I’m asking since I’ve managed to pull muscles in my chest, (which ever muscle it is is a few inches to the right of my breastbone) not once, but twice so far in 2001, and I don’t know how.
The first time I thought I did it from shoveling, since I’d shoveled a great deal of snow that week, it was the week we got 48" of snow between 3 storms. However, since I did it again last week, I’m clueless as to what I did.
Any suggestions to what I could be doing to myself? I suspect it’s in my sleep because I haven’t had a pain after doing an activity, but I’m not sleeping any differently than I have my whole life so I’m not convinced this is the case. I thought I’d ask if anyone had any ideas about it before consulting a doctor over it.
Before anyone worries, I’m positive it’s a pulled muscle, not any other type of chest pain, since it only hurts if I turn myself in certain positions or move my right arm the wrong way- it just feels like every other muscle I’ve ever pulled basically. However, it took 6 weeks to heal last time(though it’s mostly better this time, maybe since I’m not doing any shoveling to aggravate it now), and I’d like to keep from doing it again!
My favorite method is to pull grab a fence post needing removal in a bare hug and try to pull it out of the ground. Used to think it was easier than digging them out, but finally decided it was not worth walking around with what feels like a heart attack.
Coughing, that could be it, then. Maybe I did pull it the first time by shoveling, and prehaps I’ve repulled it by coughing, since I do have a cold with a cough now. Thanks for the suggestions. Now, if I never cough again…
Flapping your arms too had ( perhaps trying to fly away from the snow. )
Yerp, flapping does it, as does doing that thing where you fall from standing up into a press up, wait too long before you catch yorself- ‘YOWEE!’- that’s gota do it too.
Appart from flapping in your sleep, or falling over… erm… i guess if u ran adn wave your arms a lot, or maybe mince really fast, that might do it.
this is great fun, thinking of all the things that can strain your chest muscles!!
erm…
flapping… builds up chest muscles. we get chicken breasts from battery hens right? ( maybe i am wrong) surely if they were free range they would do more flapping, have bigger.:. more meat adn the breasts would be generally better for us… just a thought.
Try to recall any sort of “pushing” actvity that you did with your arms or hands. Any number of those could do it. Pushing yourself out of a chair, shoveling, etc. Heavy coughing or sneezing could, too.
Basically, a “pushing” motion which is out of the norm for you is probably what caused it.
I learned my best method for pulling a chest muscle while in high school gymnastics. My routine on the p-bars went horribly wrong, I missed my catch on the outside, fell between the bars, and ripped the hell out of my left pec. Yowch.
I read quite some time ago (sorry…I’ll look for a cite) that it’s actually quite common–esp. among teenagers–to hyperextend and injure the pecs/tendons where they anchor to the sternum. It’s not something you usually stretch to protect against, and extreme range of motion (i.e., just about any high-school sport, or the downswing of flys during weightlifting, etc.) can do it.
