Kettlebell No overhead work...What to do now?

[Tom0Blom0]

How is your posture ?

Sorry for the delay - my posture is not great. This is definitely part of the issue. I have pretty bad 'nerd neck' which is where some of the issue comes from. I continued trying swings and pushups while doing PT and my issues persisted, with TGUs removed. I stopped working out completely and still have problems. My PT has felt useless and I've had and MRI of my neck, my thoracic region, ultrasounds of my shoulder and elbow, and EKG of my left arm, etc. They're confirmed and reconfirmed that I have cubital tunnel syndrome.

My hunch is that I was doing all this S&S stuff without having good posture/form and advanced to 50lb kettlebells with a rounded back. This started to put a strain on my left shoulder and back which I'm still paying for. Structurally there appears to be nothing wrong. I think the nerve is irritated and continues to be irritated through my regular computer use through work, etc. and my overall crap posture. I try to be mindful of this throughout the day but it's difficult to catch it. I'm trying to do exercises to fix this, but tbh I was not seeing results with what was provided by the PT/OT I worked with and am pretty much hopeless at this point. I don't feel like I'll ever be able to get back into what I was doing with S&S which is a real bummer.

I started slowly doing some KB stuff again. I do 10 Goblet squats, 8 one-arm kettlebell rows (per side), 15 Kettlebell Chest-Loaded Swings (to avoid strain on my shoulders), and I'll potentially add 10 kettlebell Deadlifts but I need to make sure I can keep my posture good first, so I might stick with the rows for a bit first. As a result I feel like what I have provides a really lopsided workout that focuses very little on my upperbody. I guess it's a start but, again, I'm really frustrated with where I'm at with trying to fix my issues. Pretty much the only advice I was given by the PTs to fix my posture was to not have bad posture and to do these repetitive exercises 3 times per day that didn't really appear to be addressing anything. I do not believe these folks had a sports medicine background. They also insisted on doing dry needling and would not give me any recommendations for exercises I could do to strengthen the areas I had weakness. For a month solid none of my exercises changed and I was following these recommendations (re: it was not a result of my being a non-compliant patient). Finding quality care in my area is somewhat difficult.

 

[Steve Freides]

The devil is in the details. I highly recommend working with an SFG or taking our 1-day course.

For your own practice, I really like something I learned from @Brett Jones - before you do anything else in your swing, stand tall and imagine a piece of glass on top of your head, almost as if you're standing inside a glass box that's exactly your height if your posture is good. Then each time you come back to the upright position, try to touch or even break the glass that's on top of your head - keep getting back, strongly, to that position.

-S-