Unable to Train for 10 Days or More

Bigger Stronger Leaner Competitive Bodybuilding
1

Hey guys,
Thursday night I fell on a beer bottle and got about 20 stitches in my right forearm. The Dr. said I can’t touch weights for atleast ten days (maybe more) because i’ll reopen my cut. I’m very worried I’m going to drop some muscle mass.

Is there anything I can do diet wise that will help me out. I’m planing to load up on creatine, beta alanine, and go heavy on the BCAAs for the next few days. I’m pretty much going crazy because I can’t train… any advice would be great!

Thanks a lot,
jt

2

Chill, eat clean, and relax. Don’t look at the scale. As soon as you are green lighted jump back in there and hit it balls to the wall.

3

Sucks.

Eat A LOT. High protein diet, lots of calories (shocking, I know).

Do 30-45 min of low intensity cardio to keep your metabolism at a high rate. That way, all the food your taking down won’t turn into extra fat. I can’t imagine walking on an inclined treadmill or training on an elliptical to be a problem for forearm stitches.

After a week, you’ll probably feel like you’ve shrunk. You might feel your clothes become more loose, but don’t worry. You’ll get it back very fast once you can get in the gym again.

Very minor setback if it only costs you 10 days of no weight training.

4

sounds good fellas, i’ll keep the protein and cals high and hit the cardio until I’m good to go.

5

I think you should just listen to the dr. and rest. It will probably help you more than it would hurt you. But also you could think of it this way. If you suddenly lost your right arm, would you just give up on training for the rest of your life? You still have 3 fully functional limbs. And you probably are right-dominant so laying off the right arm wouldn’t be the end of the world. Im just playing devil’s advocate though, as I think rest and listening to your dr is probably the best choice.

6

I’ve read that every now and then a good rest week is good for the muscles.

7

Relax, its 10 days. Don’t go hog crazy with your food and just rest and be active.

8

Can’t you still train legs and your other arm? If you can I’d do that.

9

I trained legs the night I got cut, so I’ll have to wait another day or two to train them again. I think I’ll just take it easy, do some cardio and train calves everyday… better than nothing I guess

10

After lurking around here for a couple years, I figure this is as good a time as any to make my first post…

I had been in Bangladesh since May 21 (returned home on June 4th). While I was there, I found it impossible to train, other than doing body weight stuff (the boat we were on for a week had a pipe I used for pull-ups), which I did 5-6 times. Nutrition was a nightmare, as they eat primarily white rice, and protein sources were hard to come by (and when they could be found, it was usually very bony fish, or stringy, fatty beef). It also didn’t help that my airline lost my bag, and all my supplements and protein bars/powder was lost.

If all that wasn’t enough, I contracted malaria over there. The fever and chills hit me the last few days of the trip, and I’m still recovering. All told I think I lost about 10 lbs. already, though my body fat% is up, and haven’t felt well enough to get off my ass and start training again. I’m shooting for this week to return.

Since I’ve been home, my nutrition is getting back to normal. I feel I have a very good concept of how I should be eating, and I log what I eat every day on fitday.com. I eat meals of protein + carbs from breakfast until I train (usually around 3pm) one more protein + fast carb for post workout, then protein + fat meals for the rest of the night. I plan on eating around 4,000 cals on workout day and 3,200-3,400 on off days. My sister also just started working at a health food/supplement store, so I plan on loading up on creatine monohydrate and BCAA’s.

My goal here is to put back on the muscle and size I lost as quickly as possible, and my question is, what type of program would be the best for this? Before I left I was doing this body part split: Legs/Calves, Back/Biceps, Chest/Triceps/Calves, off, Shoulders/Calves, Arms/Core, off. I would consider myself to be an intermediate lifter, as I have been training for three years, though only two years training hard and with proper knowledge/technique. Thanks for any input.

EDIT: Does anyone know why my avatar looks 10x bigger than everyone else’s?