Monday 120213

Injuries are part of being human.  Some are preventable, some are not.  They are less then fun, I’d even call them un-fun and sometimes even scary.   After watching the video some may say, well if Zach had never tried to lift that much weight he’d never had gotten hurt in the first place. He also would not have won a U.S. National Championship.  That’s an easy enough rational for Zach, but what about us?  We aren’t on track to win any Championships, we just want to be as fit and healthy as we can be.

I’m here to tell you that you are going to have injury set backs regardless of your elite fitness level.  ALL people do.  What is different is what shape the body is in before the set back, how well people listen to their body to nip things before they get worse, how quickly they heal and what they do in the process.  Fitness (specifically, I mean increased work capacity across broad time and modal domains) is your hedge against decrepitude. Decrepitude is the logical path of an organism, humans included.

If you want to age gracefully, you have to run fast, push and pull your body weight around and lift heavy shit.  That’s just the way it goes.  You know the saying, if you don’t use it you lose it, period!

So what do you do if you have a tweak, injury, are pregnant or have in-flexibilities?  First talk to your coaches, they will scale you so that you can still workout without injuring yourself further.  Shoot an e-mail to Joylyn and Cherie at info@crossfitverve.com explaining the injury.   If you really want to take the bull by its horns your going to need to set up a personal training to go over a rehab plan.  You’d be surprised about how an hour of talking about you and how to get you better can help propel your healing.  The bottom line is… TAKE AN ACTIVE ROLE in your healing process.

We all have choices and though it lives in the un-fun category, re-habing yourself takes a TON of patience, time, pain and dedication.  No one is going to do it for you and you won’t get better without addressing the problem.

Let’s revisit the above video.  On 2/25/2010, Zach snapped both of his wrists on a 352# clean, told by his surgeon he would NEVER lift over 100# overhead again. His wrists just wouldn’t be able to do it. Two weeks later he was back in the gym.  Not using his wrists, but squatting, keeping the rest of his body strong. Six months later rehab on his wrists started.  All the while he had been continuing to “workout”, absent the use of his hands.  Eight months later he defied the Doctors predictions and reached 110# overhead.  One year later he was cleaning the same weight he snapped his wrists with.  One year and one month later he qualified for the U.S. Nationals.  That year becoming the U.S. National Champ.  Finally after a series of personal records he put 423# overhead almost 2 years after the injury.  Now I ask you is Zach special?  Did he have any magic healing pills?  He had one thing for sure, he had a hedge built up.  But, he possessed something that we all can tap into; the will to work hard, smartly and painfully to an end that is far better then the place we may find ourselves in now.

No matter what life may throw our way.  It’s always a choice to build the hedge back up.  Take responsibility for your outcome and keep heading back in after a defeat or injury, keep pushing and who knows you might just heal faster and stronger then you were before.