Hopefully this is the correct place for this question. I had a slip and fall (on a raised mop sink) at work, and landed on my left side above the lowest rib - this was 11 days ago. Last night I squatted 305x5x3 and felt pretty good. Went on to press and on my second to last warm-up 115x3, I felt a sharp, stabbing pain in the bruised area. Almost knocked the wind out of me. I finished my sets 145x5x3 and a lighter volume day on deadlifts 275x5x3, but really struggled to take a breath and get my back set. It basically made the last half of my workout absolutely suck. I suspect the hip action from the press strained a bruised intercostal from the fall. I’m due to squat 310, bench 235, and pull 350 on Friday. My question is is there any real damage that can be done by going forward with those lifts aside from pain endurance? I want to do the work if I can, if my pain tolerance will allow me to set my back, but if it’s smarter to lay off it a couple days per your experience I can ice/heat over the weekend and maybe try again Monday.
Thanks for the post and sorry to hear about your slip and fall.
As far as what’s going on, hard to say from here, but it doesn’t sound like anything that requires urgent intervention. From a training perspective, I’d recommend doing what your symptoms allow, understanding that the absolute load on the bar doesn’t matter much when considering long-term strength, health, or hypertrophy outcomes. In other words, you could squat 265, bench 185, and pull 315 at your next session (or less) and be just fine. We’d recommend using something like RPE or RIR to autoregulate your loading vs doing LP, as there are a number of shortcomings with that program which I have discussed in numerous places.
Nevertheless, if you wanted to continue running it for the time being, I’d do what you can- keep RPE around ~ 8 for each set, and don’t get caught up on the weight on the bar.
Excellent. Thanks so much for the reply. I have another month all ready paid for but I am definitely going to take a lot closer look at your Beginner and Bridge templates and consider making the switch once the month runs out. I’m not a kid anymore and like the tie-in between strength and long-term health as opposed to just getting as much weight on the bar as possible, even if I have to be overweight to do it. Although, in truth, I have some crazy strength goals for an old guy…:o