A week ago, I broke my ring finger. On my way out the door the next day to go do my Monday morning weight lifting workout, I realized that that probably was not a very good idea. As such, I took the last week off from lifting and just did a lot of running. Which I would have done anyway.
I went back to the gym this morning. My finger is mostly recovered; it is still sore and aches, but most of the swelling and just about all of the visible bruising is gone already. Granted, I probably did not really break the finger, or if I did it was really minor. But it was nice to be able to lift and not worry about dropping a heavy barbell because of the finger.
The lifting itself was no trouble at all. After I finished the sets, though, the finger definately ached. Stretching and flexing it made it worse briefly but better in the long run. I did not have any trouble with the snatch grip deadlifts or the romanian deadlifts, and the bulgarian split squats burned like normal but didn’t even make my finger take note. The same goes for the bridge exercise with a knee tuck on a swiss ball that Bud Gibson had turned me onto.
Speaking of which, he has a new exercise, BOSU Jackknifes, at his site that is fairly similar. I haven’t tried them yet, but plan on playing around with them at some point in the near future.
Have you had this finger x-rayed? BTW, everything I read says you are better off continuing to exercise while healing *unless* you are damaging the affected area.
Thanks for the links. We’re going to do leg press series based on a request from Scott Bird.
I didn’t bother getting it x-rayed because it is a waste of money. It was just a bad jam; there wasn’t really a need for a splint and if there was I could have done that myself. There’s nothing else to do but let it heal.
I gave it a week when it was black and blue and swollen to just use it normally and not with lifting, because I did not want to trust holding a barbell with my own body weight with a bad finger. I still typed and used it like normal though.
It is not 100% yet but I am back to lifting with it. I feel like it could support the weight enough to get me through my workouts without dropping something and hurting something else. As long as the swelling is gone so that I can fit my wedding band on in a month I’ll be all set.