Training Around Injury
I am currently dealing with a psoas strain. Like all injuries, its frustrating. But injuries do happen when you push the body to its limits. So there is a correct way to deal with training when injured.
There are 2 wrong things that people do when they are injured.
1. They just train as ususal, play the same sports, do the same exercises... this is unwise. Of course there is the risk of further injury (takes even logner to heal) and there is the risk of devloping compensotory motor patterns that are wrong and (body compensates for weak injured area by overutilising other parts in a way they were not designed to be used leading to long term problems).
2. They stop training alltogether. "oh poor me, I'm injured, I need to eat some cake and chocolate!"... you can see how this is bad. You get detrained and if you dont watch it, you lose diet consciousness as well. (naturally bad eating is made even worse by lack of training... d..d..d..d..duhz).
So the correct way to train with some injuries is to train around the injury. Train to the point where pain starts. Thats the general guideline. This may seem common sense but how mayn people fall into the previous 2 traps?
As for me, deep squatting is out because the psoas gets really shortened in the bottom of a deep squat and starts so spasm (try turning your head to the side where you are having a neck ache haha not plesant huh...). So i train AROUND it. I did high box squats using the formerly girly "reebok steps" hehehe. So i get to keep the max effort training, and i set the steps to be just above the point where i feel any discomfort. This principle works for all injuries.
Note: This does not work for chronic soft tissue injuries like scar tissue adhesions and trigger point problems. Those will not go away till you get some soft tissue therapy/massage done.
posted by Coach Jonathan Wong @ 10/02/2006 05:52:00 PM
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