THE PT CHRONICLES
PART 10
Dislocation, Dislocation, Dislocation
I started renting out of a small gym called Heart and Soul at the top of Ladbroke Grove in West London. I say small, it had three levels consisting of a weights room, cardio room and a 8very impressive functional/CrossFit room on the top level. The gym was run by two PTs Sarah and James who I’ll always be thankful to for letting me use their great space.
I’m now two years into my PT career, with a huge client base and still living in Kennington. I remember walking into Heart and Soul for the first time and thinking ERROR. James and Sarah were great but the lads upstairs, Lee, Greg and Shahin all cut me that look when the wrong guy walks into the wrong bar in the movies. It was going to be a struggle.
I got it, they were CrossFit boys and all with level 4 Strength and Conditioning Qualifications. In walks this skinny-legged TRX’r (whatever the fuck that was to them?), and hangs his strap over the chin-up bar and didn’t move from there for 8 hours of clients. They hated me immediately. I didn’t use their methods and I was hogging the pull-up bar and music all day. I’d have hated me.
This went for on for a few months and after a while, I got to know Lee quite well. He is this vastly knowledgeable, proud, moody Irishman who trains harder than most I’ve seen and rolls with best, I think he’s a Purple belt in BJJ. This essentially means that if Lee grabs hold of you, your life is over. We trained together a few times with him teaching me Olympic lifting and me showing him TRX upper body moves. Baby steps. In fact, after a while they all accepted me as the crazy TRX guy and allowed me not to die, which I’m sure they’d been planning all along.
One fine West London day I had a gap in the middle of my rather busy schedule so I decided to train. I was training a lot of TRX and weights at this point so I felt superhuman. I wasn’t.
If you’ve ever watched the array of different TRX movements I can do on my Instagram you’ll know that I’m a show-off. Handstand and jumping my way through a bevvy of moves isn't uncommon.
I was having a very strong day. Handstands felt like breathing, Single-leg box jumps felt like walking up steps so I made the extremely smart and well-informed decision to perform a certain move I’d had my eye on for a while.
A roll-out. Know what they are?
It’s something people do with next to zero functional basis behind it. Think full plank but moving your hands further away from you and bringing them back to towards your body. But I’m not regular. I decided to do a ONE-ARMED standing roll-out. MORON.
I set my feet back a little so I’m leaning one-handed into the TRX, I set a strong plank. I’m ready. I slide my hand, holding the TRX handle further away from me engaging a seriously intense single-arm plank. Wow, this is the move! I drag my left hand, barely I might add, back towards my body. Rep 1 down. I’m feeling great. Rep 2 down although that was a mighty struggle to get back in…
PAUSE. If you’ve done one physics lesson in your life you’d have looked at my body position, assessed the movement and known that it wasn’t going to work. I don’t why I THOUGHT it was going to either? Actually I do, EGO.
UNPAUSE. I begin rolling out into the third rep, all eyes in the gym are on me because this move looks cool despite being dangerous. As my arm moves further away I feel LIKE Mr. TRX , he’s doing it, I AM DOING IT, I am the man. I reach the maximum distance that my arm can move away and then, as if in slow motion but not, I’m stuck. In real-time, it was 0.5 seconds but for me, it was 10 seconds of "what’s that ripping/clicking sound coming from my left shoulder?
...and then BOOOOOOOM my left arm explodes, forwards, out of my shoulder socket and I plummet to floor onto my knees...
The pain is unreal. It feels like an elephant is standing on my arm and chest. I look at Lee’s face. It tells me whatever pain I’m feeling in my arm is matched by the visual. I look down to see what used to be my shoulder sitting on the left side of my chest. I nearly puke. The only thing keeping me from passing out is the actual pain.
Now, I can’t really describe it, but I knew/felt that it had to be put back in immediately. The pressure was immense and it needed releasing.
“Guys, anyone, can you help me?”
A sea of shaking, frightened heads. No one would help because who actually knows what to do in this situation? I thought I did so I stood up, sheepishly grabbed a staircase bar in my hand and took a deep breath in…on the breath out I dropped my hips back fast and PLOP, my arm dropped perfectly back into the socket. I AM A HERO. I stood up and moved my arm around testing my re-locating skillset. It felt fine and boomph I hit the floor passed out and start shaking with the shock. There IS video of evidence of all this but maybe when Netflix pick this up we can all have a watch.
Two hours later I’m sat in the emergency room in agony whilst Tallie, my next client waits with me in sympathy of my idiocy. The doc calls me in and lays one of my favourite quotes in my life so far;
“You should not have put your own shoulder back in BUT you put back in perfectly.”
HERO.
Roll Credits