not quite.
what happened is that i injured myself in early september 2012 and which caused pain in my sternum consistent with costo ( had to go to multiple doctors until I was officially diagnosed despite telling all of them that it seemed like I had costo) and took about 4 full months off from lifting shoulders, chest and most compound movements (no barbell squats, deadlifts, bench press, etc.) I did legs, back and arms but mostly accessory type shyt and nothing super heavy. I also had to cut down on cardio cause it literally hurt when breathe (word to puff daddy) and I could hear a cracking sound and feel pain anytime I took a really deep breath or tried to stretch out the pec major on my left side of my body. In addition to the sternum pain, I also had referred pain on going from my left pectoral, to my left shoulder and down my arm. My physical therapist said that it appeared to be nerve damage given my symptoms and had me doing some stretches to "floss the nerve" and that it would take time for those nerves to regenerate if they did at all given the nature of nerves. I started PT right around Christmas and did alot of stretching, yoga moves and slowly worked up to doing some chest exercises like light dumbell presses, light dumbbell flys, (and I mean light, like start from scratch light 7.5 pounds and shyt) and the UBE cycle. It helped and I slowly started to integrate some chest exercises into my routine but stayed away from shoulders since alotta times the pain I felt from doing shoulders was worse than I actually felt doing chest. I ended up changing my diet drastically by late January since I had been losing muscle and gaining fat due to the my weightlifting not being nearly as intense as my body was used to and mainly cause I couldn't do any cardio that was more intense than moderate cause of the costo causing pain when breathing heavy. I went ultra low carb (followed Carb Nite protocol with the 30 carb max per day with 1 refeed per week) and was able to cut alotta weight but lacked energy and couldn't gain any strength so I stopped that by May, which is when I started seeing another physical therapist who helped me get back on track to where I am today. She pushed me to really work my chest and shoulder area and told me that trying to protect my chest and not working it out was just as detrimental as pushing too hard, so by July of 2013, I started lifting chest and shoulders again, progressing slowly but pushing myself to ascend in weight as needed, made sure to stretch before and after religiously and stayed away from any exercise that locked my upper body in any unnatural motions. I pretty much did mostly dumbbell press for chest and stayed away from regular olympic bar bench press cause it kept causing pain and I am now stronger that i've ever been and now am up to doing dumbbell press with the 105 lb dbs for 6-8 reps or so, which three years ago I never would have imagined. It's not a crazy amount of weight but given my size (5'10" and anywhere from 170-175 on a given day depending on how much cardio I do) and the injury, I'm okay with it. I still from time to time, have some pain in my left pec and my left arm doesn't quite feel right with the nerves and such, but it's such an improvement to where I was when I got injured that it's ridiculous. I'm stronger now that i've ever been, so that's a positive.
sorry for the long ass post but Costo is no joke, I wouldn't wish it on anyone. shyt made me just wanna end it seriously
, thought I wouldn't ever be able to live a normal life, much less lift weights again. from what I've heard alotta ppl hurt themselves the same way I did, going too deep on dips, so before careful brehs, don't want y'all to go through that shyt.
