How I treated sore joints and what came of it

Period of idiocy

Tell me how you do sports and I'll tell you if you are an idiot.

articles on Lifehacker, I described the changes that sport brought to my life. But I repeat: what an idiot I was. I don't know where my brains were when I, after walking into the gym for several months, took up the deadlift of 100+ kilograms.

It is a pity that at that time there was no person in the hall who would come up and give me a sucker or at least cool my ardor with words. But you can't bring back the past, and with my wonderful workouts, I put joints on my knees and elbows.

I'll make a reservation right away: I have never consulted a professional doctor about my joint problem. It so happened that I learned to deal with pain and discomfort on my own, and I hope that the problem is in the past. Or at least I'm going in the right direction.

What do I mean by planted joints? Unpleasant stitching pains in left elbow and right knee under any load. It even got to the point that I could not lean on my arm when I got up from the chair, the pain was so unpleasant.

During this time, I continued to train. Sometimes through pain. Sometimes the joints would stop hurting for no reason at all, and I thought maybe training was helping.

Treatment

When I realized that things were bad and the joints continued to hurt, I had to pay attention to this. A doctor I know, whose opinion I trust completely and completely, said that either I will have to go for a massage and massage problem areas in the near future (a month, six months, a year), or I need to do stretching of these areas and reduce the power load in order to prevent a worsening of the situation.

By this time, I had reached serious, by my standards, results: the weight in basic exercises reached 100 kilograms. Not such a kilogram as at the beginning of my journey, but the correct kilogram, with the ideal technique, knowledge and sensations of my body.

Those who train with weights will understand how much I did not want to lose weight, especially when you see that it only grows. But there was no choice, and I cut the weight in about half.

I also started looking for preventive drugs that could help me in the difficult task of treating joints. My choice settled on three of them:

Mukosat;
Artron Triaktiv Forte;
Animal Flex.

Mukosat seemed like the best choice, but due to the fact that it is unrealistically difficult to get it in my country, I had to exclude it from the list, leaving the last two options. After looking at the same price, I decided to take Animal Flex, a sports vitamin and mineral complex for ligaments and joints.

At the same time, due to other circumstances, I stopped practicing. For about a month I drank Animal Flex, ran around the stadium and did not do strength training.

I was very surprised when a month later I came to the gym and found that the pain in my elbow had decreased, and very significantly. Previously, he was ill on certain exercises (all exercises for triceps and bench press), but now with the same weight I practically do not feel pain, but I also try not to fly off the coils and not hang all the pancakes that I see nearby on the barbell.

Workout

If you, like me, do not dare to go to the doctor (and going to the doctor is the best option), you will have to significantly revise your training. First, no big weight. As soon as you feel pain in the problem area, this is a signal that you need to reduce weight. If the pain persists, then you will have to find analogs to the exercise.

Secondly, running. I have a special relationship with running. We can say that he changed my life, and I was not going to leave him. But the pain in my knee slowly led me to this. If you love running and don't want to give up, I highly recommend you read.

Its main thesis is to stop running on the heel and start running on the toe. I retrained in about two weeks. And after these two weeks I forgot about the pain in my knees. At that time, it was a real miracle for me, because I was almost used to living with pain.

Third, stretch marks. I would advise everyone to stretch. It doesn't matter if you have sore joints or not, stretching is cool and healthy. If there is still a problem with the joints, pay special attention to stretching the problem areas.

You can find the basics of stretching in. But I would recommend reading a book on this topic and treating stretching as a necessity.

Should you give up training? The choice is yours. Chances are, if you stop exercising, the pain will stop. But don't make your sore joints an excuse not to exercise.

conclusions

For those who leafed through this article and did not want to read a lot of letters, I decided to prepare brief conclusions so as not to waste your time. So:

Reduce the intensity of your workouts. Do not forget about a lot of weight as well, it will have to be removed. At least for a while.
Mineral complexes. I still didn't figure out which helped me more: Animal Flex or no training. But the reviews about this complex are extremely positive, so I advise you to try it.
Add stretching to your workout routine and pay special attention to sore areas.
Run on your toes. Forget about thick soles and heel runs.
Be mindful and improvise. Look for analogues of those exercises in which sore joints make themselves felt. There are dozens of different exercises for each muscle group.

Still, my advice to you: do not stop practicing. If sports are a burden to you, then joint pain will be another reason not to go to workout, but think about who are you kidding and is it worth doing?