Pete Henry
Level 3 Valued Member
A bit younger than me and defo pushing more than me but very similar symptoms of which I'm about 18 months further on. The involuntary twitching in my tricep was exactly what I had as well. I was comfortably barbell benching about 150lbs but literally overnight I had no ability to press with my left arm - no pain, just no strength at all.Came across this forum while researching my problem.
48 yr old male. I have been working out for over 20 years. Recently had sharp pain near rhomboid on right side. It happened without trauma. I work a job where I'm bending forward a lot. After work it felt like a sharp defined area of pain. I have had ribs out of place so I chalked it up to that. Next few days it got worse. Generalized deep deep achy on my right scap that spread into my triceps. My triceps started to twitch involuntarily. The pain was quite severe. I saw MD and he gave me Lyrica and pain meds. After 2 weeks it settled down and a month later i am fully pain free. I went to gym and went to warm up with 35lb dumbells press and my right side during the press felt like spaghetti. I usually work up to 110lb dumbells for sets. I was scared as hell because when I grabbed the dumbbells from the rack everything was fine all the till the concentric push. My right pec and triceps strength decreased by like 75 percent. I'm so depressed. If it is a disc herniation ( I am scheduled for an MRI soon), what chance of recovery of strength do I have? I have zero neck discomfort, it's all scap and tricep. It has been just over 1 month, do I still have hope?
First the bad news - my left tricep and pec disappeared over a 6 - 9 month period and I then started to get back to some dips and seated press isolating each pec and the covid hit, so I've built a garage gym and am getting back to normal 12 months on from that. As for weights, I'm now back to 3 sets of 15 dips with a 11lb weight attached, barbell bench is 3 sets of 120lb, dumbbell fly 3 sets of 40lbs each and dumbbell press of the same.
Now the good news - they do come back but slowly, the muscle that i have worked out has taken the biggest hit is the medial head of the tricep which is still noticably absent but I'm focussing on that now so I'll update in a few months on progress.
Biggest help has been stretching - when I got the 'canary in the mine' signs of tingling in my left hand fingers I did a seated stretch with my left arm at my side with palm facing out, make a fist with your thumb inside the fist and lift the straight arm out to the side. At the same time tilting your head in the opposite direction. I've also started doing yoga which is helping with about 30 years of no stretching but I'm not able to touch my nose with my toes yet so a way to go
Don't be depressed as it will return, just need to accept you're getting old and we can't throw weights around like we used to.