Overcoming Injuries

Injuries…I hate to break it to you, but they’re going to happen.

As an athlete, or even a weekend warrior, at some point you will get injured, and that’s okay.

Yes, some injuries can be prevented via smart programming, mobility work, and avoiding overtraining, but silly things like spraining your ankle on a 400m run, tripping and breaking your nose on that run, or busting a lip/chipping a tooth on a push press is all part of being a human non-couch potato.

As the saying goes: Shit Happens.

Now spraining your ankle is fairly minor, but what do you do if you have a more serious injury?

A broken bone more than likely means you (or part of you) will be out of commission for a fair amount of time for proper healing and recovery. And coming back to normal training after that can feel like a very steep hill of poopy-doo, both mentally and physically.

How to return to training

It’s important during this return to training to ease back in with a focus more on strict strength work – and if it was an extremity that was injured, this should include unilateral strength work to correct injury related strength imbalances.

Meet Remote Coaching Client Heather

Let’s take a look at Remote Coaching Client Heather. Heather broke her wrist 9 months ago while testing her 1 rep (squat) clean. She caught the bar wrong, elbow dropped, and wrist snapped. No fun for sure- and she has since self-diagnosed herself with “Squat Clean PTSD”.

She did the best she could with her training over the next 6 months sans “lefty”- and maintained decent conditioning; however, after fully healed it was very clear she had a huge strength discrepancy left to right in her upper body.

We started working together 6 weeks ago with a goal to correct these imbalances and get her back in tip-top shape- both mentally and physically.

How did we do this?

Among other things, the focus has been on lots and lots of upper body dumbbell work as well as technique work to regain confidence in her clean:

DB Bench Press
DB Rows
DB Overhead Press
Tall Cleans

I’m proud to say Heather hit a milestone this past week in her training… a grinder metcon with 3 full cleans at ~90% of her old 1 rep per round. Though it was a huge hurdle for her, she rocked the sh*t out of it.

I couldn’t have said it better myself:

“Some days you are asked to face a brick wall and get over it. Today was that day. I haven’t done any heavy squat cleans since breaking my arm in December. Today I was asked to do 133# for three. I warmed up. I did power cleans and front squats. And I got the first one. I knew I would have to take a rest before number two. Technique over time I always say. I went for number two and bailed. This created flashbacks of the “Pop pop pop” of my bones breaking. I had to focus on one lift and not what “could happen.” Then I got it. Went for number three: fail. Then fail again. Breath. Boom. Got it. Went through my other moves and there I was. Back at the bar. I lifted and didn’t even get to the turn. Fail two. Fail three. Hat was thrown. Select words were said. But I was not giving up. Got one! Rest. Fail. Possibly kicked something. I’m not lowering it. Number two. Got it. Number three. Yup! Sometimes we face a wall. Sometimes we don’t want to go over it. But we have to if we want to keep making progress. Thanks @strength_babe for asking me to do this. ‪#‎squatcleanptsdisreal‬.”

-Heather

Getting back on the horse with strict strength and technique work…
Getting comfortable with the uncomfortable…
Facing your fears…
Congrats to coaching client Heather on climbing that brick wall.