I go to an Ortho Surgeon next week. My family physician doesn't think it is completely torn in half but that it is probably a second degree tear meaning that 50 - 90 percent of the muscle actually tore.

It was weird. I was warming up on March 3 by shadow boxing as normal. Almost immediately after shadow boxing the back of my right arm started to burn. By the end of the night I told my coach that I thought I had pulled a muscle. I have always just worked through pain like that I should have rested the arm (hindsight) but I didn't. The next day my tricep in the back of my arm was so sore I couldn't touch it... but it wasn't deep in the muscle just like a bad, bad bruise underneath the skin. I could also feel a lot of crinkly stuff (hemotoma) right underneath the skin. I worked out that Tuesday and Wednesday and did everything but uppercuts with that arm becuase uppercuts hurt bad.

By Friday it didn't hurt as bad... but it still felt bruised and I could feel a knot right underneath the skin.

I sparred on Friday night... and on Saturday I went over to a friends house and he was like... what in the world did you do to your arm. My whole right arm from the arm pit down to the elbow was black and blue... I mean a dark purple... it looked nasty. I was like good grief... but my arm wasn't hurting so I thought everything was ok.

I practiced the week of the 12th through the 16th and sparred heavy again that Friday night... sometime in the night I woke up and my arm was killing me. I got up and went and looked in the mirror and my arm just looked funny. If I held it out straight it looked like I had an old ladies arm on the right side... the tricep muscle was hanging down and was all knotted up. I mean if felt like I had a tennis ball in the back of my arm down around my elbow. Turns out that was just congeled blood in the muscle from the tear. I rested that arm all last week before the fight. I didn't tell anyone about it as I still wanted to fight but I knew something was seriously wrong at that point.

Now I'm just waiting to see if I need surgery... or if the ortho surgeon thinks this will heal on its own. I will know in a week or so. In the meantime I am just focusing on remaining in relatively good shape by doing my road work.

Looking back... I think all of this came about because of how hard I was pushing my body. I just wasn't giving it any rest. I'm 32 and was in the gym 4 hours a day in intense training for at least five days a week. It just caught up to me.

We shall see...

Blackvenom-2001