Lift weights for long enough, and eventually something is gonna get hurt.
Not to sound all too doom and gloom about it, but it’s prolly gonna happen. I don’t mean you’re gonna have a catastrophic injury like an ACL tear or a disc herniation.
…but more like a niggly shoulder, or achy knee, or twingy hip.
EVEN if you’re following a good program, with a good coach – these things can happen. One thing I’ve noticed over the last year in RevFit is that people are far more likely to have problems when they join us if they’ve trained somewhere else before.
Our “homegrown” guys and girls typically stay much healthier for much much longer. But I digress.
When you’re “injured”, “hurt” or however you describe it, there’s a few things I think you should do immediately which will have you back to full power and out of pain fast.
#1 – STOP DOING WHAT HURTS
This should be obvious… your body is trying to tell you something. It has this fantastic way of feeding back information. Things get tight. Then things get sore. Then things get hurt.
If something starts to feel tight or “different” – catch it early.
I’m not saying one bad training session where something feels off is enough to send you for an MRI, but if it persists for a week or two, your body is trying to tell you something.
When something does get tight / sore, it’s usually a good idea to avoid doing movements that hurt.. That doesn’t mean you can stop training. I could show you how to train around every problem you can show me.
We’ve lads training around (old) disc herniations, bicep tendonitis, hernia surgery, broken wrists, damaged knees and bogey hips. But more on that in point #3.
#2 – GET SOME HELP
I’ll be brief. Go to a specialist. Someone who deals with injuries and rehabs people back to full function. Think of yourself like an athlete who needs to thrive. Not just a regular person who needs to be able to move around pain free.
As such, often a more aggressive approach is needed. A physio not afraid to push you. I’ve personal experience with the 3 groups listed below, all exceedingly positive.
If I’m broken, I’m calling one of them. You should too.
http://www.pearsestreetphysio.com/
http://sportsphysioireland.com/
#3 – CHANGE SOMETHING
For most people, the worst part of being injured is that they think it means they can’t train, and the great run they were on is now ruined. NOT TRUE.
If one body part, or type of movement, hurts – there are still 100s and 1000s of things you can do. We’ve literally “saved” people from giving up on training just by being flexible and being able to design a program that still gives results, even when injured. Here’s some examples;
Hernia Surgery – lots of benching and chest supported rowing work until recovered, no core demand, no risk of injury
Herniated Disc(s) – benching, chest supported rowing variations, multi directional core work, hip hinge drills to teach neutral spine while using core to support back
Knee problem(s)Â – transition away from squatting until issue is resolved, do extra hamstring and hip hinge work, depending on the person you can do some lunge variations, provided the knee stays behind the toe
Shoulder problem(s) – move away from any pressing variations that causes pain and focus on limited ROM / isolation movements for that area instead, increase row volume and use the decreased pressing volume as a chance to work on any know weak points the lifter has.
….so you see, being hurt doesn’t mean being out.
Sure, in a perfect world you’d always be pain free, but we don’t live in a perfect world and at some point, despite every measure you put in place, something is probably gonna give you trouble.
Smart people deal with it and kill the monster as a baby.
Silly people wait until it’s unbearable to do something about it.
Be smart 🙂
** if you’re struggling with an injury and want to figure out how to train around it, drop us a line on our contact page and we’ll get back in touch and help you out https://revolutionfitness.ie/contact/ **