Injury diagnosis time

J

Jester

Well-Known Member
Continuing on from my log.

Been feeling left rib (area is middle to lower) soreness since doing 230kg rack pulls for the first time.

Today, at warm up rep of 200kg, I felt/heard a pop (we all know the kind) in that exact place.


-No visible bruising or colouring through the skin.

-Google searches for some combination of rack pulls rib injury, deadlift rib injury, rack pulls cracked ribs etc. tell me I've done something to either my 'floaters' (ribs 8-12 ?) or my obliques, or my rib cartilage.

-It's (almost) definitely not my lats (can I pull my arms back and down)

-It's definitely making breathing laboured due to pain (not due to an impediment of the actual breathing, just significant pain/discomfort)


Kind funny/ironic; when I press on it, the pain briefly increases and then subsides lower than if I don't apply pressure





Thoughts?

Best specialist to see? (I'm about 98% sure I don't want to waste money on a GP unless I have to ... physio, chiro etc at least makes sense).
 
Sorry to hear this mate, you were making huge gains on those deadlifts and rack pulls.

I would probably see a bulk billed GP for an x-ray referral. Will cost you nothing and takes away the guesswork, so you can attack the correct injury with physio. It could be a wide range of injuries, but the pain you experience when breathing and the 'pop' you heard could indicate a fractured rib.
 
Hoping for cartilage issue rather than cracked/fracture on the rib?


I'm guessing there's things I can do injured, such as weighted stretches etc. I really hate SD, it's so boring.
 
Whichever it is, I think the treatment will just consist of keeping it taped up for a few weeks and avoiding lifts that aggravate it.

Or maybe a full body cast for a year and watching Aussie soap operas on a TV mounted on your ceiling with Rihad as your nurse! :rolleyes:

Best of luck!
 
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I cracked a rib a few months ago. I was able to train through it, but had to avoid certain exercises for about 6 weeks. It was a minor fracture. Yours may be more serious, so I wouldn't recommend training through it without an x-ray or some professional diagnosis.
 
@O&G - you're a sick, sick man.

@Sci - yeh, GP visit in an hour, probably x-ray referral from there. I know what exercises I'd do as soon as I'm able to do them. Obviously Rack Pulls will be on a brief hiatus.

I'm wondering if maybe it's due to over-under grip, the 'under' being my left hand and where the soreness, and now injury, have occurred.
 
For me, the recent small rib injury ( not the fracture) happened when I tried to rack pulls beltless. Apparently the belt helps keep the ribs from squishing together or something. I am going belted from now on.
 
It is possible that you were pulling unevenly when using the mixed grip, if so then at least it was just a rib and not torn biceps or something. I would probably stick to double overhand hook grip or using straps... see if that helps. Other than that, I don't really know.
 
^^^ is now the proud owner of a cracked C6 rib, left hand side.

GP says 4 weeks should be fine, 6 at most. I figure I can probably take a proper 3-week SD, with some stretching throughout.

Will have minimal SD for legs, two weeks at longest.


Will go for double overhand in the future. 95% sure that the underhand was involved. If I assume the lift position (you know, standing around in living room etc) and rotate the arm between grips, there's some sort of involvement (probably via lats?) to do with that rib.

I'll stick w/chalk rather that straps or grips for now. Obviously "for now" meaning in 3-4 weeks.
 
Ouch... Good on ya though for going to the GP. We tend to do a lot of self-diagnosing these days with the help of Google. Now you know for sure what it is and can adress it accordingly.
 
Loose motivation, loose some muscle and strength, loose even more motivation, get fat, give up and eat everything in sight and then start from the very beginning again... Ah sorry, that's me!

You'll be fine mate. It's amazing how much time you suddenly have for other things when you give training a bit of a break.
 
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