Pinched Nerve

I believe I pinched a nerve in my neck, it feels like an electric current going down my triceps and out my fingertps with a pinching sensation in my trap. I have gone from beching 365 to struggling with 225. My question is what steps should I take to get back at full strength. I am almost at the end of a cycle and I don’t want to stop working out altogether. Will it be harmful to go light? I saw a chiropractor 2 days ago, but it didn’t seem to help too much. Please help.

Stretch/massage your anterior delt, upper pec tie in…
massage it in the stretched position until you relieve the stress. I can almost guarantee that the problem lies in there for you.
Treat the source of the problem…not the area you feel the pain.

you can try bowen therapy or active realease technique…

both work great…

no need to agravate it with heavy weights…your long term health is what is important

Sounds like you do have nerve impingement. The question is whether it is coming from your neck or further downstream. You want to rule out a cervical spine disc herniation causing impingement on the nerve root where it exits from the spine as opposed to a type of peripheral nerve entrapment such as anterior scalene syndrome, costoclavicular syndrome, or pec minor syndrome. The strength loss is a little concerning, do the muscles feel weak or do you feel restricted due to pain with the movement?. What kind of work-up did the chiro do? What kind of treatment? If you could provide some more info regarding the onset of the injury, things that either aggravate or relieve your symptoms, and what fingers are involved, I would be glad to offer some suggestions on what I would recommend you do to get an appropriate diagnosis and what type of treaments may be available.

i agree with drryan. we need more information. i would suggest you go see your family doctor and possibly have some diagnostic tests performed. i would also suggest seeing a manual physical therapist who has some training in neurodynamics (ask if they have studied material by david butler and elvey). they should also be able to help figure out the source of the symptoms; i.e. neck, upper arm, wrist, etc. hope this helps. please respond if you have other questions.

climbon

d-bolgame,

It may sound simplistic but I have had amazing results with ice. I would ice it every three hours non-stop. You might have so much inflamation around that nerve that it cannot heal.

I would also stop lifting for a week or two until you see some results.

i had a pinched nerve in the neck, my chiropractor fixed it right up with 2 weeks of 3x/week visits. I had to shop around to find a good one though, some are quacks, some use awesome high tech stuff and integrated healing methods such as massage, muscle imbalance/flexibility detection, etc… so find a really good one and you’ll be right as rain. Also, if it’s painful, it’s one step away from extremely painful and damaging. If your body is decreasing your neural recruitment ability such that your bench pressing strength is going down, realize that its doing it for a reason. I remember an Ian King article about how smart trainers don’t train through or around serious injuries, they know when to lay off, think about the long term, and get help. Best wishes!