Dealing with Injuries

Injuries suck! As much as we try to avoid injuries, they will happen. Injuries are a part of all sports and fitness. If you’ve never had any, you’re not working hard enough. Injuries are bound to happen when you are toeing the edge and pushing your limits. We are going to talk about what to do when you get hurt. First, you should seek a medical expert. Professional sports teams have team doctors and athletic trainers to help in the prevention and treatment of injuries. You should find people that understand the sport you are in, the needs of the sport, and the stresses that it puts on your body. Ideally they do/ have done it too. Our injuries will vary in severity – from being chronic (“My elbow always bothers me when I snatch”) or acute (“Shit! Something popped”). Dealing with acute injuries is a little clearer – you need to go to a doctor, do rehab, and listen to what they tell you. Simple. But it still sucks. Chronic injuries can be harder to deal with because you can get by with making compromises. Before you know it, you’ve gone six months with not going overhead, squatting to depth, etc. It’s better to have a month of being bored than to have six months of poor training and still be in pain. We can and should train around injuries; we just need to get creative. We can use specialty bars and movement variations that take out the use of the injured body part. If you blow out your knee, you better get rid of that poverty bench. Once we are cleared to get back into regular training, after either an acute or chronic injury, a general phase is needed to build back lost muscle and work capacity. Essentially, we need to do some bodybuilding to become more durable. But it’s not all bad. Recovering from an injury can be a great time to address other issues that you’ve been ignoring.