Injury while training!

Greg Everett
Catalyst Athletics
The Performance Menu

Setbacks & Motivation

One of the most difficult things in anyone's training is dealing with injuries and similar setbacks. An injury in the middle of a training cycle can be devastating physically, but usually more so mentally. The physical can always be built again; the discipline, motivation and attitude for productive training is what's most difficult to maintain or recover.

Personally I've had to deal with few serious injuries. I attribute this to the fact that I'm very consistent with maintenance and preventative work, largely because I see others in constant pain and various states of injury and have no interest in joining them. I've always been diligent about pre-training preparation, flexibility, icing and the like, and it has worked well for me. I don't doubt that at least some of my success can also be attributed to good luck (and/or not lifting enough weight).

The reason this is on my mind is because I re-injured an old injury site last week and it's taken me until the last day or two to get my head back in the game the way it needs to be. A few years ago, I sprained my left SI and L5-S1 joints during a clean - embarrassingly enough, on a very light one the day after making a record lift. It wasn't fatal, but it was bad enough that I couldn't lean forward to even the slightest degree without falling over, and it kept me from training normally for a month or so. Fortunately I recovered and while it was touchy for quite a while, eventually it was no longer something I worried about, other than periodic soreness in the injury site.

Last week, in my final heavy week of a squat cycle that was going just swimmingly, I sprained the same location during the recovery from a squat. Luckily it turned out to be nowhere near as bad as the first time, but it happened with a visible buckle in my lower back and an audible pop. The most irritating part of the incident was the fact that it was so unnecessary. Basically I got lazy. I was feeling good and didn't take the time and put in the focus I should have.

So this cycle that was going so well suddenly was over. Even if it only took a week for my back to get back to normal, which was quite optimistic, I would lose the momentum of the cycle. Immediately my attitude regarding training went to shit because my grand plans were no longer viable and I felt a big investment in time and effort were now wasted. Understand too that this was such a minor setback - by no means a serious injury - and it still evoked this shift in mindset. With more severe injuries or complications, it just gets worse.

With chiropractic treatment, some outerspace cold laser, a lot of ice, a lot of stretching of certain neglected areas, and some focused back strength work, my back has returned to about 90% or so after about 10 days, and it's hard to complain about such a quick recovery. During that time, I've had a chance to get some perspective and rethink my training going forward. I realize that even though it was cut short, my last cycle wasn't exactly a waste of time - really what happened is that I put in the work, got most of the benefit, but was unable to measure the progress. That measurement being absent doesn't mean the progress is. I planned a new cycle with more emphasis on the weaknesses I clearly need to address, and I'm confident that it will be successful.

There were a couple take home lessons for me, and hopefully for you, in this. First was that you can never take anything for granted, even the most minor details of training, down to a single lift. I hurt my back doing a clean with about 60% because I wasn't focused or taking it seriously; I hurt it again doing nothing extraordinarily rough. It wasn't a clean or a squat that injured me, it was my own complacency and lack of focus. I plan on not making that mistake again.

The other lesson, which I seemed to have had to learn more than once, is that one training cycle and one injury don't represent an entire career or life. They are small pieces of a long timeline and if handled properly, will stay that way. They can be small hiccups if you stay on top of them, or if you don't, they can be monumental disruptions.

Finally. it's important to keep an eye on the future and to institute sound plans even while focusing on the present. If you get too wrapped up in what happened yesterday or what you're doing today and something doesn't go according to plan, you're going to find yourself all out of sorts. If you can step back and consider that day, moment, lift, whatever within the context of a larger plan, you'll likely find yourself better able to keep moving forward productively.

Good luck with your training.