“Aaaugh, I’m Injured!”

How Injuries Happen

• Injuries occur when baseline characteristics change and training demands exceed your current capacity.

• Injuries are rarely caused by “bad form,” and they’re almost never the fault of a single exercise performed in one moment.

• In the example here, the cause of injury was not the act of doing the Kettlebell Swings

• Rather, KB Swings was the point at which demand exceeded the individual’s capacity.

  👇See more tangible examples below “What to do after an injury.”

What to do after an injury

First 1-3 Days of Injury

Promote blood flow & organized movement:

• Daily cardio activity (accommodate for injury).

• Controlled Articular Rotations (CARs) on the affected area.

• Restrict movement only enough to mitigate re-injury or prevent additional swelling of injured fibers.

Post-Injury Days 4+

Lifting weights can resume as soon as three days after injury.

• The body and the injury benefit from load and movement starting in early recovery.

• It’s your coach’s job to help you find an alternate route to continue training healthy areas while mitigating risk to injured area.

• It’s your job to communicate to your coach about how program changes are working & feeling, and its especially critical during the early phases of this process.

Framework for Training

Use a pain response-based approach to training the injury

We want to rebuild the injured tissue just like you would build any tissue — just starting at a different point.

Primarily via progressively increasing workloads that qualify: cause less than a 3 out of 10 pain response.

Signs of progressing too quickly:

• A pain response during training of 3 out of 10 or greater

• Pain progressively increases between sets

• Pain increases after a training session for the 2-24 hours following

If an exercise causes a 3+ out of 10

1. Reduce workload

2. Reduce range of motion

3. Regress or revise the exercise
   

MSM PMID: 39077777

Tangible & Identifiable Routes to Injury

1. 1. Increased stimulus applied

   • No graded exposure after time off or a previous injury

   • Sudden increases in workload, volume, tension, speed, or exercise complexity

   • Large load jumps (e.g., +20 lb on your squat each week)

   • Extra “I felt good so I went really hard” workouts

   2. Suppressed recovery

   • Poor sleep

   • High life stress

   • Inadequate time between demanding sessions

   3. Reduced functional capacity

   • Loss of mobility or flexibility

   • Reduced strength in key ranges

   • Poor strength balance between tissues

   4. Impaired movement variability

   • Longer desk hours recently

   • More or longer drives or flights

   • Training patterns that are too repetitive or redundant

   5. Irritated physiological systems

   • Musculoskeletal changes associated with menopause

   • Medication changes

   • Autoimmune flares

   • Nervous system dysregulation (over- or under-arousal)

   • Gut inflammation

   • Hormonal shifts in pre-/peri-menopause

   6. Psychological or belief triggers

   • Fear or guarding from a past injury

   • Hypervigilance and catastrophizing

   • Movement myths (e.g., “deadlifts are dangerous”)

   7. Program–person mismatch

   • The program doesn’t match your current skill, tolerance, or life stress

   • Progressions are too aggressive

   • Example: performing a “heavy triple” the fourth time you ever back squatted

   • Example: going from zero to 50 box jumps in a week