After I experimented with lifting eight hundred pounds a few years ago, I reached this experimental conclusion: don't lift eight hundred pounds, you idiot!
I'd been reading a neat book about short range heavy weight lifting, as opposed to full range of movement-type lifting; the advantage of short or static contraction is that your can lift much more weight.
The disadvantage of it is that you can lift much more weight!
As a result of my eight-hundred pound lift, I developed a little tiny bulge in a little disc. Next to my little bitty sciatic nerve. And then I learned the meaning of pain.
Long story short, I recovered completely, except that occasionally I'll sit for too long, and get a twinge, and that makes me more than anxious, because I have some traumatic memories of sleeping on the floor with ice-packs and ibuprofen for company.
And so I went to the local Relax the Back Store in Phoenix at Camelback and Central, and picked up a Teeter Hang Ups Inversion Table. If I told you I was the model in the pictures with the washboard abdominals, would you believe me? Yeah, that's what I thought.
I experimented with it in the store, and I loved the ease of use.
Now it's at my house; and I'm about to experiment with the I.Q. Test that is the assembly instructions.
They sent along written instructions, in three languages, which already ticked me off.
But my next project is to watch the instructional video to get a living color explanation of the assembly process (which had better not be in three languages; I don't want to spend three times the needed time watching the darned thing!).
And the theory of inversion tables is pretty simple; it's to provide traction in an opposite direction from the usual pull of gravity to give your discs a chance to move back to their normal, non-squashed shapes. And away from nerves like the ever-popular sciatic!
By the way, many folks have herniated discs, and no symptoms at all! If the bulge doesn't impinge on a nerve, well, there you are!
And that is just another example of words to live by: it's better to be lucky than smart!
And am I smart enough to assemble this bad boy?
I'll let you know!
p.s. I also have buddies who swear by their inversion tables, telling me that they actually gained height after use, as well as shedding pain. If it works for me, I'll tell you! Bear in mind, of course, that there isn't any guarantee that if it works for me it'll work for you, because bodies and pathologies differ.
And always talk to a doctor instead of a Phoenix, Arizona Bankruptcy Lawyer about your health issues, especially before you strap yourself into ankle shackles and hang upside down like a bat!
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