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Episode #58: Acute Muscle Weakness in the Bench Press | A Clinical Case of Cervical Radiculopathy with Powerlifter Chris Rzany
Cervical radiculopathy is a common condition of the neck that can result in a multitude of symptoms radiating in the arm, including muscle weakness. Acute weakness with the bench press can be a sign that something is impinging a nerve in your neck but when addressed appropriately, you can regain your strength effectively.
Chris Rzany experienced the acute onset of pec and triceps weakness in his bench press from one day to the next. He knew something was wrong and needed medical attention when he could barely bench press the empty bar where previously he was bench pressing 260lbs.
In an effort to preserve his physical health he sought immediate medical attention from an orthopedist, underwent imaging, and other testing, with no conclusive diagnosis to the root cause of his cervical radiculopathy.
Through his recovery journey there were ups and downs, relapses of his symptoms, but eventually, with the brief help from PRS Clinical Coach, Dr. Rori Alter, Chris was able to understand the root of his injury, his training program.
In this episode of the PRS Podcast, Chris and Dr. Rori Alter sit down and discuss his journey from severe cervical radiculopathy back to the powerlifting platform and hitting a raw powerlifting bench press PR.
In this episode you’ll learn how volume, intensity, frequency, recovery, and novel stimuli played into his injury. And he’ll also discuss how he stopped the relapse/remission cycle through monitoring training intensity.
Connect with Chris:
IG - @crzany75
Email - chris_rzany@yahoo.com
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Chris Rzany: [00:00:00] But that was actually one of the lessons I had to change. My frame of reference is these exercises are now serving a different purpose. It's not about hypertrophy or strength building, it's about activation. And if one's needed to get to the other, then I'm happy to do it.
Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC: [00:00:16] All right, guys, welcome back to the Progressive Rehab & Strength podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Rori Alter, head clinical coach here at Progressive Rehab & Strength with a guest here today. Chris Rzany, I always want to say his last name differently, but it's two consonants together. It's a little weird. I always say Rzany but it's Rzany, right?
Chris Rzany: [00:00:57] You got it.
Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC: [00:00:57] I got it. Okay. And we're here in our cervical spine month on the Progressive Rehab & Strength podcast talking about cervical injuries that can affect training or be affected by training. Vice versa can happen in training and happen outside of training. We've got to modify training and technique in order to bounce back from these types of things. Chris was working with me last summer for a few weeks in response to a recurring cervical injury that he was dealing with that was affecting his training. I'm going to let you talk about what was going on and kind of what your injury was, what the onset of the symptoms were, and how it affected your training.
Chris Rzany: [00:01:40] Sure. That sounds great, Rori. I've called myself a recreational powerlifter and bodybuilder, and I've been known to compete in powerlifting. I did one bodybuilding contest, I don't know if you remember.
Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC: [00:01:52] Yeah, now that you're bringing me back to speed, I remember that.
Chris Rzany: [00:01:55] I was long between powerlifting meets at the time I injured myself, but the way it happened was I was bench pressing. One morning I lifted and on my first warmup with the bar, I felt a definite loss of strength on the right arm. This is kind of weird. Maybe a little disconcerting. Probably not a big deal. Let's just add more weight. I added 25s. I went to 95, which is my typical second warmup. I definitely could not press the bar. Left arm went up. Right arm did not. It was as though there was a ceiling pressing down on my on my fist, so I couldn't extend the bar. This was after recently bench pressing 265 as a top single just a few weeks before that. I thought, this is odd. Let's see what else I can do instead. I went to the lat pull down, try to do some pull downs, and I could not pull the bar down symmetrically at all. The left side came down just fine and the right side came down like this very slowly. At that point to me it was undeniable. I could no longer deny that something was wrong. Something was seriously wrong. Stop the workout, went home, and took a shower. This is the inner bodybuilder in me in the mirror noticed an immediate loss of muscle mass on the right side. My right arm was visibly smaller in circumference than my left arm. I couldn't contract my right pec and I got really, really scared.
Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC: [00:03:21] Yeah, that's definitely scary. I mean, we just recorded a podcast that's coming out the week or two before your episode is released and we talk about this is a common I mean, I don't want to say it's common, but this is something that here at Progressive Rehab & Strength, we as physical therapists and strength coaches have seen as one of the cervical injuries in barbell training is that this unexplained weakness in the upper body on one side and it demonstrates itself in the bench press. A loss of muscle mass, probably what you were seeing, because the training session before even you didn't experience this weakness, so it probably wasn't a true muscle mass loss at that point. It was probably a tone loss because of the innervation being compressed, which was causing the motor function loss as well.
Chris Rzany: [00:04:21] It makes sense because it came back really fast. It probably was not an actual loss of tissue. That makes sense.
Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC: [00:04:27] Exactly. Yeah. So keep going. Where did you go after that? What did you do?
Chris Rzany: [00:04:31] After that, I ultimately re-injured that later, which we can talk about in a little bit, and that's when I contacted you immediately after that first injury. This would have been September of 2021. Probably the next day, maybe even that evening, I was looking up orthopedic surgeons. I thought, no, this is serious. Lifting is important to me. This is a priority. It's not acceptable. We have to go get this taken care of. I had an appointment within three days of the onset of symptoms at an orthopedic surgeon locally here. They did a bunch of imaging, so they did an x ray on the spot. That's when they diagnosed me as having C5, C6, cervical radiculopathy, which I still have a hard time saying, and then sent me for an MRI and then ultimately an EMG. The MRI, that just showed typical age related degeneration in the discs, so nothing that they said would have possibly explained the symptoms.