On the disabled list

Watch a professional baseball game on television and you’ll hear the sports announcer mention that so-and-so baseball player is on the disabled list. In Major League Baseball, the disabled list (DL) is a method for teams to remove injured players from their roster in order to summon healthy players. Players are placed on either the 15-day or the 60-day disabled list, usually depending on the severity and/or recovery time of the injury.

Well yesterday I placed myself on the 48-hour disabled list due to tibialis anterior muscle pain in my left shin. I made that “business decision” at about 30 minutes of my workout during the 7th set of squat snatch training, skipping the clean and jerks and front squats that I had planned to do.

No thanks to science classes I didn’t take in high school or college but rather Wikipedia, the free internet encyclopedia, I know that the tibialis anterior is a muscle in the shin that spans the length of the tibia. In my middle-age man limited anatomy vocabulary, “my left leg hurts in the shin area.”

An investigation is in progress to pinpoint the culprit of this pain. It may have been the brisk walking I’ve been doing, or it could have been last Friday’s Olympic weightlifting workout. I can't rule out last Saturday morning’s karate workout; but truth be told, it may be as simple as that I am a middle-age man wanna-be athlete, engaging in athletic activities that make me more prone to occasional injury. Whatever it is, as if it matters, I am injured.

Hopefully I’ll be ready to resume training Wednesday afternoon as I have things to do, places to see, events to enter and middle-age man fitness goals to achieve. There’s a planned weightlifting competition I want to enter in early November and yesterday was my 4th training day of a 16-day training plan to prepare for that competition.

So it’s rest, ice, compress and elevation, RICE for short, during my recovery. The faster I heal the sooner I can jump back on the fitness saddle. And while I am a middle-age man wanna-be-athlete without the fame, glory and multi-million dollar contract, I have something in common with that injured professional baseball player as we both sit on the sideline; we both are on the disabled list.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum