I'd like to thank all of you for creating and contributing to this thread. When I describe my symptoms to non exercisers, people just don't get it.

I've been lifting weights for over 30 years. I've never had an injury which stopped me dead in my tracks like this before.

Four months ago I did Ab Ripper X3 from P90X3. Specifically, I think it was the exercise where you are in forearm plank and you touch your knee to your tricep. (Sphinx Crunch Hold) My back started to burn near my neck, nearly unbearably, my form started to get sloppy, but I ignored the warning signs and finished the set to the very end.

(I never get flu shots, so that was not a factor.)

Two days later I woke up with numbness in my right index finger. There was a floating pain that moved from the top of my hand, to my forearm, to my bicep, to my tricep. My neck was in excruciating pain. My right lat and pectoral were also sore. The first two days, the neck pain bordered on unbearable, and all I could do was lie in bed.

I bought a chiropractic pillow so I could sleep at night. The neck seemed to be the source of my issues. Slowly, as each day passed, the pain lessened. I tried neck exercises, workouts, anything I could think of, but the symptoms followed what others describe as a pinched nerve in your neck.

The troublesome part is that before this happened, I could do about 60 pushups, 25 chin-ups, and my strength was symmetrical. Since the injury, my right pec feels like it is constantly spasmed. Right after the injury, I couldn't do any pushups. Chin-ups looked very asymmetrical with the left half over compensating for the right.

It was like the nightmare we all have- You wake up and you are back to normal and all your lifting gains are gone and you are weak.

At about 4 weeks, the index finger numbness went almost completely away. By 6 weeks, things were good enough to think about starting working out again.

I'm now at four months. I can do about 30 pushups, and 12 chin-ups, so I'm almost 1/2 way back to where I was. The right pec still doesn't flex the same as the left, and I still have a slight muscle pulled feeling my my right tricep, pec, lat. The right pec, tricep, and lat are soft and flabby compared to the right. The rapid atrophy seems to have stopped, but the recovery, if any, is slow. You can clearly see the asymmetry in the right pec flexing compared to the left. The left has a healthy bounce, and moves as one muscle. The right has individual striations that flex incompletely.

Dips, Pressing Movements, pull-ups, tricep moves, all way down. Curls are fine, slightly stronger there as a result of working out more to trying to recover.

One particular exercise- incline bench press on a machine with separate handles illustrates the injury perfectly. With 45 lbs, the right arm fails at about 10 reps. The left arm hasn't even got started, and just keeps going- it's at the strength level prior to the injury.

When the right arm fails with overhead dumbbell presses, it's like a light switch goes off in the nerve, and the dumbbell falls straight towards my head at an alarming speed.

We're all in this together. If anyone was able to get a surgical solution to work, please post any updates as to how things have changed over time. It sounds like some of us get better, and some of us don't. I can only be optimistic that I will continue to improve and keep pushing myself in that direction.