Injury question

Hello Doctors!

I’m a bad patient, because I’m not very definite with my causes/symptoms…

Male 49, 5’11", 206. Former BBM programming client :slight_smile:

About 10 days ago, dropped a loaded barbell on my chest. 225, fell somewhere between 6" and a foot off of my chest on the way up. (Thumbs around, chalked…bar just rolled and fell out of my hands…never had it happen before.) Well, that smarted! Chest was very tender for a few days, but no signs of bruising.

3 or 4 days after that, I was lifting 135 off of the rack, from roughly knee height. I was picking up the barbell to put it on the floor to begin deadlifts. Something felt like it flipped in my chest. Swore it was a piece of my pec…that’s the only way to describe it…but I know that couldn’t have been literally what happened. Not the whole pec…just the lower middle/right pec. Next day was some pain when I’d get up/down, lift my arm, etc. Hard to lift plates off of the tree and the barbell…puts strain/pain in that area unless I’m extremely careful.

Next workout…2 days later…no probs squatting/benching. Deadlifts at 135 and 185 warmups, no problem. 225…ouch! Reaggravated the same “pec” pain. this went on a few days…workouts would aggravate it, but it would feel better from off days.

Last night, Squat aggravated it, bench did too. More acute than it had been, and the pain seems to be traveling. I swear it was initially around my lower middle right pec, maybe very top of abs, but it seems to have moved up and towards my armpit.

Went to doctor today, discussed the previous, talked about cracked rib, muscle strain, blood clot. He suspects pulled pec, prescribed a week off of lifting.

Would love to hear your thoughts on if those symptoms seem consistent with that diagnosis, and if the time off is best, or continue to work through it?

Thanks!
Chris

This is a super bizarre set of symptoms, to be honest. But, given how much they’re fluctuating/migrating, you’ll probably be OK.

You already know that if it was me, I’d be in the gym - however, there’s nothing wrong with taking a lighter week to move through the ranges of motion you can tolerate on all the movements. You aren’t going to make crazy gains this week, so the weight on the bar doesn’t really matter. Use some NSAIDs if you can, and keep at it.

Appreciate the feedback!