It has been 14 months since I herniated a disc in my neck and caused severe pain, numbness, and overall discomfort in my neck and left arm. If you’ve read the blog, you know the history of what I went through, so I won’t belabor that history and instead I am focusing on the now and the future.
In an effort to get past some of my internal demons, I have a fear of doing a lot of overhead hanging exercises and I have to get past those thoughts and fears.
What I do know is that most injuries are stress related. Stress in your head that affects your body movement, your breathing, and how well your body functions nutritionally. Compound all of that you get hurt. There is another component to this in that if you don’t properly warm up, cool down, especially as you get older, you will also most likely get hurt.
About 6 weeks ago I was doing great, hitting it hard, getting some amazing workouts in. Then I got this crazy idea to lift heavier. I have been lifting heavy on my lower body so that was no surprise. The surprise came when I decided to start bench pressing again. I have not bench pressed other than dumbbells in 10 years. Started off light, then my next workout I was feeling great so I decided to go heavy. Bench press itself was amazing, felt great, felt strong, ready to conquer the world. Did some heavy hang clings to boot. Later that day, my left chest started to tighten up, my neck started to tighted up, I started to get tingling in my fingers in my left hand, then some shoulder pain to boot. I was freaking out.
To say this was stressing me out was an understatement. To add to that, I had some new things happing professionally that created some stress(good stress I thought), and compound all of that, boom…major setback.
I have rehabbed my way back to feeling great again. I have not bench pressed or hang clinged since. I have been doing pushups, pullups and some shoulder work though.
Right when I hurt my neck last year, I completed building our Salmon Ladder in our garage.
To give you some perspective on how high it is, it goes up to 11ft. 12ft ceilings. I did use it while I was hurt last spring, before I knew how serious I was injured. It has not been used since, that is until last night! The kids have not been using it because I don’t have the safety mechanism installed yet. We are getting that done now.
On my way home from work I was thinking I could use a workout. I get home and Andrew is cranking out a leg workout with some pullups included in the garage and get a huge smile on my face. So I quickly changed, and headed to the garage to start warming up. While doing legs and pullups I kept looking at the Salmon Ladder thinking I need to do that soon. I have been doing some clapping pullups to get used to the motion, however not very many of them. I was doing 15-20 clapping pullups prior to injury, so to be doing 3-5 now is humbling and yet exciting.
When my workout was done, I looked at Andrew & Ben and said “I am going to do the Salmon Ladder. I have to get this mental roadblock past me.” I grabbed the bar, got situated, did the motion like I was going to jump the bar up, then let go. Looked at my boys and said “I am freaking out, I don’t want to hurt myself or fall.” The look on their faces told me I had to do it. I turned back to the bar, grabbed it, hit the first jump, yelled, then hit two more. I jumped down and starting yelling, YES! I am BACK! I felt great.
Today I feel great as well, no neck, arm, hand pain. It really comes down to stress in my opinion. Meditation is by far the most impactful thing I do. I am still an amateur at best, but I do it and it helps me relax, sleep better, and breathe.
Journaling is the other thing that is helping me in my rehab. It keeps me focused, driven, and it keeps me positive and optimistic about the future.
I will post a video soon of me taking it to the Salmon Ladder in our garage.
To you in health & Abundance,
Steve Aune, Ninsurance Ninja
Steve Aune 
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