I’m 40 years old now and for the past year or two, my joints have started barking.
I used to run 3-5 miles a day, 4 or 5 days a week, but my knees started aching in the mornings (especially cold ones), and my ankles so stiff I’d have to grip the banister while walking down stairs.
I started a 100 push-up challenge and could rapidly do as many as 50-55 push-ups at a time, but hit a plateau not because of tricep or chest muscle fatigue, but because of my elbows. At the 45 push-up mark they start to audibly creak and my elbow tendons complain.
It reminds me of when I started doing bicep curls with free weights - same thing - it wasn’t sore muscles that stoped me but elbow and shoulder tendon inflammation. I had to ice my elbows and shoulders at night even on non-lifting days or the pain made it difficult to sleep. I gave it up.
Are these issues something I can “work out” differently to strengthen properly? I did do post-workout stretches and pre-workout warmups but they didn’t seem to affect my joints over the long run.
There’s a difference between exercising a joint and over working it. The limits on joints will vary from person to person. I don’t know how much, if anything, you can do to raise your use limit on your joints.
However, you CAN strengthen the muscles around a joint, which will help with stress, joint pain, and so forth. But I can’t advise you on how to do it as that would require knowledge of your joints I don’t have, and exercise/rehab knowledge I don’t have.
If you’re having joint problems there may be exercises and/or physical therapy that can help you. You may need to modify some of your exercise techniques. But all of that would require some consultation with a trained professional. If this is really important to you, you may find it worth it to go to the trouble of consulting someone who can help you more than some random stranger on the internet.
Lots of runners I know bike alternate days for their knees. You should be icing and heating it routinely as well. Rite-Aid has these great “cold wraps” I recommend; plastic gel ice in a “sock” with velcro that wraps around so you can be mobile.
Do pushups with your hands gripping barbells, so that your hands replicate the image in the Perfect Pushup. This will help significantly, but not cure.
I’m working on 100 push ups and so far the worst part has been pain in my left hand. Apparently in the last 10 years I’ve developed some sort of bone spur in the base of my palm, it’s very painful when in the push up position. I have to shift my weight closer to my fingers to do push ups.
I see. “I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled”, then…
I have used ice to good effect on the tendons but my concern is that while the building up of muscle strength is often described as “microtears” followed by healing growth, I have never read or heard of tendon inflammation being anything other than a barrier - and I suspect that repeatedly causing inflammation doesn’t raise the threshold for the future so much as use up more mileage on a ticking counter. Is that right?
After all, professional athletes get shelved for tendonitis, can end up requiring cortisone injections to overcome them, and eventually typically require either surgery or retirement.
It’s kind of bleak news but I think I can remain healthy - which is really my goal, and not to get large or run a marathon - doing light walking/running and 50 pushups at a time (which is certainly a lot more than many people bother do). It’s just kind of depressing to think that I may have topped out at those relatively modest levels.
Home remedy… For barking joints. My wife has been taking the over the counter Osteo Bi-Flex for her knees for several years now. Her orthopedic surgeon recommended trying it and she’s glad she followed his advice. It’s a relatively inexpensive option that may provide some relief for you, if it is in fact your joints. YMMV.
robardin, if you really want a full explanation and insight, I’d see an orthopedist and ask for a physical therapy referral. The athletic trainers I worked with at the physical therapy office were more concerned with my quality of life/maintaining working out at a high level whereas the orthopedist and physical therapists were more concerned with “pain”, and avoiding pain at whatever cost.
Athletic trainers, once told your problem by the physical therapist, are eager to get you back or nearly back to your high level by proper technique, icing/heating and electronic stimulation. This is YMMV of course, but my physical therapy routine was invaluable to continue working out at a high level without sacrifice.
With today’s interventions, joint wear and tear is essentially irreversible. Efforts are aimed at diminishing pain with anti-inflammatory agents such as NSAIDs or cortisone, or trying to replace joint fluid with hyaluronates and that sort of thing.
Once you beat up your joints (and running for a typical non-small individual beats them up), the best you can hope for is a slower progression of worsening. To the best of my knowledge, nothing really reverses the damage.
This ^^^ You are experiencing the early onset of osteo arthritis. Basically the cartilage in your joints is wearing thin or possibly even gone. When that happens you’ll recognize the bone-on-bone feeling. Not good. But the Osteo Bi-Flex and similar products do work. The effects can be mitigated by adding extra amounts of the cartliage building blocks contained in them to your diet.
