Wednesday 160615

2 Rounds for time:
Row 20 calories
20 Strict pull ups
Row 20 calories
20 Strict ring dips

Post Results to BTWB. 

Today I am going to be addressing a couple different factors that come to play while training around an injury. An exercise program takes many things into consideration before putting the words on paper. When you are dealing with an injury there are many ways to tinker with the variables a bit to make a workout more in your favor. Here are some things that I did for myself when I injured my back and was returning to a training program:

• Volume Control. The days of throwing caution to the wind are behind me. I can no longer just jump into any workout without carefully sitting down and thinking about what I have done the days prior or what I would like to do in the days to come. If I know that I have travel coming up, I lay low on higher volume squatting or pulling from the ground. My main focus here is not to smoke my hip flexors before sitting and traveling for somewhere between 4-8 hours.
• Exercise Selection. In the introductory phases of going from a rehabilitation program into an exercise training program, it’s important to pick the correct movements. Again, let’s take a lower back injury as an example. Don’t do back or front squats before you do box squats, don’t pull from the ground before you pull from the blocks. Don’t do cleans until you have deadlifts. There are progressions for everything. Pick exercises in the introductory phase that will help you build confidence getting back to the more complicated, technical movements.
• Exercise Order. When introducing new exercises back into a program, don’t be afraid to set the workout up for ideal situations. Training fatigued immediately after an injury isn’t the best route to go. Yes, eventually we would like this to be be able to change, however in the beginning stages – train smarter. What would this look like? Let’s look at writing a workout for someone who is coming back from a back injury in this instance. For assumption purposes, let’s assume the athlete has already worked back up to heavier deadlifts in his strength protocol and it’s time to start testing higher rep, heavier load deadlifts in workouts. How would we do this?
  • Example:
    For Time:
    2K Row
    20 Deadlifts, 275#
    20 Handstand Push-upsWhat this could look like?

    For Time:
    20 Deadlifts, 275#
    2K Row
    20 Handstand Push-ups

    Simply doing the deadlifts in the beginning of the workout will set someone coming back from a lower back injury into a safer scenario than having them do higher rep, heavier weight pulls from the ground in a fatigued state. This is a parameter that we can and SHOULD control. Don’t just throw caution to the wind. Train optimally, not maximally

• Better Recovery Tracking. I know I have referenced this before, however I think it is good material and worth mentioning again. Use a recovery tracking device. Some use heart rate variability – I prefer a system called “Restwise”. I like this system because there are both quantitative and qualitative markers to help you decide how you are handling the workload you are trying to perform. If you receive a score of 60% or below, you are not allowed to train that day. This helps an athlete train optimally, while avoiding being overtrained. If you have a history of doing this to yourself, you should check it out here.