My Motorcycle Injuries

Time marches on. I had slacked off a little over the past several months concerning my exercise routine, but I’ve been back on track with all of it over the last month and a half. I started slowly, but I’ve been methodical about how I advance with it all because I’m no longer just a guy with a bunch of old motorcycle accident wounds. Yeah, I’m also a guy who turned sixty this summer. I feel that physically I’m pretty much fit and capable, but I find myself sometimes describing my abilities now with the term “for a guy my age”. Next up is me finding the need to use the term “in my day”. Uh-huh, there better not be any neighborhood kids wanting to mess around on my front lawn or I’ll go all Clint Eastwood on them. I still walk roughly five miles a day while also doing upper body work with weights, pushups, stretching, and some boxing equipment. None of it is very complex, but I try to keep things going for myself in a way that keeps the aftereffects of my injuries under control. It will ...

 I'll turn sixty in a couple of days. The motorcycle accident occurred when I was fifty years old. Ten years ago I was roughly 50 lbs. heavier than I am now and I had stopped exercising with any level of consistency. To be honest, none of that mattered to me. I was happy enough with everything in my life. However, I now keep my weight at a healthy level and I eat within fairly healthy standards because of the diabetes that was brought on by damage done to my pancreas in the accident. I also exercise regularly and it involves walking, stretching, pushups and weight lifting, along with some work on a punching bag.  I sometimes wonder what things would be like now if I hadn't been in such a horrific accident back then. I mean, would I be a heart attack waiting to happen? Would I be a plump guy who has trouble fitting into a booth at a restaurant? Would I have to resize my clothes every two years and wind up falsely claiming that jeans companies are making them smaller now?  ...

                                                                                                                                                                                                                Before                                                                    After One of the stranger thi...

I’ve noticed something a little weird about lifting weights recently. I usually do my routine in ten sets of ten repetitions. Lately I’ve been using the weights for upper body strength by working with a set of dumbbells for the sake of biceps, triceps, and shoulders. I’ve been working hard on getting past a problem with my one arm that seemed to originate at the point of injury where my bone was broken near the wrist in the accident. The strange thing that I have noticed is that I don’t have trouble with the last set of ten repetitions, but rather with the very first set. One would think that the last set should be the one that causes me to struggle with exhaustion, but it’s actually the first set that I strain with the most. After the first set it almost feels as though I’m the Tinman in The Wizard of Oz after Dorothy applies oil to all of his joints. Suddenly I’m free to move and work again. I have no problem with the remainder of the workout as long as I get through that first set. ...

I’ve very recently started to lift weights again. I have had this bizarre pain in my arm that runs from the area of my forearm near the wrist where my arm was broken, up the inner part of my forearm, and then up the center of my bicep. It started around January of this year and at times it was so severe that I couldn’t carry my bible with that arm when heading into the church auditorium. Wacky stuff. I have no idea what caused this pain, except to say that it originates in the part of my arm that received a compound fracture through the accident, but it’s been getting better over the past two months or so. It’s been a little strange to have my arm in such a state of weakness for the better part of this past year, but I’m really glad that things are getting better. I’m just now getting to the point where I can use the arm for heavier tasks and lift things without grimacing in pain. I have started the weightlifting with very light dumbbells. I’m using roughly 15% of the weight that I’ve ...