+1; hope it's a quick recovery.

+2. Ugh.

Thanks guys! It might not be all that terrible. Long post coming.

Knee update, short version: I do not need surgery to repair the torn ligament or any of the other damage. I am getting PRP injections on Monday.

Long version:

The doc who did the report on the MRI was incorrect on some things, so I am not going to say much about that report. Doc friend looked at the MRI. The MRI doc who works for Rayus misread some of it.

Doc friend said:
• "Not too bad.
• (Rayus doc) Missed the coronary ligament—I’m not surprised.
• Cartilage not worse (Rayus doc wrong here too)
• Bone not changed. (Rayus doc wrong again)
• I’d have liked to see some more change in the meniscus with cells 4 mo ago. (I bet the heavy lifting I was doing are the reason it's not better)
• We can PRP the coronary and menisci."

Elite powerlifter friend noticed in the video of the rack pull that caused the injury that my knee slid a bit forward as the bar came off the pins. I told Doc friend what Elite powerlifter friend said, and that got him thinking more about what exactly caused this injury.

Doc friend is thinking that when I started pulling the bar, my hamstrings were not fully engaged. That makes sense because the hamstrings are what should keep the knees from sliding forward.

Here is the interesting part. One of the functions of the semimembranosis (one of the hamstrings, and one that is strained right now) is to pull the meniscus out of the way as the knee is extending so that the meniscus does not get smashed between the femur and the tibia.

Since I was late activating the hamstrings, that process that is supposed to happen did not happen. We now think that is what tore that little coronary ligament that holds the meniscus down to the tibia.

Also something to note, my understanding is that the semimembranosis kind of wraps itself around and meshes with the medial coronary ligament (the torn ligament). All these things affect each other.

So Doc friend told me about how he is going to inject PRP into the tiny little holes in a bunch of tendons, muscles and ligaments around this injured area, and he is hopeful that I might be pain free right away afterwards. My fingers are crossed. I might be a few days away from walking, or it could be several months, or anything in between. I am planning to rehab this a lot more slowly and carefully than I did after the last knee treatment.

Side note on the Rayus doc: I was talking to another doc friend of mine about this. I told him about what the Rayus doc and my doc friend said about the MRI, and how the Rayus doc was wrong about a few things. This was what he said, "They usually are (wrong)". I asked if those docs are careless or just not very good. He said, "Idk it could be a combination. They like to say things are worse than previous to pressure people into surgery." yeah, that actually makes a lot of sens to me based on everything I know. ****ers. I am really fortunate to have several brilliant friends who are doctors. I wish I would have known all this stuff about 25-30 years ago, before I let one of those ****ing butchers cut open my right shoulder.

:chathumb:

Thanks!

I go the PRP injections yesterday, 10/30/23. It feels different, but I am not "fixed" yet. I think its going to take ~6 months before I start hitting the heavy weights again.

Not sure how long it will take until I can walk. Right now, pain is roughly similar to how it felt a few days after the injury, but its different. I have not needed any pain meds since last night. It feels like it will heal pretty fast.

After the procedure, doc had me test the knee. I was still under anesthetics and ketamine and oxytocin, and was pretty buzzed, so I was feeling little pain, but I was able to squat up and keep weight on the right leg until it was about 75% or more straight - probably slightly more than I had been able to do before - before I had to shift weight to the left leg. I still cannot stand straight up with weight on the right leg. As I was describing to doc what I was feeling as I was standing up, he said "good", and that was the effect he was going for. Everything went according to plan.

Prior to the actual procedure, he was telling me details about how nerdy he is when he does everything with regard to these procedures. There's a certain way he draws blood and handles it prior to injecting the PRP that increases potency by 20% compared to how other provider do these procedures. The blood cells are sensitive to a lot of different things, so everything he does with them is very careful and purposeful. That's one of dozens of reasons that I'm aware of that this guy is head and shoulders better than probably anyone else doing this type of work. I am really lucky to know him.

I have not been able to do a lot since tearing the ligament, but it does feel like the knee is a little better every day since getting PRP. I can walk sort of ok, but I am concerned if I push things, I might have a setback, so I am babying this knee.

PT gave me a couple little things to do to activate hamstring and glutes that seem to not do a whole lot, but its something. I figured out on my own that doing very light band stomps is good. Those seem to be helping some. Doc and PT approve of it.

When chiro did ART on me the other day, my gracilis and both hamstring tendons were extremely fired up with what felt like bad nerve pain.

I mentioned this to doc and he is considering doing some hydrodisection of the pes anserinus, which is where the tendons of the gracilis and sartorius and semitendinosus come together near the knee capsule. He said the fact that I am feeling pain in the gracilis and hamstring, and not the sartorius, makes sense because the two with the pain attach near the coronary ligament tear, and the sartorius attaches in a higher spot.

He says this procedure will be similar to when he worked on my sciatic nerve about a year ago. That was a quick recovery. Hopefully this helps everything else in the knee heal and feel better.

12/6

Doc did the hydrodisection. He told me it would be about a 10-20% improvement right away and progress will be faster in all respects. He was right. It felt like things started moving better right away. I did some bands stomps and triceps / elbow rehab stuff later that evening.

The less than good news: He looked at the elbow. Its been six months since the treatment on that. He said some of it is better, but one area did not heal as well as he hoped. That probably happened because I probably pushed too hard too soon. We are going to treat it again with PRP, and I will do nothing but isolation eccentric triceps stuff for a while. No heavy pressing.

He looked at the torn knee ligament too. Its only been about 5 weeks since he treated it, but its still a bit bunched up in one area and its not really attached to something it should be attached to. While this is pretty much expected, he said we can do some more PRP in the knee ligament when I am getting the elbow done. Cool.

Wait...wat? Like, what's it attached to, your Johnson?

lol...I think its just kind of hanging there, not unlike my Johnson.

I think its not yet attached to the meniscus like it should be.

12/13

A week after the hydrodisection in my bad knee on 12/6, doc looked at the knee on ultrasound, he said he couldn't believe what he saw. The balled up coronary ligament from last week has flattened out and has healed significantly since the hydrodisection just one week prior!! Also, the cartilage has laid down in place like it's supposed to. He put some concentrated PRP in the cartilage and around the ligament, so that should help it a lot more.

The PRP was a pretty significant procedure, so I was stiff for the rest of that day. After that, its been improving every day. By last Saturday, the knee felt better than at any time since the ligament tore.

Regarding the elbow, I need to lay off pressing for 6 weeks. I'm really optimistic beyond that.

Knee: Nothing particularly interesting to report about my progress, aside from the bad knee slowly improving every day and still being quite a ways from being able to train hard, but I can walk ok and I can go up stairs ok. I still cant go down stairs very well, but I can do it now. Band stomps seem to be the best thing I am doing to this point.

Elbow: 1/17 will be six weeks after the elbow PRP, so I will probably start light pressing then.

1/13 - Mrs. Cha did something amazing today. She did bench only in a sanctioned XPC meet in her Mendy band shirt. This was a last second decision to do this meet. The meet was in Fargo. Knowing that some XPC meets allow band shirts, she looked at this meet last September, and it said raw & single ply only, so she did not give it another thought.

She got the band shirt in mid August last year when we visited Mendy's gym. She pressed 429 off 1 board in it there while being coached by Priest Burdette and Scot Mendleson (see post 7723 above).

After that, she did a meet in October in polyester, and had no meets on the horizon that allow band shirts, so she only trained in this shirt once last August, and she had never touched in it. Fast forward to earlier this week. My teammate Fred, who was judging at the meet today, talked to the meet director. Meet director said he would allow band shirt lifters as bench only, but he would not have a monolift, so there would be no full power multiply. Fred got all excited and told Mrs Cha that she is in the meet. We had a birthday party planned meet day, and she had not been training in this shirt at all, so we said no.

Fred talked her into seeing if she could touch and press something in this shirt Wednesday. She easily pressed 325 (touching was a bit difficult), then smoked 345 and also did 350. She signed up for the meet Thursday. I guess we are going to Fargo, lol.

Mrs Cha is 57. Before today, according to openpowerlifting.org, the biggest bench press for any woman 55-59 was 355 lbs. This includes all weight classes and all federations. https://www.openpowerlifting.org/ran...55-59/by-bench

Mrs Cha opened with 330 and smoked it - 3 white lights.

We decided to attempt 363 next, and if she got that she would jump all the way to 402. She touched it well, and it came up off her chest fine, but she pulled the bar sideways to the right and she could not lock out the right side because of that.

363 3rd attempt- 3 white lights - woohoo!!!
https://rumble.com/v46umsx-lisa-363-lb-bench-press.html

Longer video from different angle: https://rumble.com/v46usgw-lisa-363-bench-wr.html

Awesome stuff. Glad you're still kicking around.

Thanks, I really appreciate the kind words.

wow, incredible. well done Mrs Cha

what kind of training are you managing to do right now Mr Cha? (or....maybe you should be Mrs Cha's sidekick after that!)

Whoaaaaaaa. That is really impressive!!! Yay Mrs. Cha!

Thanks!!

lol, yeah.

I did coach her & write her programs for several years, then we hired Daniel Tinajero (one of, if not the best geared lifter coach in the world imo) to coach her for a couple different 4 month periods. Daniel thinks a lot like I do, but he gets deeper into everything because he does it for a living, and he is very smart. He really cares about all of his clients, so he does a fantastic job. We both learned a lot and now she programs herself rather than having me do it for her. I still coach her form though. I highly recommend Daniel to anyone who wants to compete in the sport, raw or geared.

Your timing is perfect in asking that question, as I have a few minutes, and a lot has happened the past week.

I did a lot of band stomps, some adductor & abductor machine stuff, some hamstring stuff, lots of eccentric tricep stuff (no pressing though), and a variety of little things here & there that would help my core, knee and elbow. I think band stomps have been the best thing for my knee yet.

I reread Mike Robertson's program, Bulletproof Knees and got general ideas from that. I had read it about 13 or 14 years ago.

I am always looking for ideas for rehab or prehab stuff, and I try things I think might work and get rid of anything that feels or seems bad.

I have done a lot of little things that my PT recommends, and I usually come up with my own variation of exercises based on things I learn from her, my doc (he lifts with me every Wed. - I coach him), and I get input from my chiro and my teammate who is a chiro. I am very lucky to have become friends with a lot of extremely smart and talented medical people who have a great understanding of what I do and who I am. I'm basically always either being watched by, or can make contact within hours or even minutes, with someone who knows more than me if I have questions about what I should or should not be doing.

I made a couple big progressions within the past few days.

1/17 was six weeks after the PRP elbow injections, so I had the green light from doc to start pressing light stuff. "Start low, go slow" is what he always says to me. He was there while I was trying a bunch of pressing stuff. I did:

1 arm cable presses
standing cable lifts
blast strap pushups
blast strap scapular pushups
1 arm DB press
blast strap rows
cable pulldowns
band stomps
air squats to a box
probably some other stuff I cant remember off the top of my head

My right shoulder has been shitty lately from leaning on crutches, then on a cane. Doc and chiro and PT helped me figure out I had badly jacked up right subscap, infraspinatus, teres minor and the posterior part of my serratus anterior. Chiro and PT did a whole bunch of stuff to help improve those areas of the right shoulder, and several of the above exercises worked on those things too. The cable lift is somewhat similar to a therapy exercise my PT showed me. I recorded a video and sent it to her asking if this was good for me and she loved it.

My pecs got DOMS like I had not had in a very long time after that workout, and my elbow felt great.

Oh yeah, a guy that I have been coaching was doing some DLs, and when I was explaining something to him, I bent down and picked it up to demonstrate something. It felt very good - nothing in the knee - so I did a few more. I think I did 185*3 and 235 * 1.


1/19
I did a bunch of warmup stuff and then DLs
135x1x3
225x1x3
275x1x???
315x1x4
The only thing that hurt was the skin on my shin where the knurling hit my leg.

I did a little bit of RDLs and some other very light stuff.


1/21
I warmed up good, including something I never used to do - tricep activation stuff, then I bench pressed. I had zero expectations. I was just thinking the whole time about what doc told me to pay attention to: I should stop pressing if I feel any kind of sharp pain in the left elbow/triceps tendon area.

I did all this off my chest in elbow sleeves:
55x15
105x10
145x10
185x5
225x3
275x2
No elbow/triceps pain at all - it felt the best it has since even before I fell on the elbow back in last May I think. I figured I would try some geared stuff.

F8 insert
315x3

3 boards
new used Inzer band shirt - this thing is a BEAST. Its triple ply and it weighs about 25 lbs I think (maybe exaggerating a little). A friend of mine gave it to me because he had shoulder replacement surgery and cant bench anymore. Its a really nice shirt. It fits my arms very loose, but it fits my chest well & I did not know if I could move a light weight down far in this thing, so that's why I used 3 boards.
435x3 - easy and no pain at all.

I wanted to compare that 3 ply Inzer shirt to a new/used F8 I got that has a nice thick collar, and is much tighter than the Inzer. I figured I needed more weight.
465x3 - easy, no pain

I kept the F8 on and did 505x3 to a 2 board. Still zero pain. I figured my elbows were plenty warm, so I took the sleeves off. 505x3 - still zero pain! Huge success!

I did some light pulling stuff, some chaos pushups, light triceps stuff, face pulls, and called it a day.

Elbow still feels great today. What is really great right now is I have more pain free ROM than I did prior to when I fell on the elbow. I think the tendon was already damaged quite a bit when I fell on it back ~7-8 months or so ago. It feels better than I can remember right now.


Knee continues to improve daily. I dont need the cane anymore and I can walk almost normal. Going up stairs is fine, but coming down stairs is still a bit sketchy, and I still feel like I am a long way from doing any heavy squat training. Maybe I can start training competitively for bench only or push-pull soon though.

I really dont want to compete in a lift that I cant do very well by my own standards, like have a shot at a PR or a national record or a world record or something. I'd really like to do a band shirt meet someday relatively soon, but I wont be breaking any records like my wife did. The dude who has the 55-59 unlimited (band shirts allowed) bench record pressed 1140! And this guy is my size and age too. I wont ever be able to top that, but I have an outside shot at a WR if I can do unlimited in a full meet if my knee comes back better than it was before. IPA & XPC do unlimited right now, so I will be looking at doing one of those at some point in the future. XPC nationals is in Fargo in November - I'd be happy if I can lift well by then.


Thanks!!!

I've neglected my log for too long. Lots has happened.

Some Russian woman beat Mrs Cha's 55+ ATWR by pressing 375.

My knee has improved, but isn't great.

Mrs Cha & I decided to enter a Metal Militia push-pull meet in Seward, NE on Saturday, May 25. MM allows band shirts. This was an opportunity for me to do my first band shirt meet and break some push pull records, as well as all the MM age/body weight related WRs. It was an opportunity for Mrs Cha to bench the most of any woman 55+ in a meet ever, all federations, all weight classes.

I modified my best band shirt by having the insert stitched in so that its a 3 ply shirt. In addition, I came up with the idea to stitch knee sleeves into the sleeves so that the sleeves would stay in place (they are way too big otherwise). I call it my Frankenstein shirt.

The Frankenstein shirt worked great. I could touch and press between 685 and 725 cleanly in the gym with it. The 725 looked really good - so good in fact, that the GOAT, Ed Coan told me it looked perfect (more on that later).

https://rumble.com/v5628mc-725-lb-bench-press.html - PR

I was able to pull a clean 595 conventional in the gym. Modified sumo still seems to bother the knee, but conventional doesn't. I went into the meet expecting to attempt 685/725/750 and 550/606/656. I was expected to go 6/9 or better. 1300+ total would put me at #1 McCulloch score all time, all ages at 275. 1406 would put me at #2 all time all weight classes for 55+.

The guy running the meet was super nice. He bought 60 lbs of angus ribeyes and cooked them for all participants the night of weigh ins. He is a guy who has benched over 1,000 in a meet. He understands what its like to move big weight.

I did not have my team with me to spot. I had one guy do the middle handoff, but he has to step away after the handoff, so I was at the mercy of whoever was side spotting. The meet director said guys he lifts with would do the spotting. Ok, I figured I'd be in good hands..... nope.

Warmups went fine. I did my raw stuff, then put on a loose band shirt for 505 off 2 boards & smoked it. Then I put on my Frankenstein shirt and smoked 605 off two boards.

When it came time to do my 685 opener, the side spotters from my warmups were now side judges, and he had six guys, mostly high school kids, spotting the sides - 3 on each side. I should have refused to get under the bar. The handoff was a little goofy - they pulled me up a bit and kind of dumped the bar on me. It forced my wrists to cock back a bit. Not the worst handoff I have had, but I should have stopped there. I figured at the time I would just straighten my wrists as I started to lower the bar. Bad idea.

As I straightened my wrists, the bar rolled forward and I could not stop it. It rolled over my right thumb and down my right forearm. On the left side, my fingers stayed under the bar, basically turning this into a 685 lb one arm tricep extension. That ended poorly, with my triceps ripping off the bone. The bar crashed onto the face savers. The side spotters were afraid of the weight. They watched this happen, then they picked it up off the face savers.

When I got up, the meet director asked me if I was ok. I said I didn't know. It didn't take long for me to figure that out. I reached over and felt the back on my left arm. The triceps were gone. I knew that instant what had happened. Then I tried using my right thumb. It bent sideways at the 2nd knuckle when I tried using it. The left thumb hurt too. I was done.

https://rumble.com/v56269g-bad-injuries.html

Mrs Cha went 2/3 and pressed 380 for her ATWR. That saved the day. But we knew I was ****ed up. I talked to my doc friend and my daughter (she's a doc of pharmacy, but knowledgeable about medical stuff). They told me to go to the ER. The ER at some hospital in Lincoln, NE got me in quickly (that was nice) and examined me. They put sort of a hard cast brace thing on my left arm and my right thumb & prescribed some good pain meds. Then we made the ~7 hour drive home. Fun.

I went to an orthopedic urgent care the next day. They treated me like a rock star. They got me appointments for MRIs on the right thumb & left arm, and got me an appointment with their best hand surgeon a few days later. My right triceps tendon tore off the bone and it was a pretty clean tear. My right thumb UCL was also fully torn - a clean tear as well, and the joint capsule was all torn up.

They called the thumb injuries "gamekeeper's thumb". These are much worse injuries than the triceps, and they have a low percent chance (something like only 30% chance) of full recovery. Thankfully, because I got them repaired quickly by a very skilled doc, he says I should make a full recovery.

I had surgery on the right thumb and left elbow Thursday May 30, only 5 days after the injuries. Getting stuff like this repaired in under a week is optimal. The day prior to surgery, my doc friend came to my house and examined my left thumb with his portable ultrasound device. He said my left thumb UCL was also fully torn and would eventually need to be repaired. They typically don't repair both thumbs at the same time because being thumbless sucks really bad.

The left triceps & right thumb should take about 3 months or so to heal, so they're maybe halfway there now, but they both still suck now. I decided to have surgery on the left thumb last Monday, 7/1 because surgery gets more difficult if you wait much over 1 month after this kind of injury. Its still in the hard brace until Wednesday this week. The right thumb has a removable plastic brace and the left arm has an adjustable brace. My only PT right now is bending the left elbow 60 reps a day. I've been increasing the ROM 10 degrees a week.

6/15

Ed Coan seminar

Mrs Cha & I went to an Ed Coan seminar. Only about 20 people were allowed to do it. Very cool. Ed watched as everyone lifted and gave tips, then he had Q & A at the end. He's a very nice guy, very knowledgeable, down to earth and friendly.

Ed gave Mrs Cha a few tips on squatting, one on benching (her bench is almost perfect), and DLing. It was mostly stuff I would not have thought of.

Since I could not lift, I showed him videos of my 725 lb bench (see above), and two of my best meet DLs. When I showed him the bench video, he said it looked perfect. He did not want to see the video of my injury.

When I showed him my meet PR DL video, he said, "I've seen you DL on video before". Then he said the DLs looked great.

If you are into powerlifting at all, and if you have the opportunity to attend one of Ed's seminars, I highly recommend doing it.

Pretty brutal man! Tough video to watch. I’m surprised you didn’t have some cracked ribs as well. Hopefully you are back to lifting soon. Congrats to Mrs Cha!

That sounds terrible and a huge fail on the meet's part for failing to staff it with spotters who knew what they were doing. Wishing you a speedy recovery.

Bonkers weights and inexperienced spotters does sound ridiculous. Hope you recover quickly.

Thanks! If not for the face savers, I would have been dead. Maybe without those I would have not gotten under that bar. I will never get under a heavy bar again without having side spotters that I know and trust.

Thanks!

I agree. Lots of weird things happened to line up that made it so he had no good spotters there. I like the meet director, and I understand why what happened, did happen. But I won't be doing a meet there again. Its kind of in the middle of nowhere. Some great lifters that were going to do it pulled out, and several potential great spotters didn't make it there for a variety of reasons.

Thanks!

J F C

I'm glad it seems you are ok and will be able to recover well. That was...horrible.

Thanks man.

As Ving Rhames said in Pulp Fiction when Bruce Willis asks if he's ok: "Naw, man. I'm pretty f*cking far from ok."


But I am alive, and I am improving.

I'm posting today because I got some good news yesterday.

Between my last post and yesterday, I saw a hand therapist twice. She gave me several very time consuming exercises to do. I have been doing them. They are mostly range of motion type stuff. They have not helped much, but it is good to keep moving. She basically told me to exert no force with my left triceps and exert almost no force with my thumbs.

The two things that have helped the most so far were:
1 - seeing my regular PT who did MAT on my right thumb for an hour on July 11. Immediately after she worked on me, the range of motion in the thumb increased pretty substantially, and it has slightly improved since.
2 - I have an acupen device. I've been using it quite a bit on both hands and thumbs. This is slowly increasing strength and ROM better than the lame exercises that the hand therapist has me doing.

Yesterday, 8/7, I saw the surgeon's personal PA. Great news! He says I probably do not need any more hand therapy visits, and I probably do not need any more surgeon visits. They are basically finished with me.

He did tell me to keep doing ROM exercises, but said that I know what to do going forward, so just pay attention to my body and do whatever seems right. I asked a lot of questions about specifics, and everything he said made sense. I need to avoid jolting the triceps, and I need to avoid sideways force with both thumbs, especially the left one, as it is several weeks from being ready to be used much.

PA said I can get PRP injections in my right thumb and left triceps anytime now. He said I should wait about another month to get PRP in my left thumb. I need to talk with regenerative doc friend about scheduling that now.

PA says I can bench press if it feels good. I tried benching the bar last night for a few reps. The triceps can handle it fine. The left hand did not feel good. The area where the bar sits between the left thumb and index finger has a lot of muscular atrophy. In addition, probably since the joint isn't healed, it felt kind of bad in that area holding the bar with the left hand. I stopped.

I was able to do some light cable pressing with kind of a fat, padded handle, and pulling is going pretty well. I did rows (10 body weight blast strap rows and a bunch of lighter stuff), and some pulldowns, face pulls, tricep cable pushdowns, and probably some other stuff I'm forgetting. I also did one static hold of about 350 with the trap bar, being careful not to exert the thumbs much. That all felt pretty good.

I ordered some Fat Gripz last night. Hopefully those allow me to bench press a little more going forward. If nothing else, maybe I can use them for dumbell and cable work.

Definitely not watching that, hope your recovery goes well!