Training when you have an injury
Let’s clear something up straight away… injury sucks!
And yet it’s something that almost everybody will face at some point in their lives.
I think pretty much every single person I have ever trained, has had an injury history or is currently dealing with pain at some level. (sometimes that pain is chronic)
An injury can make training feel like an impossibility.
Yet… training is often an essential part of recovery.
So I wanted to share our approach to training with an injury at FS46 and how you can still move toward your goals despite dealing with injury.
First… Rest and seek professional help
As a personal trainer, I’m not a medical professional.
Your trainer / coach shouldn’t be attempting to diagnose or treat an injury, especially at the onset.
If you suffer an injury of some kind, you should seek out a medical professional and receive any sort of assessments necessary to properly diagnose the injury.
Being informed is very important.
… Because the last thing you want to do is make the injury worse and lengthen the recovery time.
In this initial period, resting is usual a wise course.
This may not mean you have to stop training all together.
For example…
If I twisted awkwardly and hurt my knee, I could still train upper body without using my lower body at all.
Obviously, it would probably be unwise to start doing some heavy squats without clear knowledge of what the damage was to the knee.
The key principle is not to try and train through the pain.
The motto of ‘No Pain. No Gain’ does not work well when applied to training whilst injured.
Next… Train around the pain
Once the initial injury period is over and you have a clear understanding of your injury.
There are often ways to train around the pain.
This is where a highly skilled coach is worth their weight in gold.
Depending on the nature of the injury, it’s often possible to still get a training effect in the desired area, without making the injury any worse.
To train around pain consider:
Shortening the range of motion of an exercise.
A good example of adjusting range of motion is if someone is having shoulder pain when pressing.
Instead of performing a full range of motion bench press… we might choose to use a floor press, which stops the elbows in-line with the body, shortening the range of motion.
This change could allow a person to press without pain, by avoiding loading the shoulder when it’s in its most vulnerable position.
This might allow a training effect, without making the injury worse.
2. Change the exercise.
It may be that we can perform a similar movement to the one we had planned, but we have to change the exercise variation we use.
Perhaps somebody could be struggling with lower back pain, and a traditional barbell deadlift is causing them pain.
Something as simple as swapping to another variation of the deadlift, maybe using a trap bar or a kettlebell, could make the same movement pain-free for the client by altering loading of the movement.
Changing the exercise is probably the technique I use the most when training around client injuries.
There is usually a way to set up an exercise that allows a person to train with no pain.
Sometimes that requires some elaborate and creative thinking, as well as a deep understanding of how the body moves… But if it can be done, the client can get a great workout, in a pain-free way.
I like to think of all of us having our very own ‘training menu’
There will be certain exercises and activities that are maybe off menu for a time.
… but usually you can find an alternative that gets the job done!
Finally … Train to improve the injury
With the majority of injuries, at some point, we need to start strengthening it again.
The biggest precursor to injury, is weakness.
Unfortunately injury causes weakness in the effected area, which then leaves us more susceptible to another injury.
Strengthening becomes very important for anybody wanting to not only get out of pain, but stay out of pain.
At FS46 we work closely with a sports therapist, Miles.
He gets to see a lot of people with varying injuries.
People will come to see him, desperate for relief.
They’ll hop on the treatment bed and enjoy some manual therapy, perhaps sport massage or acupuncture…
Then they leave the treatment room and rarely ever do the restrengthening exercises.
Miles therefore gets a lot of repeat customers.
Appropriate Resistance training strengthens ligaments, tendons and muscles which in turn supports joints and bone structures… reducing the risk of re-injury.
So…
When it’s time for restrengthening, how should we approach it?
I’m speaking very generically here, it’s important to note that there are a wide range of injuries, so I can’t give rules that apply to all of them.
That being said here are a few key principles to consider:
Find a way to regress a movement to a level where you can perform it with a minimal level of discomfort. Over time slowly increase the difficulty of the movement until you’re back to a good level of strength.
Focus on building quality movement patterns. It’s important to move correctly. We can avoid enforcing poor movement patterns whilst also acquiring better movement and range of motion to reduce risk of re-injury.
Think about other structures in the body that can influence your injury. For example, knee pain can be cause by the hip or ankles. Be thorough.
Working alongside a skilled coach and / or therapist is going to ensure you rehabilitate your injury correctly.
Injury Mindset
The physical effects of an injury are obvious.
But sometimes the biggest barrier to progress is what effects an injury can have on your mindset.
I know this first-hand as I’ve suffered my fair share of injuries.
In cases of chronic pain, there is often a lot of fear to do any form of exercise.
Again, this is where working with a coach helps so much.
A great coach will try to reduce the feel of threat to a level where a client can start to work on overcoming there pain… but this takes requires a lot of professional trust and often a lot of time.
As well as creating fear in clients.
Injury can be incredibly demotivating.
A person who is working to get in shape… may be seeing great results and then all of a sudden feel that they’ve had the rug pulled out from under them.
It could be the case that the injury may actually slow them down for a while.
But I always try to remind people that injury isn’t a road block… it’s a speed bump.
It may slow them down, but it won’t stop them forever.
In summary
When training with an injury.
First, seek professional help and get a clear assessment of your injury.
Then, if possible, train around the injury by modifying your workouts so you can still get results from your training.
Finally, make sure you rehabilitate & restrengthen properly to reduce the risk of re-injury.
As well as dealing with the physical challenges that injury poses… don’t ignore the mindset challenges that can be posed.
Trying to remain optimistic and positive in the face of injury can be hard. But remember that Injury doesn’t have to de-rail your progress.
See it as speed bump, not a road block.