Lately, I have been having these pains in my forearms. It feels like shinsplints, only more severe. I haven't been able to complete a heavy biceps workout in weeks. What is wrong?
Coincidentally, this very same pain struck me several weeks ago. I consulted the head athletic trainer, and he explained the problem to me.
Basically, what happens is the muscle in your forearms gets so tight from lack of stretching that it actually irritates the covering of the bone where the muscle attaches to it. In other words, the lack of elasticity of the muscle is causing it to pull on the bone covering, thus causing pain (in my case, severe). The solution to this problem is simple: stretch your forearms constantly throughout your workout. Holding your arm out in front of you, grasp your fingers, and pull them back towards you. Feel the stretch in your forearm as you do this, and hold it. An alternative method is to press your hand palm-down on a bench or some other flat surface, and lean forward slightly, to stretch the forearm. To stretch the other muscles in the forearms, take your hand and press on the back of it, moving your fingers towards the inside of your wrist. Through constant utilization of these two stretches, you should noticeably reduce pain in your arms within just a few days. Keep the stretching up to ensure that you don't have a recurrence of the forearm-shinsplint problem.
Addressing a myth of the weight room
I would now like to address a myth that abounds in weight rooms, and with college-age guys who are wishing to "get bigger." It is the idea that in order to gain muscle, get stronger, or simply look better, one needs to push up the numbers on the scale. This is an idea that no doubt stems from the fact that guys are constantly being asked their weight in comparison to their musculature. I'll explain.
The weight of your body is made up of many different things; however, only two of those things are generally variable. These are muscle mass and body fat. In order to get stronger, look better, etc., one need only manipulate the ratios of these two components of his weight.
For example, let's say you came to school weighing 170 pounds. You worked out religiously first semester, your lifts went up, but you didn't really put on any weight. Was that first semester of busting your ass in the gym in vain? Definitely not. While you may not see the results on the scale, you will most definitely see the results in your physique. What you have in fact done is change your overall body composition. Your arms may have gotten bigger; or maybe you added an inch to your chest. The fact that your bodyweight didn't really increase simply means that while you were building muscle, you were reducing your body fat at the same time.
While the simultaneous addition of muscle mass and the reduction of body fat has long been thought to be an anatomical impossibility, it is only so in the extreme. If you want to put on 20 pounds of muscle, inevitably some of the weight you gain on the way to that goal will be in the form of body fat. However, if you go slowly, and make changes to your physique gradually, it is entirely possible to add muscle mass while reducing body fat. Oftentimes, what happens when a person is doing this is that the muscle density increases; in other words, the muscles get stronger and harder, though not necessarily much larger. This is another way that your body composition can change for the better without much weight gain.
That said, always keep in mind that weight is merely a number. A guy who weighs 30 pounds more than you is not necessarily stronger than you; nor is he really that much bigger than you. Weight is all in how you carry it, and in your body composition. So the next time your 260 pound lineman friend talks about how much he weighs and how huge he is, ask yourself: Just how much of that 260 lbs is useless fat?
