I can remember it like it was the 2001. I had just moved to Edmonton, was dating someone who I thought was kinda cool at the time (we broke up later that year), and I was a bright-eyed, perky geek who liked lifting things and makin teh musclez.
I started going to the campus gym as many students decide to do, seeing as how I was broker than broke and was only able to afford a gym membership at a free facility, and at that point I was juuuust barely able to afford it. I walked into the place and looked around, saw the cardio bank in the upstairs section, all the free weights in the lower floor section, and heard the cheesy canned music bumping through the 20-year-old speaker.
“So this is my home for the next few years, huh? Guess I’d better make the best of it.”
From there I proceeded to head over to one of the two squat racks facing concrete walls thick from 50 layers of latex paint. With a fresh Kraft Dinner coursing through my left ventricle, I went to work doing what I thought was a good workout gleaned from the pages of Flex magazine. Ronnie Coleman’s leg workout for his Olympia prep? Sounds like a good idea for this guy to tackle!!
The next day as I wobbled into the gym on freshly desecrated stalks of dough and humility, I decided chest day was in order. As long as I didn’t need to work on walking around between exercises. I found the bench press in all its’ 1960’s glory, coated in a thin sheen of sweat and halitosis from years of wear and tear, as well as the fun scratches and rips and rust patches providing a warm glowing warming glow kind of patina that just can’t be replicated by today’s antique hunters.
Since warmups were for pussies to a testosterone-dripping 18 year old fresh from the middle of No-where, BC and plunked into a metropolitan university complete with a campus full of people that would love to become my friends in high correlation to my ability to bench press for every ones benefit, I set in to my first few sets, ready to demolish the bar in a jerking, twisting fury of excellence and nasty that would be rivaled by few.
I lowered the bar to my copious chesticles, felt something funny in my left arm, thought almost out loud to myself “screw you shoulder!! You don’t control me!!” and proceeded to press the hell out of that 225 like no one’s business.
Once that epic bit of stupidity was complete, I got up and felt like there was water running down my arm, radiating from the shoulder. I didn’t know what this felt like or what it was supposed to feel like, so I decided to skip further sets of bench press and proceed to do some weighted bench dips with some weight across my lap and then some light dumbbell flyes.
As many of you could probably tell, this wasn’t a high intelligence point in my life, but in the mind of me using my reason-thoughts at the time, I figured my honest awesomeness would protect me from any potential injury.
However, as I would find out, my awesomeness was in fact a rare form of kryptonite to my Superman, meaning I therefore was a complete idiot who developed a near-complete rotator cuff tear that would then make it nearly impossible to perform bench pressing for around roughly 10 years. Promptly, my girlfriend and I broke up. She couldn’t take the fact that I couldn’t bench press anymore, and I couldn’t take the fact that she couldn’t not take the fact that I couldn’t bench press anymore. It was a vicious circle of double negatives and confusion that lead to our demise.
As a cogent, grammar-check hated the hell out of that last paragraph.
I then began a long and arduous journey that would take me through caves, basins, thunderdomes, and deserts trying to find out what I could do to help my shoulder feel better and get back into bench pressing once again. I went to physiotherapists, chiropractors, witch doctors, that guy Skinny Dave on the corner with the one really weirdly yellow front tooth. Nothing. None of them helped me return to my glory of teenage bench press domination.
I sighed a deep sigh, looked through the Googles, and found some basic articles on how to get my rotator cuff back to rotating and cuffing. They were only minimally beneficial. Life sucked. I probably lost out on potential job opportunities since as an aspiring personal trainer job applications require you to list how much you bench, and me filling in a big glaring “N/A” was like an HR fork stab saying don’t hire this loser, he can’t bench.
I was a failure at life. I went through depression. I also went through a period where I felt like a 1600’s pirate, but that’s a story for another time.
Now this is where I can showcase something that I wanted to have back in the day but unfortunately I didn’t have the time machine to help me come into the future and get access to Rick Kaselj t take back in time with me to help the past me become a better version fo the present me so the future me can make me……
Wait, what the hell just happened? I got kinda confused as I was just writing that.
Anyways, Rick has recently come out with a product called Fix My Shoulder Pain. It does exactly what it says it is supposed to do. First, it lays out the kind of exercises I was too dumb to avoid, and why they are going to wreck your shoulder. Next, he shows better ways to train your shoulders so they aren’t walking balls of fail and regret. He’s partnered up with Mike Westerdal of Critical Bench (say what?? Bench press?!? I’m in, brah!!), which also means it’s going to help you get strong and not be stuck in a rehabby type of program for the rest of your life, but will help you to become strong, pain-free, and ready to bench press so much it makes near-by members of the fairer sex ovulate on the spot from the sheer magnitude of your greatness.
If you’ve read through my demented ramblings from 30,000 feet as I write this article on my way back from a weekend in Tulsa, Oklahoma, then I applaud your vigour. This also means you’re either interested in what I have to say next, may also have shoulder problems you want to fix, or are simply stuck at work and trying to look busy so your supervisor doesn’t have to call a meeting with you about your productivity.
Again.
Now Rick knows a thing or two about shoulder problems, seeing as how he completed a masters degree with rotator cuff issues as his thesis. He knows more about shoulders than hipsters know about cardigans and skinny jeans, and that’s saying a lot.
The free manual he includes with the entire package could be sold as a very solid product in and of itself, not to mention the self assessment guides handy flow chart system can help you to determine which program is going to be the best one for you and your specific issues. From there, the videos show you what to do and explain why it works, and the included workouts give you the direction to get the job done.
Rick’s gone over and above with this program, spending time making sure every base is covered. I really like his thought process and delivery, which makes it almost idiot-proof for you to figure out and develop a specific program to get the best possible outcome for your shoulder and to help you get back to diesel status within a very short period of time.
Here’s the thing: If I had something like this 10 years ago, it would hve saved me a lot of time, pain, suffering, humiliation and Hagen Daaz used to try to drown my pitiful bench sorrows. You should get this product today if you have any kind of chronic shoulder issues, and even if you want to make sure you don’t wind up having shoulder pain in the future.
Rick has release this puppy upon the world today with a very reasonable low cost of only $19.95, so there’s absolutely no reason not to get this product, meaning you should get on top of this action as soon as possible.
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