Bodybuilding with rheumatoid arthritis.

[Spokeonawheel]

Been a while since I was on the forum.

I used to use the handle Spokeonawheel.

Anyways, been going through a bunch of health issues. I see a rheumatologist here in a few months.

Most of the joint issues have thus far been in the ankles feet and knees. So, leg day has been almost impossible the last couple months.

Not interested in AAS that might help. Everything I'm doing these days is legal.
I run trt at 200 mgs a week.

Just wondering if anyone else has ever gone through this and how they adapted their training.

 

[Bigred523]

It's all about finding what works for you.

I have arthritis in my hip, and I suspect that I could have it in my shoulders but it hasn't affected me yet.

Anyway back to the hip... I come from a powerlifting background. I've always had shit hip mobility, and could never figure out why despite the amount of ungodly amount of mobility work I did. An xray pretty much showed why I couldn't improve it, it was basically the arthritis. My squat was always very somewhat unique, it was very close together stance but it allowed to me to comfortably hit depth needed for comps. I would basically squat high bar instead of the preferred powerlifter low bar.

I've decided to sack off barbell squatting, it seemed to constantly be a tug of war mobility wise, some days were shit due to my hip others were fine. After sacking it off I've switched to using the hack squat and appear to have absolutely no issues. My arthritis now also hardly every flares up... in fact I can't remember the last time it had. But I suspect that it could be due to the fact I've lost a lot of weight from my PLing days and that can have a knock on effect for flaring it up.

Oh and to add, I did find that curcumin helped a lot with the inflammation caused by arthritis.

 

[Spokeonawheel]

Yeah. It is all about finding what works.

There are some sacrifices.... ive pretty much given up on hitting that 400 pound Bench.

And these days my focus is on health and lifting in a way where I (hopefully) can still be doing it in 20 years.

I do a lot more volume and superset work. So I cam get to the effort level I find satisfying.

 

[hijoshiki]

Getting older forces to you to compromise and figure out ways to move that don't trigger pain.

I have chronic pain from numerous injuries from years of abuse to my body pushing past pain.

Some days things work and other days you have to back off.

I don't like pain pills, they have side effects that most don't notice and it's a bad habit to get into, there have to be more natural ways to address pain.

For me lots of fish oil seems to help lesson joint pain. I use my tens machine a lot if only to overload the site of pain with stimulation for a hour before working out to get the nerve pain to stop signalling. I have a tens I can plug into the wall for max power and I put it on 10 to put as much hurt on those nerves as possible.