Torn Pec

I'm always eager to report various feats of fitness, grit, and awesomeness accomplished by a half dozen or so people training in my basement and around the yard. Well, not today. Today I bring a story of the dis-awesome and plain ugly.

After a few progressively heavier warm up sets the blogger lays on his back under 315 pounds. In many times recently passed, he's benched pressed this plus plenty more. So it's no big deal. But he's taking it seriously. He must, or it's not worth doing.

Never mind - that in the previous month he went on-and-on about the overrated, uninspired exercise that he cared for very little. Neither did he pay heed to the fairly severe muscle soreness lingering in his shoulders and arms from heavy pressing just two days prior. It was Tuesday, lifting day, and he's here, so he may as well give a damn and go hard. It was time to battle or be crushed, yeah, just like he wrote about a few weeks ago.

The core tensed, scapula rigid, lats flared, he un-racks the weight. The first rep feels light, throws it up. The second rep accelerates as well. Descending into the third rep of 5, he feels and hears the sound of a T-shirt being torn apart at a seam. In a fraction of a second the weight crashes down as his right pectoral muscle peels off the insertion into his upper arm bone (humerus).

"Torn pec" he blurts, writhing under the load as his friend regroups, heaves the load off his sternum and back to the stand. 

He stands up.

"It doesn't hurt that bad."

"I am NOT having surgery."

"I feel dizzy."

He sits down. Then stands up, shirt off, poking at his protruding right...it turned from a chest to a boob.

He works until lunch the next day, calls his friend who specializes in shoulders at the Orthopedic Institute of Pennsylvania.

"Come in tomorrow at 9. If the MRI shows a full tear you'll need to have surgery."

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