Screwed up back

Ugh. Just when I start to get some motivation behind me something bad happens. Somehow I screwed up my upper back. It wasn't from lifting, because it was bothering me on Monday during the day (and I hadn't worked out since Saturday). I was sitting at my desk, and my neck felt tight, so I moved it around to try to crack it and loosen it up. What happened instead was it locked up, and I couldn't turn my head to the left. I figured "okay, that sucks, but it'll go away." Well the neck pain did go away, but I could feel my upper back and left arm getting really tight and sore. I've had issues in the past where my back being out of alignment has caused pain down my left arm, so I pretty much knew nothing was actually wrong with my arm (but it hurt like a son of a gun). I went to the chiropractor yesterday, and he re-aligned my spine. This has caused the pain in my arm to disappear, and my neck feels fine as well. But my upper back is crazy sore today, and I can feel that it's the muscles and not the spine. So I'm thinking that it's caused by my spine being so out of alignment for so long that the muscles sort of got used to the bad configuration. But it's got me sidelined from exercise, because I really can't do much of anything without excruciating pain. Right now I'm rocking NSAIDs, and when I get home I'm going to use my foam roller and jacuzzi to help loosen it up. I'll probably go back to the chiro early next week for a follow-up, but I'm hoping it doesn't last that long.

I guess there's a lesson in this: if you don't take all aspects of exercise recovery seriously you can jack yourself up. I'm usually pretty good about my recovery, but I know I should be visiting the chiropractor every few weeks at least, and I haven't been. Lesson learned.