Barbell Shrugged - Coming Back From an Injury: How To Ease Back Into Training and Get Back on the Wagon

Episode Date: March 23, 2016

How to come back from an injury.

This week on Barbell Shrug, we talk about how to come back from an injury. Hey, this is Rich Froning. You're listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to barbellshrugged.com. Hey, I see you sitting there, lonely by your keyboard. If you want to, just whip your fingers out, put them on your keys, type in http://www.barbellshrugged.com. While you're there, swing on over, sign up for the newsletter. We'll send you some cool free stuff, and make sure to check out to check out overtime it's a sweet place with a bunch of sweet stuff and last but not least i know

you're trying to find a bitchin t-shirt to get your mom for a birthday head on over to merch.barbellshrug.com that's what happens what do they call that that's what happens when you when you squat and then your leg just go in. That's the stanky leg. Or you get a concussion. And you're like dancing. All right. All right. Let's do this.

Welcome to Barbell Struggle. I'm your host, Mike McGoldrick. That's how you get injured. Yeah. Didn't really sit like that. Where was I? I'm your host, Mike McGoldrick, here with Coach Mike McElroy. What's happening?

Yep. There he goes again. Coach Kurt Mullican. Kurt Mullican. Mullican or Mullicant. Mullican. That's right. That's what you are today. That's right. And then Coach Alex Mullican. Kurt Mullican. Mullican or Mullicant? Mullican. That's right. That's what you are today.

That's right. And then Coach Alex Macklin. Yes. Awesome. So, again, thank you very much, Justin, at Hit and Run for hosting us here in Memphis, Tennessee. The iconic 1911 up on the wall. We got the gun now. Justin back there in the corner.

I had to give him the shout out while he's right there because I don't know when he's leaving. With tea and chicken in the tube hanging out. At them pits, man. So what are we talking about today? Today let's talk about coming back from an injury. So we've all been injured. If you're doing complex exercises that have higher risk of damage or whatever. If you're going hard, man, if you're going hard and you're trying to be competitive

and, you know, maybe you don't move the best, you know, maybe you don't have a great background, you know, and you're doing, you know, very, very complicated movements like snatches, clean and jerks and things like that, it's probably, there's a good chance of it happening. We're not saying that we should accept it's going to happen. We're saying just here's how to be prepared. Right. Right. So, you know, I want to start this off with talking about something.

And it's not always a bad thing, too. It's not always a bad thing. Well, getting injured? Yeah. Yeah, it's not always. I mean, it sucks. I mean, it's a bad thing. It's a bad thing, but you can learn from it.

I think you can always put a positive out of it. Yeah, exactly. That's what I meant. That's what I meant. That's more like it. Sometimes it's a good thing. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, That's what I meant. That's more or less. Sometimes it's a good thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It could be.

I've got like a laundry list of mine from playing ice hockey for 12 years and then cross it for a couple years. So I think my first one going back was my first like real injury was – It all started when I was four years old. I hope you all got time to sit. It was – I think I broke a vertebrae in my lower back. I had four AC separations, two in this shoulder, two in that shoulder. Wow.

From hitting people and then being hit as well. What else? Tore my groin. And recently I've tweaked my back. So I wouldn't say like too many, but, you know, some severe, some not so severe. But, you know, I'm excited about this today because to talk about the things that I've

learned. We're going to throw in a bar on your shin at regionals. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I don't know. It's getting like, it's like a cut or something, an injury. What are we defining as an injury? You got stitches.

I feel like you got stitches. You were out for a little while. What technically is an injury? Is it based on how bad it hurts or how many stitches? Are you hurt or are you injured? I did. I did. That's the old school coach.

The bar was extremely heavy. No, it was actually 95 pounds. You went past your end of the threshold. I was a little tapped. And I like whatever you want to call it. Faint, pass out, drop, exhaust. Did you end up on gymfails.com? You had to have one more on YouTube.

I know. I got back up and finished, but I had to go to the hospital. I had like 12 stitches in my shin. But, hey, I got a shin guard and I finished the next day. So how about that? So then I wasn't injured. What about everybody else? Yeah, what do you got, McElroy?

I got one just recently. So I herniated C6 and C7, so I ended up having to have surgery there. That's really the first one I've had. So you had to have surgery? Yeah, I had to have surgery there. That's really the first one I've had. It was a bad one in your life? Yeah, I had to have surgery. To correct it. How long were you out of, I guess, training? So before I had surgery, I rehabbed it back for probably, I guess, total about six months.

And then it kind of happened again and had surgery the next week. And that's been about three months ago and still not back to 100%. So almost a year. Yeah, it's been a year process of dealing with it. Yeah, that's basically the same. I'm kind of in the same boat. So recently, it's from an old injury. So back in, like, 2011, I really hurt my back doing a snatch.

And it was because I didn't have the best form back then. And I was trying to go pretty heavy and totally just felt something not good in the back. And pain shot all the way down the legs. I never really got it checked out. The damage was done. It's not even worth it. You pay a bunch of money to go through. You just rub some blue stuff on it. way down the legs. I never really got it, you know, checked out and never, you know, the damage was done. You know, it's not even worth it. You know, you pay a bunch of money to go rub some blue stuff on it. Yeah. But there was definitely damage and I was out for, you know, probably a good six, six months pretty much. But, you know, that has that flared up. Um, I did a weightlifting

competition back in may and I came back and it's always it's funny we can talk about this too because I feel like I always get injured when I'm doing something that I shouldn't have been doing and like it's just like you like you know and the next day I was like oh okay I'll hop in this CrossFit class this regular class and that's where you did it yeah yeah so like so the workout was work up to a one rep max power clean and jerk and power jerk. And I had just competed like the day before. So I'm like, oh, okay, yeah, I'll do this. Yeah, whatever.

So I like pull like, you know, I work up to like 275, 280, and I go for 285, and then it's like boom, coming off the ground like, oh, shit. What about you, Kurt? Most recently I fractured my wrist at a metal show. So you weren't training at all, man. Man, like I was training, but, you know, I live hard too. I like to party. But I'm like, I'm up in the air and some huge guy fucking comes off screen

just like, bloop, land like right on my hands on a concrete floor. I was like, oh, God. There was that. I was spraying a oh, God. There was that. I sprained a costal vertebral joint in my back doing some push jerks. And then most recently, I was carrying some 25-pound bumpers across the room, and I set them on the other 25-pound bumpers, and I pinched my giblets. But that was a minor injury. It was a scare, though.

So basically, you're just clumsy. If you've ever gotten hurt training? The costumers' joint was training. The other one, my weenus and the metal show, nothing to do with training. Oh, my. I like to party. Yeah.

Yeah, thanks for sharing. Yeah, so with that said, we thought this was an important topic because obviously it's going to happen at some point for a lot of people, especially if you're if you're being competitive. Right. So if you're doing complex movies and you're pushing hard and you're trying to get, you know, next level gains or make the human body do things that aren't necessarily normal, like you're putting yourself in that in that risk of injury. So with that said, we want to talk about how you react from that. So not so much like the prevention and the science into that, but more about how you actually come back from doing that and dealing with it mentally, rehabbing correctly and so forth. So, you know, my wife tore her knee or tore her ACL on her knee about a couple of years ago at regionals. And the coolest thing with her was her recovery from that was she's stronger

now than she was back then and it's not necessarily i mean obviously she rehabbed correctly but how she handled it was that was the most important thing like she took it as an opportunity that well it is what it is this is all i can do so i'm gonna do what i can for what i can train right now do what i can with what i can train and she used that as a great opportunity to work on her upper body gymnastics. So obviously she was limited lower body. She spent, you know, six months just doing strict pull-ups, strict gymnastics, strict handstand push-ups, and she just made the best of it.

And then now she was just patient with coming back from that, and she's stronger than she ever has been. So she's, you know, she hit a snatch PR recently. Like there is hope if you do it correctly and you're patient. Yeah, I feel like that's a huge thing is having patience. You know, like, it sucks getting hurt. Like, there is nothing worse than you getting hurt and knowing, like, all your friends are going to the gym and training.

Everybody's doing a workout. You show up and you're sitting there just there just like twiddling your thumbs. It sucks. It sucks. And it starts getting to your mind too. You know, you start, you know, maybe you start doubting like, should I even be training anymore? Sometimes I felt that.

Yeah, it's mental. It's like a huge mental thing. Yeah, it's a huge mental thing. And there's only so much that you can take, and you need support from other people. Right. You know, I mean, my injury is like the wrist thing. It didn't happen in the gym, but as a weightlifter,

somebody who holds a front rack really often, I couldn't do that anymore. So it was super hard, and I managed really well. Alex was on my ass all the time. Even though you didn't listen to me. I was like, I don't hear my snatch, but I did fairly well with that one. The following injury, where it was like right after that, that one just tore me up. I was super sad.

That's where we went wrong. We'll talk about that, but one just tore me up. I was super sad. That's where we went wrong. We'll talk about that. But I just didn't have the right mindset. Yeah, you have to be patient and know that it's going to be a slow process. It's not going to get better overnight. And, you know, even though you feel better, you're going to have to still be patient coming back. You're not going to get back to where you were like, you know, oh, I feel good.

I'm just going to go and PR and max out my lift again. You know, and I feel like sometimes people, you know, do that. What about the signs that might be showing it? So, I mean, you know, so we're saying, you know, be safe and be smart about it. But like how safe is too safe? Like where do you draw the line on that? Because, again, you're trying to take risk and grow and do crazy things and get the gains that you want.

But if you're someone who is not competitive, how risky should you be? If you're not in competition at all, what are you going to do with that? So we're talking about now maybe preventing injury going forward. So, yeah, I think looking at and having an outsider, maybe an unbiased opinion looking at what is safe and what is smart for you. So, for instance, if you don't move very well, maybe overhead squats shouldn't be in your program. We mentioned Doug earlier because all of his shoulder injuries he's had in the past,

he just simply can't go overhead. So he just ignores it. He just doesn't do it. Just snatch pulls and whatever he can do. It's a huge risk, but he knows what's not much of a reward. Yeah, so looking at your program and really getting down into why you're training and why you're doing what you're doing and then designing a program based off that instead of just saying, hey, we've got to learn how to snatch,

we've got to learn how to do muscle-ups because we're in a CrossFit gym and that's what we do. Looking at what are our main goals, and if our goals are just health and longevity, then you can take some of those things out and just train in a smarter environment. Yeah. Yeah, so maybe once something like that does occur, then you can take some of those things out and just train in a smarter environment yeah yeah so maybe uh once something does like something like that does occur like it's super important too to try and learn from it like really sit down and assess like how did this actually happen right

rather than just ignoring it so um always assessing it you know figuring out like what led me to this like why did that tweak happen you know you hear that like tweak is that word now tweak is like just everywhere and everybody i mean you just used it earlier. Yeah, tweak is that road sign coming up for that curve. I feel like it could be anything other than, like, oh, shit, like I don't need to go to the hospital. Yeah, arbitrary word. It's like something happened.

Yeah. I mean, it could be, you know, your body giving you a sign. Well, that's what it is. I mean, you know, when you tweak something, that's a sign. You know, and that's not something that, you know, you should ignore and just brush it off and be like, oh, well, you know, I just tweaked my back doing this thing. It'll be fine.

I'll wait a couple days and I'll go back to doing the same thing. No, that is your body telling you that something is messed up and something is going wrong. And if you continue down this path, it will turn into something worse. Like it's just a matter of time. Like it will happen. Yeah. I mean, I've been pretty lucky to not have many injuries.

Like I said, I've been competing in CrossFit for seven years, and this is kind of my first injury. But what it did, what you mentioned, like what can I learn from it? What can I take away from it? You know, I've known about, again, I had C6 and C7 herniated, and it wasn't like an instance that I did it. It was kind of over time. I've known that I've had bad posture forever.

I've always had kind of neck issues, neck aching, and things like that. Even from when I was 12 years old, I got headaches from that. And so I just kind of ignored that until the injury actually happened. And now that the injury happened, it could be easily for me because there is no real PT for it. You can do like neck retractions and things like that, actually happening and now that the injury happened it could be easily for me because there is no real pt for it you can do like neck retractions and things like that but there's no muscular damage there's not a whole lot of actual pt you can do it for like a low back thing strengthen the core um so i could just say like well i've had the surgery now i'm just going to

deal with it but what i can learn from it and be proactive about is trying to fix posture still so that another disc down the road doesn't happen again so still learn from it and do what you can to prevent anything in the future what you said was super what the first thing you said was really important because you said that you had been seeing all these warning signs for a long time and you know you kind of ignored it and and yeah just one day it just happened and And Mike, Mike Bledsoe, he's my coach for a long time. And, you know, he's always saying that it's rarely something that you do right then that causes the injury that was actually the cause. It's like it's rarely – like, yeah, you may have gotten injured doing a back squat

or a snatch or whatever, but it has been a cumulative effect the whole time, and then that was just a straw that broke the camel's back. You know what? I think I've learned the most when I deal with an injury because it's the time where I actually step back and I'm like, well, obviously I can't do what I've been doing, and I think weightlifting is going to be way harder because it's kind of specific what you guys are doing.

There's always ways to train around it, though. But if you're just a weightlifter, it could be way more stressful, I mentally because oh yeah you got like i'm i'm a crossfitter like i do a lot of different things right so like i get injured you know and i'm like well i'll just go work on gymnastics or i'll go do this like i'm super creative with it and not saying weightlifters can't do that but i'm just saying it's a little bit easier for me mentally because i have that much interest in this in the other sports so you know it's a good time because i always recognize that and i'm like well i guess i'll just go work on planches for a while like i'm not gonna olympic lift for a while sometimes

you have to do that yeah i mean i'm doing that right now and it's fun like you you open up other avenues and learn a lot more things about fitness and training that way so like that's that's definitely one positive you can pull out of it and in you know you really back off the same thing goes when you have clients that get injured you You know, you're going to have to really be creative as a coach, obviously, to do it safely to help work through their rehab. Like I'm not saying design it if you're not qualified to, but I'm saying you're going to be creative in keeping them interested and positive as well.

So do you have any experience with that? Yeah, I mean, it's really, I mean, my experience because of my specific injury, because, you know, most injuries that we've talked about, and low back low back maybe a little bit like mine too it really affects a lot of stuff most injuries don't necessarily affect a lot of stuff like if you have a shoulder injury you can still do lower body stuff right or if you have a lower body injury you still do upper body stuff but mine specifically i couldn't lower the spine so i couldn't do a whole bunch of stuff my left side my left you know trap and tricep were shut off. So I couldn't do that. So I was really limited to, like, biking and sled pulling. Yeah.

That was it. And I remember we trained one day. You put a harness around your waist, and you were doing reverse sled drags. And then lateral sled drags. I think he maybe did some lunges. Yeah, yeah. He did sled lunges. Yeah.

So that being said, like, it was really boring. So what that helped me with is, is recognizing what clients are going to have to deal with when they get injured or something like that happens and having to get creative within a really boring standard. And it was things like doing different intervals on the bike, like just changing up the intervals is things that, and tracking heart rate and looking at it from that way to learn about that side of things, not just to learn about it, but also to make it somewhat engaged. Right. Right. Give you some motivation. Where I'm not just getting on about it, but also to make it somewhat engaged. Right, right.

Give you some motivation. Where I'm not just getting on the bike and doing it. I'm actually tracking some stuff. You're trying to get better. That was a really good point you just made. So going through it yourself is really going to help you connect with your clients when they get hurt. Because now you really understand that, like, yeah, they come to you

and you're like, oh, you can't do pull-ups, just don't do anything. Yeah. Like, that's the worst, right? Right. So now you understand, like, what they would want to hear in return to that. That's going to be really helpful. Oh, yeah, definitely, 100%. You just made me a better coach.

Thank you. I've been one that naturally moves fairly well or focuses on movement fairly well. I haven't always moved great, but I've always focused a lot of attention on that, and I've never had injuries. So leading up to that, with my competitors especially, I was like a kind of a I don't take anything like I don't take any excuses like if something aches or like you're a competitor like get over it but now I kind of have this

different perception of like okay we need to take that more into consideration and be a smarter coach about it like you said I think it's a huge like you said pulling good from it. That's one of the main things that comes from it is learning how to coach other people. Or, on the flip side, if you do what I did, like when I couldn't load my spine, I just drank a lot of Miller Highline. It was really sad. And did that fix it?

It absolutely didn't. I did it all wrong. It was like the second injury in a row. It kind of stacked up, and mentally I was just kind of taxed. I was kind of done with it. Do you have anything you've done, like Kurt just brought up, that hasn't worked? Like maybe cutting your rehab a little short

or trying to rush back into it. Well, yeah, I mean, that's the one thing. You know, I've done that a few times. And, yeah, I mean, like I said, there's a rule that, you know, I like to, I like to go by and sometimes you may be off and, and that just reminds you, but you know, if you feel good, you should give yourself, you know, a week or so, and then, and then go back and then go back slowly, you know, but sometimes it's, it's hard. It's hard to, to, because, you know, like as a weightlifter or as a competitor you know you may have a

competition that you're really looking forward to and let's bring that up and and and you know you're under the gun time pressure and you know sometimes maybe you have to bow out and you have to be okay with that you know sometimes you know i know you i know you you you've had to do it kurt yeah yeah you've had to like i mean kurt Kurt was supposed to go – we were supposed to go to the American Open last year. That was the wrist injury. Yeah, that was the wrist injury. And – Fucking mastodon.

The mastodon. At least it was mastodon. It was a tight show. So, like, yeah, and Kurt was like, well, I don't think it's – I mean, we both came to that decision that it's not good for him to go. I think an important note you said is when you feel good, give it another week or two. Yes, that's so hard. It's so hard. him to go. I think an important note you said is when you feel good, give it another week or two. Yes, that's so hard.

It's so hard. When you come back. And you could be wrong. You could be wrong. But that's better safe than sorry. This week was the first time I was able to load my back with a barbell. And I could have – I mean, it felt good. I went up to 185 on back squat and it felt completely 100% fine.

I could have kept going to 400. Probably wouldn't have been the smartest thing to do. I say that to clients all the time. It's hard to explain and get them to buy into it. But even when they get sick, so let's say that you have that small tweak and two days later you're like, I feel pretty good. Not great, but pretty

good that I could train. And it's like, rather than coming back at 80% and potentially training and not letting it heal or getting over that sickness, for the next two weeks you're training at 80% rather than taking three more extra days off. If you look back, what's three days in the scope of two weeks later? It's nothing. Because remember, like you said earlier, the actual injury probably had been building over time.

So when you come back from that, it may not be completely healed. You're just training for it, and it's going to come back on that instant day, even though it's never really got fully healed. Yeah, you'll save so much more time in the long run. You've got to think about coming back from an injury, you're talking about the long game. This is nothing short-term. This is the long-term plan here.

So, yeah, I mean, if it takes a couple more weeks to get back at it, so what? And I think if you're someone who's on a time frame, like you do have that competition coming up, and that's something that's very important to you, like is that juice worth the squeeze? So it might be. It might be something that you might have to risk. But you've got to recognize that and assess that.

What did you say? Juice? No. Not that kind of juice. I don't even know what you're talking about. Steroids. Steroids, yeah. Oh, God.

Don't even bring that up. Right. So the point being is like, yeah, I mean, sometimes it is, you know, a risk that you're going to take if it's, you know, a three-year peak that you've been doing to go compete. And like, you know, it's worth getting, you know, taking that chance. But most of the time it's not going to be. I mean, yeah.

I mean, I would say if you're going to the Olympics or something like that. Or the CrossFit Games. There's a lot of athletes get or something like that. Or the CrossFit Games. There's a lot of athletes get hurt in between regionals and the CrossFit Games. A couple have had to pull out. A lot of them have competed injured. I've seen it. And they've been torn up.

But, I mean, they may not ever get the opportunity again. So I don't necessarily blame them for putting their body at risk like that. Definitely lay it on the line for that. I mean, it all boils down to is it worth it or not. And for the most part, I think if you look at it as, you know, okay, I can have this little sweet feeling right now or I can keep doing what I'm doing and then go back later and then be successful later.

I think a really honest way to look at it is if you're questioning if it's worth it or not, it's probably not worth it because the people that you're talking about or the people that are getting ready for the Olympics, there's nothing getting in their way. There's no doubt in their mind. They don't care what happens. I agree. So if that question even comes up, then that's your automatic gut feeling that it's probably not worth it. What about getting help from the outside?

We've been talking about just kind of emotionally and how to deal that it's probably not worth it. What about getting help from the outside? You know, we've been talking about just kind of emotionally and how to deal with it from that kind of standpoint. What about, like, you know, chiropractors and PTs and stuff like that to get help with? Yeah, I mean, I think. Yeah, go see them. Yeah, I mean, I've seen both chiropractors and physical therapists. I give a shout-out to Jason Ward. Jason Ward has fixed my ass so many times, man.

That's weird. He's fixed my back. He's fixed my shoulder. You know, I think he's great. And I think it's really important. The reason I like him is because he does a lot of – he knows about movement. And so, you know, when he's prescribing something, he's keeping that movement, like making sure I get a good movement,

and then he's giving me a lot of stuff that I can do on my own to help me get rid of the pain or rehab what I need to rehab. He's a good therapist. Yeah, man, he's awesome. I saw somebody similar, like Dr. Clayton Pitts. He's kind of the same way, and I think the important thing that you said in the same way with Clayton is somebody that knows what you do and knows that you're not just going to stop and sit on the couch.

No, no, yeah, exactly. They know you're wanting to get back to function and what your function is, which is training. Somebody not just a PT or a chiro, that kind of, in my opinion, that title is kind of irrelevant. It's more about do they know what you're doing? Do they understand? Do they even lift?

I got a great example. In 2013, after regionals, when I qualified for the CrossFit Games, I tore my groin on the final event at regionals, right? So if you don't know, regionals is only a couple of months before the CrossFit Games. I mean like a matter of weeks. And you want to talk about a level of freaking out, right? Like I've worked years to get to this point, and then I have a pretty bad injury.

A perfect example of what we were just talking about. Yeah, so I'm really grateful for Dr. Brad Cole here in Memphis because as soon as I was done with that, and this is also a measure of my patience too, like I've got six weeks to get ready for this big show, and I am like, I can't squat, I can't run, run i can't train like what the hell am i supposed to do all i could do is focus on trying to rehab to the best of my ability and then if that doesn't work it is what it is like i but but trying to train through that at that time was not going to work but i went saw this guy every single day you know we did

actually i would drive out there because it's like 45 minutes from my house i would drive out there we would do treatment. I would actually go get lunch, do some work, and then go back for more treatment to heal. And this guy got me healed up in like three or four weeks after a groin tear. It was crazy. But it was because of the level of patience. Like I didn't do any squatting up until the week before the CrossFit Games.

Level of patience on one hand, but also the discipline on the other hand. Again, we're going back to that athlete that says, you know, there's nothing stopping me from doing this competition, and you're going to do everything in your power to get back to that. And everything in your power, we talk about people, we haven't brought this up yet, but like reoccurring injuries and people who just kind of continue to have these nagging injuries, the same thing.

Like doing everything in your power, and that's a prime example. You were going to the Cairoro or is he a Cairo uh Cairo pain specialist so you're going to him twice a day every day it's 45 minutes away from your house and we're trying to get like our clients in our gym to like maybe do crossover symmetry once a week yeah to get their shoulders healthy like literally doing everything you can to help get this thing healed right right not just resting just resting is not enough anymore yeah resting is you've got to you've got to address the issue. Yeah, you've got to proactively address the issue.

Like if you're – and that's what we talked about that earlier is like you – getting hurt is an opportunity to learn something. So, you know, if your movement, if your technique is bad, you know, now you've got this time now, okay, how do I move better? Or if your mobility sucks like now is the time to work on that yeah and really hammer it that that that reminds me of just a lot of reactive clients so um they they only react once something happens instead of preventing you know a hand and i'm guilty of it too no one's gonna be scared of injury until it happens right right

like you just can't scare that into someone usually you can try and inform them about it but until it happens you don't know that kind of scare until you're like shit i gotta change something right well it's something i was gonna kind of talk about is the reactive client like a lot of times people pay for a gym membership they've got a coach but they just go to class get the the instruction they never really ask the coach what to do to get the best out of their workout the metcon for that day and then maybe they get injured and they don't even do anything then. They don't ask them anything. They don't look for guidance.

So there's no help on the mental side or the physical side at all, and it's because they've backed away. As a coach, I think, and as a client, you've got to meet in the middle and just try to find some common ground and just communicate about what happened. Yeah, I was going to say, it doesn't have to be like a chiro or a PT. Your coach knows about movement, knows about what you're doing. That can also be a very good resource. In my personal experience, Kurt and I coach the Muscle Gain Challenge,

and all of us have coached barbell shrug programs, and there are people that get hurt all the time. That sounds terrible. That sounds terrible, but it's not. I mean, not only do we get hurt all the time. And, you know. That sounds terrible. I mean, that sounds terrible, but it's not. I mean, not only get hurt all the time, but they get hurt. We've had one get hurt one time. Yeah, people get hurt, okay. So, you know, I talk with them, and, you know, I figure out what hurts,

what doesn't hurt, you know, what's going on, and, you know, try to figure out ways to work around. You can always, I feel like you can almost always train around an injury. Like, you know, if your back is messed up, do single leg work. Like, or if you can't squat below parallel because it hurts, do box squats. Like, there's always something to do that you can train around. And it just, maybe you don't know where to start, but that's why you can get some help. Like, go to a coach, go to your PT, go somebody that knows about movement, knows what you're doing. But you got to communicate. You got to your PT, go to somebody that knows about movement, knows what you're doing.

But you've got to communicate. You've got to communicate. You have to communicate. And you've got to assess it too. Right, you have to assess. We're not saying work around it, like ignore it like it never happened. Definitely figure out why it started in the first place because it's going to keep happening.

Right. So if it happened once, it could definitely happen again. Right. What about the athletes that you might get in the gym that you let them know the potential risk for that movement that they're doing, and they might keep kind of doing the same thing over and over. You keep reminding them, and then they keep kind of getting hurt, and you keep telling them, like, look, you don't fix this. You're not going to get, you know, it's going to keep happening. But they don't really listen.

Like, how do you handle that if you're a gym owner? The way I deal with it. GTFO. The way I deal with it, I literally come up to them and stop them from doing the movement or take the bar down or take the weight down. I literally come in and change the movement for them. I'm playing devil's advocate right now. Well, that's a respect thing, and I see it a lot.

I'm a little passive at times. You know, I've got a guy who should never be doing overhead squats. I'm like, let's front squat. I'll look over. He's doing a shitty ass overhead squat and i'm just like you're gonna hurt yourself like it's not okay and we talk about it later but he's right back to it the next day so i mean we're not babysitters ultimately and people are going to do what they want to do um and you let them know but you know what yeah what do you do and it gets that

bad i feel like education too is plays probably a big part of that, too. You know, like, you know, educating the person on, you know, their situation. While we're limiting them. Right. Totally, totally. And explaining to them. If you have someone new in the gym that's never over at squatting before and they come in and they're super tight and you just tell them right off the bat in front of the whole class,

like, you're not going to do over at squats today. And they're like, why? Without actually spending the time beforehand where they understand why they're not doing that of course that's gonna piss them off right that's definitely on you as a coach like like you gotta spend the time educating them on why they're they're possibly not doing that and what you're gonna do to help fix that not only just telling them why they're not doing it but let them know that you're on a path to work on to fix it so they can get there at some point give them some hope rather than being like, you're never going to do it again.

He mentioned earlier the respect thing and the trust thing. It's developing that respect as the owner of the coach and the trust that they can have in you that you are doing the best thing for them. So, like, let's take the overhead squat, for instance. I may have them during the warm-up try to get into that overhead squat, try to work on those positions, and then when the workout comes, we change to front squats or something like that.

And, again, educating and explaining why we're doing it, why we're limiting them, just developing that trust and that respect for that, whatever correction you're doing. And, yeah, these apply to prevention and as well as after getting injured. Exactly. And also not, just to throw in too, as a coach, you don't have to always know the answer. Well, definitely don't make it up. And as an athlete, you don't always have to know either.

So that's why, to me, it's important for coaches to develop relationships. I mean, we've all named people PTs or Kairos. That's why it's important to develop that because that's not necessarily in our spectrum. It's not in our wheelhouse. It's okay to not know that, and it's okay to say, I'm not sure we're going to play it extra safe today, and I'm going to go find somebody else that can help you or something like that.

I think that could be another episode in itself, you know, how trainers these days, I don't want to say expected, but they almost feel like they should be the trainer, the doctor, the physical therapist. I mean, you want to. You want to be that. You want to know all those things and be comfortable with all of it, in my opinion, but you don't have to. Right.

Like, you got to know when to say, look, I'm sorry. That's beyond my expertise. Like, I need to send you to someone. Yeah. And being okay with that, right? So, basically, today, you know, we brought up how injuries are just going to happen and, you know, how to stay positive in dealing with them when they do.

Right. So hopefully you took some things on how to, you know, if you get a lower body injury, how you can turn that into a positive and work on some strengths for your upper body. You can always find a silver lining. Like, there's always going to be a silver lining to something bad that happens. And, you know, you just have to look at it with that open mind, you know. You got to. Stay positive. Yeah know you got to stay

positive yeah you gotta stay positive and get get help get go find resources that can help you you know if you're lost you need that guidance like don't don't think you have to do it by yourself and figure it out by yourself and using that experience to be a better coach that's the biggest thing i took from you today so thanks for that anything else you guys want to add nailed it awesome thanks for listening guys. Thanks