Injuries

Injuries are an important aspect of training and living. I like small injuries to happen occasionally because they teach me how to tweak my training to make sure my body is balanced. It reminds me of where I am weak and what is important and what isn’t. Is it important to be able to benchpress 500# or do 10 sets of 20 pullups? Not to me. Is it important to be able to do a pull up with ¼ to ½ my bodyweight, or jump up and climb a 12’ wall? To me the answer is YES!

Yesterday I landed in a VERY compromising position and injured my hip, knee, and ankle on the right side. The way that I landed should have ripped and torn connective tissue. However because of how I train my joints hurt and my soft tissue is really sore. I don’t have full ROM in the knee or ankle and I can’t do rotational movements or loadedly straighten my leg. However, I can still squat, walk and deadlift. This is a testament to FROM loaded movements. When we train “flexibility” (yoga, stretch etc) without strength your body will not be able to withstand a load like I just went through. If you train heavy weights that don’t go through an entire ROM you will also screw yourself up.

Learn to deadlift, squat, kettlebell swing, Turkish get up, and pistols. Learn how to hang on one arm and do a handstand. These will teach your body to retain strength whether the joint is compressed or extended.

A person that saw the fall said “Adam, you were lucky!”

My response was, “No, I am trained!”

The human body can take an enormous amount of abuse and if we train it correctly we can take that abuse, let it heal and it will work well.

So what is my plan of healing…

Sleeping as much as possible.

Good food

Lazy movements through the max ROM I can

Dead lifts neuro, wise. (one or two at a time but heavy, and repeat through the day)

Compression tights

Soft tissue manipulation

Tendon retracking

Heat

What I will not do

Push to soon, I won’t even check it for another week.

NSAID, Ibuprofen, Asprin etc. Some of these pull important nutrients from connective tissue and make it brittle. Others hurt/compromise stomach lining.

Crappy food (Important to give yourself the most amount of good building blocks your body can handle, crappy food can not do this)

Ice. I don’t like ice. Compression and elevation keep the swelling down. Ice makes everything sluggish. I want my system to move junk out quickly. If you are going to ICE then use ice massage for 5 min then heat for 10 to 20. Ice packs are a waste of time. Ice massage or don’t ice!)

Have fun