I had a shoulder injury and wondered why the docs could not find anything wrong with my shoulder (other than arthritis and bone spurs and degenerative tears, but nothing that was really repairable or causing the pain I was suffering).
So now I need to decide doctor or wait it out a few months like before. I have continued training everything else, even arms are possible without pain if I take care to immobilize the shoulder so that the chest is not being used. I skipped presses for shoulders out of an abundance of caution but was able to do lateral raises with my usual 45 pounders and rear delt flies . . .
Contest prep is probably out now.