Hey MWI, tried sending you a couple of PM's but they aren't showing up in my sent items folder...
This was the latest one anyway.
G'day mate,
Tried sending you a 500 odd word pm last night but it looks like it didn't get through to you. So I'll try to make it a quick spiel instead and hopefully it still makes sense.
Legs - ++ shin splints +1 year. Mid tib stress fractures ~6 months. Back to shin splints now. Was playing volleyball, soccer, rock climbing at initial diagnosis. Stopped everything but rock climbing for +6 months, in that time shin splints went to stress fractures with no notable cause. Seeing sports physician at OPSMC now. Back to shin splints - bone scans shows current osteophyte activity, xray shows no fractures at current.
Currently wearing custom orthotics and runners for 4 weeks straight, if pain persists will be going on corticosteroids.
Day one - chest biceps is to make sure that I get the max out of triceps on the skull crushers (probably not that important now that you point it out).
Have slowly decreased 21's already, will be stopping completely now, good advice.
Rockclimbing really improved my chinups, never really had a problem doing them whereas I've always had skinny shoulders and see military press better for building size (although currently pushing more then my own bodyweight on smith and can hand stand push ups for >15 reps). Not too keen on hanging a weight for chin ups, +5 years ago broke collarbone and dislocated AC, never been the same, never did enough rehab. Currently holding a referral for OPSMC to take a look at this as well try to sort it out.
Day three - again with chins, using them only for lats easily (lat pull down doing more then my body weight so it got too difficult).
Funnily enough I am in Melbourne, studying first year med at Monash, exams in a couple of weeks and then will be going back to Queensland for the holidays (17 weeks) so I'm not sure what I will do in terms of rehab then. Hopefully going to save up for a new bike and car though so I can actually ride next year!
Feel free to ask me to explain anything I may not have been clear about.
When I checked last night I have both messages in my email, but not in my inbox here (which I don't look in unless something pops up), weird.
It sounds like you are having no luck with all the various people you have seen, OPSMC has a good reputation, I'd imagine they'd have a lot of experience with stress fractures.
What was the cause of the shin splints? obviously it was volleyball, field sports and running. But do they actually tell you the mechanism of injury? - collapsing arch, tendinopathy, stress ftactures initially, some form of predisposition?
Advice not to train legs I think is very conservative, as high rates of force development and impact are contraindicated, not the gradual but high loading that is seen in resistance training - particularly in an exercise like squats/leg press where the load is axial (down the length of the bone) vs transverse loading such as in something like leg extension. That being said I also highly recommend doing what the Dr recommends.
Cochraine review on treatments here:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD000450.pub2/abstract;jsessionid=C52354C13789A65D90339ABD80FC2547.d03t02
Yes, I taught for a few years, the other teacher/trainers really liked 21's, even though they were 'invented' by a guy when he was a teenager, have never be investigated scientifically and have no basis judged in the principles on how muscles are stimulated to grow.
Weighted dips, great exercise until you have a shoulder problem, just add say 2.5/5kg initially so its a very small increase. If you can military press your own weight on the smith with out joint pain, I bet your shoulder are fully rehabilitated!
Yeah, there is a certain logic in your case in doing chest/bi's as theres 48 hours before the next training session anyway.
I'll let MWI answer that though I wanted to say if I super set I do allowing exercises well more specific in related exercises that dont use the same muscle. That way or you really do is cut down training time.
That's just my opinion though.
Two ways to super set:
1) save time, it means you can train separate muscle groups with out a pause between the sets, as in effect you are training another muscle group during the rest period of the first. From a sports performance stand point, not the best way to train, but from time saving / getting a few more sets in during a session, for the average bloke who wants some strength and mass (for the beach) good approach.
People usually super set isolated movements - bi's / tri's; you could do something like squats / bench press, but I think all over fatigue with gross compound movements would negatively effect training quality if you are aiming for strength gains - particularly if you are at a plateau.
2) to target a particular muscle, if done intelligently works well, I have NEVER seen anyone in a gym do this intelligently. for example you can superset bench press with pec dec, so both exercises will work pec major heavily, but only bench will target triceps. It basically means you can do twice the volume for pecs, but not flog the tri's so you can still do something like military press without tri's completely failing and compromising the amount of loading.
Most idiots at my gym, tend to do something like bench/skull crushes or bench/dips or bench/incline - this completely fatigues the assistant muscle groups (tri's/ant delt) and means intensity on the prime mover (pecs) is compromised.
Much easier to explain in person than type out and I need to go ride at kinglake today!