What Happens When You Tear a Muscle? (My Pec Repair Journey)

Added: 2026-06-04

[00:00:00]So, I am now over four months post pec repair surgery, and I thought this might be a good opportunity to go over how it happened, what steps of mobility that I've been taking, and maybe just have it educational for some of you who are curious as to what happens when you tear your pec and then what happens afterwards. And then, of course, also, unfortunately, maybe some of you who may be going through a pec tear. I wanted to make this video so you could basically have some solidarity. You could see someone else's who's went through it.

[00:00:36]Maybe you're currently struggling physically or mentally. And I wanted to make this video to be like, "Hey, I've been through it, too. Here's what I'm doing to recover. You can recover. There is a light at the end of the tunnel.

[00:00:48]Surgeries, injuries, they can always be very traumatic. You're kind of wondering, well, what happens now?" Cuz everything completely changes. And I wanted to go over what happens, how to get better, and you can get better cuz I'm getting better. And there was a period of time that I thought I was finished. So, starting from the beginning, I want to say how I tore my pec. Uh, it did not happen in the gym, which is where a lot of pec tear injuries occur, typically using the barbell bench press. And usually people who are taking either a lot of testosterone or like anabolic steroids just because their tendons have not caught up with their muscle growth. Now I am a lifetime natural. I have never taken testosterone. I have never taken anabolic steroids and unfortunately I still tore my pec. But all throughout my life I've been lifting for almost 30 years now. I've never had any major injury. I've done a lot of heavy bench press. 350 lbs, you know, for reps and some of my better lifts. And I was relatively unscathed. But the problem is I run the YouTube channel along with my brother Brandon, uh, our dad Duke. We do a lot of videos together and what we'll do is challenges. So, we're in the gym working out. We're making a lot of that content, but then we're outdoors doing a lot of crazy stuff. And sadly, January of 2026, that caught up with me because we were doing an apocalypse gym build.

[00:02:20]We were building kind of like a weight lever system. We had been testing it for days. It was early in the morning. I was dehydrated. I hadn't warmed up. We were kind of making the equivalent of like kind of a chest fly machine, you could describe it. And I was really trying to just get it to work. We kept doing it.

[00:02:41]we were failing. So, I thought, well, I'm going to give it my all. I am going to just push through this as hard as I can until I do it. Well, it turns out I could not do it. So, I had my arm in that kind of chest fly position, the cable chest fly. I was pulling down as hard as I could. Probably a good solid 5 to 10 seconds of just literally giving it my all. And it was making no headway.

[00:03:05]I mean, the weight was not lifting and I was pulling, pulling, pulling pop. I heard something right here and I mean it was unmistakable right away. I thought, "Oh my god, I just tore my pec." Um there wasn't a lot of leadup to it. I was straining as hard as I could.

[00:03:22]True, but it wasn't anything where there was like pain preceding um the tear. It just happened. Um so immediately felt a ton of like numbness in the area right there. It was painful for like the second that the pop happened, but I would say about 50% of that pain was just the shock of going, "Oh my god."

[00:03:48]You know, cuz it feels like just a massive rubber band just tore right here. Um, so probably not the most painful thing I've ever experienced, but um, it was just the mental part of what happens next. So, I told everyone on set, it was Brandon, my dad, it was Michaela, it was one of my my dad's buddies, uh, Mike. I let them all know, "Hey, I tore my pec." Mike, who was right there, said he heard it, you know, he could hear the pop cuz it's pretty loud. So, Brandon made a makeshift sling, like a t-shirt, you know? I just kind of held my arm in this position right here. We had to drive over an hour to the uh urgent care. And the first mistake I made was I knew it was a pec tear. I mean um but the doctor prescribed a ultrasound.

[00:04:38]I shouldn't have done that. I should have went with my better instinct and told her, "Hey, I would really prefer an MRI." But regardless, did the ultrasound. That was a couple days later. They said, "Hey, it looks fine."

[00:04:51]So I thought, "Oh, okay. Good news.

[00:04:53]That's great." But I still had this sinking lingering feeling like I I just don't think so. There was so much pain.

[00:05:00]It was unbelievable by that point. There wasn't a lot of pain when it first happened. But once it set in, I mean, my shoulder, my bicep, it was the pain was crazy. I had to keep my arm in this exact position if I did any kind of movement. I was You almost get to that like they say the pain scale is 1 through 10. it was pretty close to like, you know, uh, eight or nine or I didn't want to push it to 10. Um, so it was pretty hard getting the MRI because you have to get a referral at least here where I am in the state of Oregon. I finally got that. I started to do some physical therapy by that point and my physical therapist called me pretty late at night saying, "Hey man, you got to check out your MRI results." Well, I checked it out and unfortunately it was a full pec tear of the sternocostal head with a 4 cm retraction.

[00:05:55]Now, with the pec tear, the scary thing is you have to get the surgery done pretty fast because the scar tissue can begin to form. If you don't know it's a tear, you can keep using it and then it could keep retracting farther and farther back. So, I ended up getting my surgery about 3 weeks and 1 day after the injury, which is which is pushing it. I mean, typically they say you want to have it done within 3 weeks. So, I was like I was right there. The surgery was pretty fast. It was 45 minutes. Uh I was in the hospital, of course, longer cuz there's a lot of prep. You got to do a lot of like disinfecting, get all that prepared. The team was great. Everyone was really, really nice. The experience was about as good as it could get. And then for the next um six weeks I had to be in a sling. I mean all the time unless I was going to take a shower and even then you know of course you got to be very very cautious but so sleeping I had to be in the sling every hour of the day. I had to be in a sling and that became very comfortable cuz I'm not really a back sleeper. So it was just to be honest pretty miserable.

[00:07:05]Um, and then of course the psychology sets in of for me personally working out is like my job. So not only do I lose my physique, which I had just entered a natural bodybuilding contest less than a year prior to that. So I lost that, I lost my job basically because I was no no longer to per I was no longer able to perform it. And there was a lot going through my mind. My wife Auga uh is pregnant with twins. So my first thought was, "Wow, one of the biggest family events we've ever had and she's going to need more help than she's ever needed and I can't be there." So man, a lot going through my mind at the time. That was probably the most depressing part of it was I'm letting my family down. Um so that was that was tough.

[00:07:56]And I just had to get into the mindset of one step at a time. Don't spend too much time looking in the rear view.

[00:08:03]Don't spend too much time looking into the future. Just kind of like again, baby steps. So, I have all that out of the way mostly cuz I just wanted to give you a good idea of like where I'm coming from. So, again, if you're curious or maybe if you're going through it yourself, you [snorts] you know, um, now I'll start talking about the rehabilitation. And I do want to say nothing is going to replace talking to a doctor, surgeon, physical therapist. So this is great hopefully for some of you who may be going through this just to see what I did. But please consult a doctor, surgeon, or physical therapist if you think you've torn your pec or you have torn your pec or anything of that nature because they they are the professionals. Um, so at the 2 week mark posts surgery, I met with my surgeon. He checked it out. He was happy with the results. Um, and he said, "Now I can begin doing a little bit of like assisted work, meaning I can lay on my back, take my arm out of the sling, and someone can basically grab my arm, and I, you know, I get loose. I'm not contracting the muscle or anything.

[00:09:12]I'm just letting it hang and they can basically work it up and then work it down. Now, that again is me being in the um supine position or laying on my back is when this would happen. And it was really just this. It was just arm up, arm down. Very easy, but um just crazy the loss of mobility and muscle size in my shoulder and bicep even within that short period of time. I mean, the atrophy is crazy. So, be prepared. I mean, you're going to you're going to lose a lot of your progress. And, you know, you work out your whole life like me, 30 years, and then, you know, couple weeks after an injury, it's already all going away. But that's just the nature of of the um the injury. So, that was at that mark. Um really simple stuff. There would be a few other things like basically you would take your arm, you know, just make little circles like this in one direction and the other really really um low stress kind of movements for your shoulder. And that was really it at the twoe mark. So from weeks two to week six, that's really all I was doing.

[00:10:27]little bit of those assisted raises, a little bit of those arm circles, and not much more. Now, the week six mark was the first big breakthrough because that's when I was able to get my sling removed. I met with the surgeon again.

[00:10:42]He looked to see how I was doing. He was happy with what he saw, so he said, "Yes, you can go ahead and take the sling off." Which which was great. Um, but the major problem is try keeping any body part in a fixed position for a month and a half straight with absolutely no movement. What you're going to find is, I mean, this it's it's like a corpse. It's basically like trying to revive a corpse. I mean, stiffness, lots and lots of pain, a lot of muscle atrophy. I mean, it's basically like you're just again, you're trying to revive it. So at that point it was tiny little baby steps. I mean for instance like with my arm I could maybe you know bring it about this far away from my body, maybe about this high and I mean after that the pain and the stiffness was just too great. So at the 6 week mark I started to do wall climbs. I would take my hand and I would basically just like a little spider just kind of like work it up the wall really until I couldn't do it anymore. And then I would just climb it back down. And I would just keep doing that little bit more. Very consistent. And that's the great thing with this rehab. It's just like working out. It's the consistency. I would meet with a physical therapist, but that's only one hour out of every week. I mean, the rest of the week, it's up to you.

[00:12:03]And I took that responsibility because again, I had a lot on the line in regards to trying to recover my body, which I know a lot of you do as well. I mean, we all work, we all have families, we all have a lot of responsibilities, and you can't have one side of your body just completely shut down. So, I tried to stay so busy with that so I wouldn't get too depressed because I know a lot of times they talk about the physicality, but it's like I mean, it's it's up here where it can all fall apart. And I had to just again say stay strong. Don't look too far ahead. Don't look too far behind. Just stay in the moment. focus on the goal at hand. And something as simple as those little wall craw crawls, I was like, that's what I'm going to focus on. That's what I'm going to do. So, weeks 6 through weeks 12, that would be the month and a half to the 3-month mark. It was a lot of just trying to bring that shoulder back. A lot of it was just like the trying to bring the shoulder back. So, it was the wall climbs. Um, there was also some isometric resistance hold. So you take your other hand and you would bring it you would kind of try to bring your hand up and you would resist it up toward your body away from your body forward kind of like you're basically trying to push forward and your other hand is preventing it. Then you grab your wrist and kind of pull back. So really really light isomemmetric kind of strengthening work. And you know, the funny thing is you just do it a day at a time and you're experiencing pain. And while I'm trying to sleep, I would still experience a lot of pain on my shoulder cuz again, I I roll around a lot at night. So I was like, oh man, it hurts.

[00:13:43]But you're just slowly chipping away at it. And every day you go, hm, okay, [clears throat] this is this is still uncomfortable and I'm not enjoying it, but it's a little less uncomfortable now. So I just kept with it. And I just want to show you really quick. I mean, again, I went from, you know, barely being able to move my arm about that high. I mean, I can just, you know, almost all ranges of motion now are more or less the way they once were. And I am currently at the 4mon mark. So, if you are earlier in your journey, again, take it slow, please. But you you will get there. You will get there. Just stay patient, stay positive. Um, you're gonna just, I hate to say it, you're going to lose almost all the size in your deltoids, in your bicep.

[00:14:32]I can't really say for sure with my chest. I mean, it's it's just cuz I can't use it a lot still. I'm getting better, but I I still haven't There's the combination of like the weariness of oh my gosh, now I got to kind of put stress on that tendon again, and then also it's just weak. Um, so I got the mobility back and then basically I started to do some like very light work on the muscles surrounding the pec. That being the shoulder, that being the bicep, that being the tricep and with the bicep, you know, the pec te uh the pec comes in over the bicep. So when it tore, it kind of threw the bicep out a little bit. They call it uh subluxation.

[00:15:16]So the bicep was experiencing quite a bit of pain as well and it was crazy. I mean it was just like mush the tricep, the bicep. Um so again really really light work. And the funniest thing is my bicep lost about 2 and 1/2 in of size, but I've already put an inch back on simply through just using it again every day. Um I'm left-handed, so this being my dominant arm. I mean, me just kind of doing things with it all day long. You would be surprised how fast it recovers and grows without even like traditional resistance training. So, just staying active, just moving, just using it all the time for everything. And that was one of my biggest fears. I told my physical therapist, "Am I going to be able to do flies again? Am I going to be able to do?" And he goes, "Well, yes, of course. You want to put the tendon under strain. You don't want to just keep it dormant." and and guard it basically because it's you're not going to get the recovery results that you're looking for. So, you know, I'm trying I'm doing a lot of chest stretches now, which even a month ago I would be like, "Oh my god, are you nuts? I'm not going to do this.

[00:16:27]I'm I'm too afraid." You know, again, it's the it's the mental thing. But, you know, now I'm trying to do a lot of chest stretches and every single range of motion. I'm doing some fly work. I'm doing the barbell, you know, very light, just the bar itself, but it it is slowly progressing. And the current goal I'm working towards is working up to 135 lbs because the way we've calculated it is that's about the equivalent of the weight of a bodyweight push-up for me.

[00:16:58]I'm 215 lbs. And that is the major goal to slowly work up to 135 lbs on the bench press and then progress to a body weight pushup. That's going to be if all goes well around the 6 month mark. I'm at the 4mon mark now. And again, another goal to look forward to that I'm slowly inching towards. Um I fully expect to get there. I fully expect to um do it and and then move on to the next step, you know. So, for those of you who watching, again, if you're just watching because you're curious, I hope you enjoyed it. I know it was very lengthy.

[00:17:32]I I've talked a lot, but I just kind of want to make sure to cover everything that I've went through personally. For those of you who maybe um think you've torn a pec, you've torn a pec, you're earlier in the journey than I have.

[00:17:43]Again, I can't stress enough, keep consistent, keep positive. There's a lot of us out there who've went through an injury like this or another injury, shoulder, elbow, knee, ankle. I mean, oh my goodness, there's so many out there and you don't realize how much we take um take everything for granted until you get an injury and then you're like, "Wow." It just it just sets you back.

[00:18:06]But you're going to be able to do it.

[00:18:09]Stay strong. Stay positive. Try to surround yourself with positive people.

[00:18:15]Um if you don't have a lot of them in real life, the internet can be a little bit of a scary place. There can be a lot of like misplaced negativity. Um, sometimes that negativity is even pushed to the forefront a lot of times. Uh, uh, I won't go getting into all of that, but it's just, you know, it's part of what I do with YouTube and everything. So, I see it all the time. But there's a lot of really great positive people out there. I hope I've been able to spread a little tiny bit of that positivity. I want to continue to kind of show my recovery to show you it can be done.

[00:18:42]It's a little bit of an unknown for me as well cuz this is the first time I've been through it, but I'm going to take it slow. Regrets, things I would change.

[00:18:50]I'm not doing any more of those crazy stunt videos because I mean that's what led to this. It was kind of a freak thing. Again, I've been mostly injury-free my entire life. I've never suffered from a major injury in the gym or even anything other than like little minor injuries like golfer's elbow. So, um I'm going to of course be doing a lot more mobility, a lot more warming up, stay very hydrated. It's the little things. It's just remember to stay hydrated. That goes a long way in like tendon tears and things of that nature.

[00:19:18]And then again, none of the crazy stuff, the extracurricular kind of freak accident stuff. So, um, take care, stay safe out there. Um, I'll I'll try to have a few more videos like this of my recovery, but I wanted to get this one out of the way cuz I thought it might be very important for maybe some of you who may be going through it and you want to see that there is some light at the end of the tunnel. There is. You just got to be patient. Um, I can flex again, which is great. So, I'm going to flex to end this video and I'm going to say stay buff.