I called my dad crying and told him the bad news. On the very last run and very last jump of the day, I landed wrong on my skis and tore my ACL. The doctor said it would be at least a year before I’m weightlifting again and that I’ll need surgery to repair it.

I was devastated and furious at myself for doing that jump. I began to rant about how I should have been smarter. I should have been more careful. I just spent the past six months working my ass off to come back from an ankle injury and was finally making progress in the gym. I did everything right then made one bad call and that’s it.

While my dad sympathized, he immediately said exactly what I needed to hear, “You can go your whole life not taking risks and playing it safe, but that’s just not you. This sucks. But you’ll get through it and come back stronger.”

I snapped out of it. I knew he was right. I don’t avoid things because I’m scared I’ll get hurt. I try shit, I fall down, I get back up and I try again. Anything can happen no matter what. There’s no point in living in fear.

I made a promise to myself that I would not let this injury break me. I have a torn ACL, I’ll be out of Olympic lifting for at least a year, but I’ll come back. Stronger, better, smarter, faster.

So if you have found yourself in a similar position, then here are a few ways you can still pursue your goals.

Use Your Good Leg

I walked into the gym two days after my injury. I looked at my barbell up on the rack and used it as motivation as I began my prehab. I had one leg that was perfectly fine, pretty damn strong even. So I designed my new program around that.

Please check with your physician before beginning any exercise regimen post-injury.

Here are some single leg things you can do:

• Single Leg Overhead Squats
• Weighted Pistol Squats
• Single Leg Box Squats
• Single Leg Deadlifts

Read Your Resources

Up your knowledge and learn everything you can. Having an injury is no excuse when it comes to learning.

Here are some of my favorites:

• Catalyst Athletics – Really any of Greg’s books. They’re all jam packed with knowledge.
• Tommy Kono – Weightlifting Olympic Style and Championship Weightlifting
• Dr. Kelly Starrett – Becoming a Supple Leopard
• Bob Takano – Weightlifting Programming

There are so many great books out there, that aren’t on this list, so do some research and find the ones that appeal to you.

Focus on Your Coaching

Just because you can’t train how you’re used to doesn’t mean you can’t take this time to improve your coaching. You’ll quickly find that your verbal cues need to improve, fast, when you can no longer simply show a movement or drill. Reach out to other coaches, read everything, watch videos and help as many athletes as you can during this time.

Train What You Can

My upper body has always been my weakness and since I sucked at jerks, I hated to do them. I’d skip my presses at the end of a long session and it showed later in my lifts. Well, there’s no skipping upper body for me now. Press, push, and pull your way through your recovery. If your leg strength was there, it will come back faster than the first time around, but hopefully you used this time to match it with some real upper body strength.

Work on Your Mental Game

Weightlifting is just as much of a mental sport as it is a physical one. Challenge yourself and dig deep during this time. What are the things that psych you out? What gets you fired up? Are you a competitor or do you shy away from the platform?

Learn who you are as an athlete and improve on it. There are few things harder for an athlete than not being able to do what they love, so think of this time as training. It may not be the training you love to do, but mental training will help you in the long run nonetheless.

So, that’s exactly what I decided to do.

It’s Rough, No Joke

I won’t lie, I get mad about being out of the game, pissed off even. But I decided this was a good thing. It was fuel. It was what I needed to continue to fight and not give up on my weightlifting dreams. My platform dreams, while humble and small to some, have kept me driven and grounded for the past five years. Right now, it’s what is pushing me through my rehab.

If you’re injured, I am truly sorry, I know how much that sucks. But remember, you can sit on your ass and feel sorry for yourself or you can get up and work.

The choice is yours.

The post Stay Focused While Injured appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

I write and teach heavily focused on how to be your own coach (or at least a strong self-reliant athlete to better partner with your coach). This injury also shapes my recent direction toward the gifts and lessons that injuries inevitably present. I’m struck that, despite my recent thinking about self-coaching and injuries, I never understood how limitations can actually provide a growth opportunity for those designing effective programs.

Injuries drive attention to areas not previously discovered or valued. They can demand that an athlete becomes more body-aware or develop a more conservative and accurate understanding of their limitations. They can help an athlete prioritize recovery, mobility, and movement quality. These benefits are immediately apparent once the initial shock of an injury subsides.

An injury, and the severe physical limitations during recovery can also give way to much more creative and effective programming by imposing creative boundaries.

Boundaries Create Endless Possibilities

Programming can feel daunting. Whether designing for yourself or another athlete, it feels difficult to know where to begin, which movements, combinations, and intensities to select, and how to periodically progress over weeks or months. The process inevitably becomes more comfortable and smooth with experience, but can still feel like trying to plot a course through an endless sea with no landmarks in sight.

When there are no boundaries, the possibilities can feel too large. Too many options can distract from focus. Anyone who has scrolled through the viewable options on Netflix can attest to this paradox of choice.

Effective programmers give themselves boundaries. This may seem confining and more difficult, but these bounds can actually drive creativity. Most effective programmers apply constraints without consciously realizing they have bounded their options. We see these as programming according to our (or athletes) physical and schedule limitations, available equipment, and goals. We also inherently remain within the bounds of our background, specialties, and values. However, we can intentionally apply even tighter bounds to drive our creativity further.

Creative Constraints

Through tightly confining boundaries we can fully explore the potential of the limited tools we have available. Coaches and athletes alike notoriously stick to what they know. We can underestimate the value of certain tools, movements, or methodologies. There are no good or bad, useful or ineffective, tools. Every option has a purpose and a set of benefits. It is difficult to fully understand any tools potential until we use it to near exclusion. Eliminating other options forces creativity with what we do have available.

My on-going recovery leaves me with few options to design my program. Doctor’s orders dictate nothing explosive or heavy, no intense core engagement, and no weights over 25 to 30 pounds, not to mention that many movement patterns and postures remain off limits because of my recovering tissue. At face-value, I am quite confined in my options.

While initially glum with my limited options, I soon found that with little available I was programming more creatively than ever. Each training session not only brought gratitude for my ability to simply train again, but I found fun and exploration than I have ever felt. I was exploring new movements to address my recovery and specific mobility. I was discovering ways to significantly challenge my system with relatively minimal weights. I focused on practicing “perfect” reps while feeling no pressure to push to more intense exertion. I was seeing possibilities for the tools available that I had never dreamed of.

With immense options available, we must consider myriad possibilities. Our thinking follows the age old “inch deep but a mile wide” approach. With creative constraints, we can sharpen our focus on only a few options allowing us to explore the depths of what we have available.

Impose Your Own Boundaries

If you have hit a training plateau, a mindset slump, or simply want to broaden your coaching or self-coaching horizons try intentionally confining your options. You’ll be forced to put together combinations, sessions, and programs differently than you ever have. You can develop a more nuanced understanding of previously less familiar tools or methodologies. It is unlikely that things will fall apart. You might need to push through some initial discomfort, but you will arrive on the other side a more balanced, broad, and bold coach with a more creative understanding of how to design a fun and effective program.

• Try a few weeks completely neglecting your favorite tools.
• Program a phase of entirely bodyweight movements.
• Plan to work out in a park with only tools you can bring with you.
• Select a piece of equipment you have never (or rarely used) and include it in every session for a few weeks.
• Use only your favorite tool to exclusion to fully explore all of its possibilities.

I have seen many beautiful meals come out of a tiny kitchen. I have seen many stunning works of art created with only a pencil. I challenge you to confine yourself to as few options as possible to drive you to new levels of creativity.

The post Impose Boundaries for More Creative Workout Programming appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

So how do we maintain the right attitude when an injury results in irretrievable lost training time? When we are frustrated because persistent pain is stopping us from moving, what kind of mental adjustment is required to ensure the mind is supportive of a speedy recovery? This is where mindfulness meditation comes in.

Meditation is not something that only benefits yogis. Meditation gives athletes the ability to stay calm in the eye of the storm, it improves your ability to ignore distractions, and it has a powerful impact on the state of your nervous systems. All of these elements are significant to recovery time.

Don’t Shoot That Second Arrow

Before examining meditation, let’s get back to the issue of pain and the mind. The meaning you apply to an injury can determine how much pain you feel and the speed of your recovery. The Buddhists have known this for centuries. Here’s a story to illustrate.

Imagine you are an accomplished archer preparing for the Olympic trials. You’ve been training for years and this is your moment. You are practicing at the archery range and about to raise your bow. Suddenly a searing pain slices your shoulder and you crumple to the ground.

A newbie is muttering, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. It just slipped.” As the first aid guy comes to look at your wound, the thought that screams through your mind is, “Why does this shit always happen to me?!”

This frustration continues to kick and wail inside your head so loud that you don’t even notice when the helper says, “Just a scratch. I’ll put a Band-Aid on it. You can resume shooting now.”

The physical pain has abated but resentment wracks your brain: “Doesn’t matter where I am, if something bad is going to happen, I’m surely the target! I won’t be prepared for the trials. A once in a lifetime chance at the Olympics thrown in the garbage.” You angrily drive home to lie on the couch and nurse your wound, feeling a need to stop at the drug store and pick up a bottle of extra-strength pain killers.

Your response to an injury can enhance your recovery, or it can be the second arrow. [Photo credit: Pixabay]

The Buddhists would say that instead of being hit by a single arrow, you’ve been hit by two arrows. The first was the wooden arrow that slashed your arm. The second was the one with which you shot yourself. You have launched a catastrophic second arrow with your thoughts.

This is a dramatic example, but the point is whether or not you get hit by a second arrow is entirely your choice. It is how you respond to the first arrow that makes the difference.

The meaning you attribute to an injury can affect how much pain you experience. When you’ve sustained an injury in training, what does the injury mean to you? Does it mean wasted time? Does it mean missed opportunity? What is at stake when you can’t train or compete – your future, your finances, your reputation?

Fear and beliefs have an impact on recovery time and pain. Research has found that recovery expectations are a strong predictor of whether or not the pain will become chronic.¹ At the same time, positive recovery expectations can lead to faster recovery times.²

The Power of the Brain on Pain

To gain a deeper understanding of your own concepts of pain, it helps to take a close look at how the pain system works in your body. Lorimer Moseley is a professor of neuroscience who works as a clinical scientist studying pain, specifically the role of the brain and mind in chronic pain. He believes simply understanding how the pain system works can help us to experience less pain.³

Your nervous system is made up of neurons, the spinal cord, and the brain. Pain neurons in your body are programmed to protect you from dangers like heat or pressure. When these pain sensors detect danger or damage, they send chemical and electrical messages up the spinal cord to the brain. Your brain then decides how to respond and sends a message back to the body. The brain might send a message to freeze, pull your hand away from a flame, or run for your life. Of course, the pain system is much more complicated, but the gist of it is that it protects the body from external dangers and ensures our survival.

Here’s the catch: The amount of pain you feel is not solely determined by the pain messages being sent up from the body or the external stimuli (i.e., the amount of heat or pressure). The brain regulates this to some extent also. The brain can decide to send more chemical and electrical messages to increase the pain sensation or choose to send different messages that decrease the pain.

The amount of pain you feel is a complex blend of:

1. The external stimuli and degree of danger.
2. Visual information, everything you already know and have experienced, and your emotional response.

The brain has a lot of power over the amount of pain you feel – whether during an acute injury event or during recovery. If someone perceives the injury is career-ending, the recovery time will be longer.

The Hypersensitive Nervous System

When tissue has been damaged, it is normal for the pain sensors near the injury to remain sensitive for a period of time. This prompts you to protect the site from further damage. However, if this hypersensitivity lasts for too long, it can cause the nervous system to react to non-dangerous stimuli as if they are dangerous.

Think about a time your back was sunburned. Putting on a shirt feels like someone put a blow torch to your skin. This is an example of tissues becoming hypersensitive. Another example of a hypersensitive nervous system happens with fibromyalgia – a gentle touch is misread by the nervous system as danger and the sensors send pain signals to the brain.

When pain persists longer than 3-6 months it is categorized as chronic pain. In this chronic state, there is a risk that the nervous system will shift into a state of hypersensitivity, which involves the brain as well as the pain sensors in the body. The brain adapts and begins to send more pain signals and it sends pain signals when there is no danger or damage. It may also start to spark pain signals in different areas of the body. The pain neurons also go into overdrive, reacting to normal touch or mild heat as if it’s a threat to survival. In this hyperactive state, your pain alarm system starts to get louder and it goes off more often –for no real reason. This tells us that pain signals are not always an indication of actual tissue damage.

The good news is that the brain can be trained so that it doesn’t send more pain signals than are necessary. When the brain is soothed, we can stop ourselves from sliding down the slippery slope towards a state of hypersensitivity. By calming the brain, we can avoid chronic pain and decrease our recovery times.

Taking a moment to calm the mind will decrease the amount of pain you feel. [Photo credit: Pixabay]

Meditation Reveals the Truth

Mindfulness helps with recovery on two levels:

1. Mindfulness meditation can help you recover from injury by changing your perception of the circumstance/trauma/event. It enables you to see the truth of a situation rather than letting emotion skew your opinions and reactions. You can look at the reality of how much tissue damage occurred. You can come to know if pain is authentic or based on fear. You can take an honest look at how much you are building up the meaning of an injury and causing yourself more pain. You can direct your mind towards what is important, rather than being distracted by irrational worries and beliefs that are based in fiction or illusion.
2. You calm the nervous system. This aids in recovery by stopping all the fight or flight reactions you impose on your body when you catastrophize (such as increased cortisol, tense muscles, lowered levels of dopamine and serotonin, inhibition of digestion, reduced sex drive).

Mindfulness enables you to check your perceptions against an objective assessment. So when you have to spend time sitting around while recovering, you can make it productive instead of wasted – you can practice mindfulness meditation.

How It Works

One time, I fell and broke a rib. It wasn’t a training injury or a spectacular accident. My rib broke when I slipped on wet stairs and cracked my back on the step. While I was on my hands and knees at the bottom of the stairs trying to catch my breath, a slew of panicky anxious thoughts went through my head.

Once I caught my breath, I slowly crawled up the stairs and cautiously slid into bed. The mental catastrophizing continued until suddenly a new thought arose, “STOP! I teach yoga and meditation. Now is the time to put my methods to the test.” I combined deep breathing with mindfulness to calm my mind and nervous system enough that I fell asleep within minutes (without any drugs or painkillers).

Here’s what I did:

1. Breathe slowly. I began to focus on my breathing and slowed it down, inhaling through my nose instead of my mouth. Rather than quickly gulping air in through my mouth, which sends a signal to the body that it is an emergency, I breathed slowly and softly. This change to my breathing sent a message to my nervous system that it could relax the muscles, slow the heart rate, stop producing stress and pain hormones, and start producing relaxation hormones.
2. Observation. Using mindfulness techniques, I moved my awareness to the spot where the pain was most intense. I began to examine and study the pain through the eyes of a neutral observer.
3. Labelling. Rather than labelling the physical sensations as ‘pain’, which has negative and emotional connotations, I gave them a neutral label. I called it heat, tingling, pulsing, movement, swirling, or contraction. This calms the brain. When the brain relaxes it sends out a message to the body that it can relax too. Body and brain learn from each other.

Through these actions, I told my hyper-excited nervous system that everything was going to be okay. It only took a few minutes to fall asleep, which was exactly what my body needed in order to begin the healing process.

Retrain Your Nervous System

Anyone can use this technique, whether recovering from an acute injury or experiencing chronic pain from an old injury. You can take control of your body, brain, and nervous system. Just like with any skill, your ability to apply mindfulness improves with practice. I attribute my ability to apply mindfulness during a meltdown moment to a consistent practice of meditation.

I was able to stop myself in the middle of an emotional and painful experience and apply the techniques. I liken it to being at an accident scene and remembering how to apply first aid skills. There’s a reason we have to renew our CPR training every few years – it’s the practice that enables us to jump in and do it by rote in the middle of a highly charged situation. Thus, it is beneficial to practice meditation even when we are not in pain.

To practice meditation, start with 12 minutes, twice a day. Consider it training for your nervous system. If you’re not sure where to begin or feel like your mind is too distracted to start on your own, you can find mindfulness courses online if there aren’t any available locally. Gradually work your way up to 15-20 minutes, twice a day. Or even better, try an hour, once a day.

Mindfulness Is Not Ignoring Pain

When applying mindfulness in injury situations, you are not ignoring the pain, or working through the pain, or suppressing the pain. It is critical to listen to pain signals. Sometimes a pain signal is your body saying, “Hello, you must listen or bad things will happen.” When the pain signal is an accurate indication of tissue damage or a biomechanical problem, your body is telling you to stop moving those tissues and address the damage. However, as illustrated above, pain signals are not always an accurate indication of actual damage. That is where the mindfulness techniques can help.

Through mindfulness we listen closely to the messages from the body. We become better judges of what is real and what is being exaggerated by our emotions. We also calm the nervous system so it doesn’t create unnecessary pain or keep the pain occurring long after the tissue damage has healed.

As you recover from an injury, remember what it’s like to feel healthy in the area that was injured. Pain is not your normal state. The human body has an amazing capacity to rejuvenate and your brain can either hamper its progress or help it. You get to decide if you shoot that second arrow or not.

How do you change your mindset while you’re sidelined?

The Gift of an Injury

References:

1. Boersma, Katja, and Steven J. Linton. “Expectancy, Fear and Pain in the Prediction of Chronic Pain and Disability: A Prospective Analysis.” European Journal of Pain 10, no. 6 (2006): 551. doi:10.1016/j.ejpain.2005.08.004. 

2. Cole, Donald C., Michael V. Mondloch, Sheilah Hogg-Johnson, and Early Claimant Cohort Prognostic Modelling Group. “Listening to injured workers: how recovery expectations predict outcomes—a prospective study.” Canadian Medical Association Journal 166, no. 6 (2002): 749-754.

3. Moseley, G. Lorimer, and David S. Butler. “Fifteen Years of Explaining Pain: The Past, Present, and Future.” The Journal of Pain 16, no. 9 (2015): 807-13. doi:10.1016/j.jpain.2015.05.005. 

The post Control Pain and Speed Up Recovery with Meditation appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

My Downward Spiral

From ages 19 to 30 I was riddled with injuries, pain, and degenerative joints. My downward spiral in health started with a torn ACL and meniscus in my right knee during a lacrosse game at the age of 19. The pain and injuries that ensued included chronic shoulder pain and tendinitis in both shoulders, a labral tear in my left hip, and lower back pain. I saw and suffered from it all. I blamed my injuries on wear and tear from high impact running, squatting with heavy barbells on my back, hours and hours on the elliptical and treadmill, and countless hours spent paddling on my surfboard and swimming.

I sought the best medical care and did everything I was told including “taking it easy.” The experts validated my belief that wear and tear had taken its toll on my body by telling me that knees, hips, and shoulders are not meant to be pounded on consistently. Despite the rest and reprieve I took from high impact activities, by the time I was 30, my health and fitness had dwindled and I was not able to do any of my favorite activities without pain or limitation. I was laden with feelings of guilt and remorse for the damage I had permanently done to my body and I was convinced that I had ruined my body from high impact activity…or so I thought.

Today, at the age of 34, I have a totally different mindset and a totally different body. My knees, hips, back, and shoulders are pain free. I perform high-impact activities five to six days per week such as weight lifting, running hills and long distances, and surfing. I am injury free and in the best shape of my life.

Eight years after being in a wheelchair for debilitating hip pain I move pain-free. [Photo courtesy of Maryann Berry]

Movement as Medicine

This 180 degree shift with my body started with a 180 degree shift in my mindset. I went from thinking that I had ruined my body from high impact activities to realizing that there is actually nothing wrong with these activities, and in fact, the human body is supposed to be able to move and perform at a high level regardless of age. I also learned that my chronic ailments were simply symptoms of joint misalignments and muscular imbalances, which I worked on correcting by practicing daily exercises. I have taken daily actions since 2009 to fix and heal my own body, I never skip a day of doing my posture exercises. This process has not been a passive or a fast one by any means!

I learned that the human body has the ability to heal itself, if given the chance, and I am living, breathing proof that this is possible. Today, I believe that we don’t ruin our bodies by moving, instead we ruin our bodies by not moving.

Movement is my “healthcare plan” for remaining pain and injury free. As I get older, my body continues to get younger. My range of motion and ability to function the way the human body was designed to move without limitation and with total freedom continues to expand.

Shift Your Perspective

Now for a quick mindset check assignment:

If you are suffering from chronic pain and injuries, take a moment to write down the thoughts that you tell yourself consistently every day. Ask yourself the questions: Are these thoughts empowering? Do these thoughts honor my body’s ability to heal itself the way my body is supposed to heal itself? Next, write down alternative thoughts and mindsets you could adopt that could lead to healing and getting the most benefit from the healing modalities that are available to you.

We all have the same innate abilities within ourselves to heal, and the mind is the most powerful vehicle for facilitating this process of healing within ourselves.

Ultimately, there is no substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. It is imperative that you seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or treatment and before undertaking a new health care regimen, and never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read.

You may be down, but you’re not out:

The Gift of an Injury

Headline photo courtesy of CrossFit Empirical.

The post Transform Your Mindset To Transform Your Body appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

I’m driving my car up a hill in suburban Beaverton, Oregon with my right foot, the injured side, on the gas pedal. Without warning, my repaired Achilles tendon decides to detach and fall apart. Not a tear, snap, or rip – it just lets go of itself and I immediately lose control of my ability to press the gas pedal or brake. But of course, instead of gradually slowing down, my little Mazda3 decides to accelerate up the hill, proceed over the crest, and speed right into the building on the side of the road.

Recovering from an injury is already challenging enough on its own, but when you toss in all the psychological games our minds trip us out with, it’s that much worse. Although nothing this catastrophic has happened in real life, I’m still left with five thoughts that burrow themselves into my psyche on a weekly basis.

The Top 5 Paranoid Thoughts You Will Have During Recovery

5. You can’t do daily tasks ever again without risking injury.

Walking down stairs is still a challenge, and I anticipate that even after I’m physically ready to do so, I’ll still have to mental block of thinking this activity will destroy my Achilles with even the slightest misstep.

4. You’ll never be back to 100%.

Although it may be true that my repaired tendon won’t perform the same way as if it were never ruptured, it’s way too tempting to wallow in self-defeat and accept my injury as a permanent and unassailable obstacle, rather than the opportunity to adjust myself and my training.

3. You just broke it again!

At one point not long after surgery I was utterly convinced I had ruptured my tendon again while I was beginning to walk on it. How do you handle the intense and seemingly uncontrollable flood of dark emotion that comes along with that dread deep in your gut when you are convinced that your best attempts at recovery have only made your condition worse?

2. All the worst things ever in the world will happen now all at once.

You are going to lose your job, fall into deep depression, be miserable, and life will suck from now on forever. Believing this one doesn’t last very long, but it keeps popping up here and there. Just often enough to get you down if you let it.

1. Your injury will recur without warning and without reason

In theory, I know my tendon won’t simply detach itself for no reason, but that doesn’t stop me from thinking, “Uh oh, I’ve been sitting here eating dinner for ten minutes and haven’t felt any tweaks or twinges. It must have ripped apart again on its own!”

I don’t really have any wise counsel or advice for those of you dealing with injury at the moment. I’m hoping that knowing you’re not alone will be therapeutic enough for now until you can jump back in the game again.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post Setbacks and Mind Games During Injury Recovery (Athlete Journal 4) appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

This is why training diaries are so important. They serve as bookmarks for you to go back and find the place where you should be when you return to normal training. Don’t make the mistake many make when returning and try to go back to the exact same spot you were at – chances are that you’re well behind that. I estimate that it takes four weeks to get back to where you were if you had a forced layoff for a week.

So when you look at your training diary you’re not searching for the last thing you did before your decline, but what you were doing four weeks prior. There’s a fair chance that those four weeks will offer some clues to that break too. It will show how well you were sleeping or refuelling after each session. It’ll show if you were trying for too much volume or overworking certain body parts. A well-kept training diary is a gold mine for everything that has or hasn’t worked well for you in the past. Instinctively you’ll know what was working for you, but seeing it in writing often helps to clarify and cement in your own mind what you should be doing.

This bookmark process, of going back and finding the last place you remember being, is vital to getting back on track. Many people struggle with the comeback element, often trying to go straight back to where they were. The thing about the body is that you don’t remember all the sessions it took to get to how you felt just prior to being sick or hurt. All you remember is how strong and fit you felt.

I was talking to a client today who was a state level gymnast and she was telling me about all the things she used to be able to do as a teenager. She was wondering how come she couldn’t do them now, until I asked her how many years it took her to get to her competitive peak. Well, she started at age four and was competing at her peak at sixteen, so it took twelve years of sacrifice and sweat to get to that level. It shouldn’t take twelve years to get back there, if that is her goal, as the body will always travel the same path faster the next time, but it’s still not going to happen overnight.

Like everyone else, I’ve had my own injury setbacks and have had to retrace my steps back to peak fitness. I can remember after tearing my hamstring off the bone and not being able to train for six months how weak and out of shape I felt when I started training again. It certainly made me realize how hard it is for a sedentary person to try to go from zero to hero.

These days I have a fairly set plan to get back into shape after big layoffs due to sickness or injury. The first part of the plan is exercises that don’t hurt me. It sounds silly to say it, but that list is getting smaller and smaller.

After some back issues recently I have cut even more lifts from that list and arrived at three that I do almost daily. This grease-the-groove approach to regaining my fitness seems to work best for me. I take my few exercises – single leg deadlifts, get ups, ring dips, pull ups, and kettlebell swings – and work them moderately every day. I use the volume of training to get my result, not intensity. Starting back to training intensity can knock you straight back down that wormhole again, so take your time getting some base again before you start worrying about pushing yourself hard. Then, depending on how badly off I was, I add in either walking or easy running.

It sounds so simple but I’ve found that it’s important to make sure your training is repeatable. If it’s not repeatable then you won’t be able to do enough of it to get back to where you were. Remember, your body can’t remember that it took you a few years to feel as good as you did, only how it felt to be that way. Look back in your journal, see where you were about a month before your layoff and start there. Formulate your comeback plan around sustainable and repeatable workloads. Finally, make sure to rectify any errors that may have caused the injury or illness in the first place. In many people’s cases they worked too much and recovered too little. Make sure that all sides of the performance equation balance and that your expectations match your abilities.

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post The Bookmark: How to Use Your Training Journal to Recover From Injury appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

The team of researchers in Iowa has identified a single protein, called Gadd45a, as the culprit. It orchestrates 40% of the gene activity which ultimately causes skeletal muscle to atrophy. The researchers also discovered that Gadd45a works inside the muscle cell’s nucleus and reprograms hundreds of genes to change the shape of the nucleus.¹

“We now understand a key molecular mechanism of skeletal muscle atrophy,” says Christopher Adams, associate professor of internal medicine at the University of Iowa and corresponding author on the paper published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. “This finding could help us find a therapy for treating muscle atrophy in patients, and we now know a great place to start is by reducing Gadd45a.”²

Previous research found that when skeletal muscle is stressed due to malnutrition, nerve damage, or inactivity, production of a protein called ATF4 is increased. This protein initiates muscle atrophy by activating genes, but the mechanisms were vague. The same scientists, Christopher Adams, led a team of researchers who conducted experiments to discover the ATF4 target genes. Their research revealed that ATF4 caused muscle atrophy by activating the Gadd45a gene.³

Additionally, they discovered Gadd45a affects muscles in two main ways that result in muscle atrophy:⁴

1. It instructs muscle cells to produce fewer proteins that are needed to maintain muscle.
2. It causes proteins already existing in muscle fibers to break down.

“To put this all together, it means Gadd45a is going into the muscle nucleus, and it totally changes it, so much so that the changes are visible. It’s turning genes on, and it’s turning genes off. It’s changed the cell. Gadd45a is like a central switch for muscle atrophy. If you can block it, you can conceivably stunt muscle atrophy to a large extent,” Adams said.⁵

Now that the door has been opened as to how muscle atrophy occurs, more research is needed to determine just how to stop the activation of Gadd45a. These findings are promising in the fact that researchers are on the verge of discovering just how to prevent or mitigate the effects of muscle atrophy. This not only could benefit the recovering athlete, but also the elderly and the ill.⁶

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

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While I’m not complaining, I’m also not saying it was fun. In fact, it was brutally painful, having a major impact on both my personal and professional life, but in a masochistically holistic way, I’m grateful. My friend and fitness guru Steve Edwards best sums up why I feel this way on his blog, The Straight Dope. “We think injuries are bad because they keep us from doing what we want at a given time. But they also force us to change, which, with the right outlook, is almost always a good thing. Change forces adaptation and adaptation is the key to making progress.”

While I still have plenty of rehab ahead of me, last week, I turned 42 stronger, calmer, more balanced, and with body awareness I never thought possible. I could write a book in the lessons I’ve learned, but today I’m going to try to distill them down to a few bullet points in the hopes that something might click with you if you’ve hit a rough patch.

Knowledge Up

The temptation is to sit back and let modern medicine cure you. Don’t do this. Treat your medical practitioner like a problem solving partner. The more you know about your body, the more information you can provide your doctor or physical therapist, and the better they can diagnose. Also, I’ve found the more I know about exactly what’s going on inside my body, the less it stresses me out. I don’t like feeling like a dog who’s being beaten and doesn’t know why.

The Internet is a great tool, but don’t limit research to that. Talk to people. Ask questions. For example, my massage therapist helped me immeasurably. I would ask her what was especially tight, then I would research stretches for those muscles. When she commented on how knotted my rhomboid (upper back) muscles were, I did a little homework, taped a couple tennis balls together and made a nightly ritual of rolling around on them for a little self-myofascial release. The almost instant range of motion this gave my post-op shoulder was amazing.

Multi-Basket Your Eggs

A lot of people want you to believe that their solution is the only thing that’ll relieve your pain, whether it’s a drug, an exercise, a brace, a book, or some Florida swampland. On one hand, they’re full of crap. No single cure works for everyone. On the other hand, this might be the cure that works for you in particular, so unless it’s an obvious rip-off, give it a try. It might not work, but that’s okay because then you can try something else, right?

Eventually, something will jibe, probably because of A) you did it at the right time in your recovery, and B) it fits well with other modalities you’re playing with.

If you ask me what “fixed my back,” the short answer is a therapeutic yoga practice called viniyoga. But if you’re interested in the long answer, I’d been working my core for months in a physical therapist-assigned program. Standard treatment for a spondylolysis involves avoiding lordosis, or bending backwards. Viniyoga features a variation of cobra pose that puts you in mild lordosis, but also strengthens your lower back muscles, which wasn’t happening with the traditional core work. It turns out I needed that. The rest of my trunk was already rock-solid. Adding that element brought it all home.

Furthermore, I’m inclined to push workouts hard. At that point, my core work was the only thing I could do, so I unconsciously turned gentle, restorative rehab into a nightly Crossfit-like rampage. Once I started alternating core work with yoga work, it gave my back the space to heal.

And further-furthermore, right around the time I started viniyoga, I fell madly in love. The relationship didn’t last (so if any of you ladies out there are single…), but I’m certain that the massive serotonin load it blasted into my brain helped immeasurably.

“Man Down”

One of the main pieces of advice you get when rehabbing is to “listen to your body.” Truth is, that’s much harder to do than it sounds. We live in a society that values toughness. We’re told to “man up.” Pushing through pain is seen as a quality of excellence. This may be true, but over time, I think it can distort your ability to perceive pain. Add to this whatever psychological baggage pushes you to get “six-pack abs” along with the fact that if you’re reading this, you’re probably addicted to exercise. With all that going on, how can you listen to your body when your head is shouting louder?

Admittedly, the physical pickle I got myself into was particularly sour, but it happened because I’d spent a lifetime “pushing through” pain. If it didn’t hurt, I wasn’t working hard enough. There’s merit to that, but if you’re hurt to the point that you’re in pain most of the time, stop. Your sport will still be there after you’ve healed. I know this sounds impossible, but it can be done. I had to stop surfing for a year. The first couple months were brutal, like, crying in the fetal position on the couch from exercise withdrawals brutal. But I did it. So, ask yourself, are you man (or woman) enough for that challenge?

Embrace the Pain

Hurting sucks. If you’re injured, you’re probably hurting quite a bit. And if you go under the knife, you’re going to be hurting even more. As you heal, there will be good days and bad days, but eventually, you should get better. In the meantime, the trick is not to let pain get to you. How you do this is up to you. I had a lot of luck with icing. Anytime I felt overwhelmed, I’d hit the couch with a couple of icepacks, numb the pain, and find a place of clarity. While I’m not generally a religious person, I also had some luck using a Buddhist-inspired technique embracing suffering and taking it for what it is. If you acknowledge pain and let it happen, it has less of an impact because you’re not letting rage and frustration amplify it. If you want to learn more, Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn does a great job of teaching these practices while downplaying any spiritual aspects of Buddhism that might not sit well with you.

Of course, your path might be different. It could be a question of finding a new hobby that you can focus on, surrounding yourself with friends and family for support, or making your way through the entire 7-year run of the original Mission Impossible series on Netflix (which is something I may have done but won’t commit to in writing).

If you’ve read this far, odds are you’re injured and you’re seeking an answer. Hopefully, I’ve given you some new clues. What you’re going through stinks. I’m acknowledging that from across cyberspace. But if you’ve read this far, you’re also a seeker, a problem solver. You’re the kind of person who makes things work, who can accomplish anything. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to acknowledge your injuries, get the pain under control, and slowly, patiently, reclaim your life.

Otherwise, you can go ahead and self-destruct, but I don’t recommend it.

The post The Pain Game: Four Lessons Learned While Recovering from Surgery appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

1. Preventing Common BJJ and CrossFit Injuries (Traver Boehm)

BJJ practitioners and CrossFitters both want to spend as much time training as possible. Preventing low back and neck injuries is a huge part of this equation!

2. Gymhacker: 5 Steps to Learn a New Exercise Faster Than Anyone Else (Jon Goodman)

Jon Goodman of the Personal Trainer Development Center gives 5 simple steps to hack your gym workout – workout more efficiently and get better results than anyone else you know.

3. 6 Reasons Why Coaching Kids Makes You a Better Coach (Becca Borawski)

Having been a kids coach I can safely say the experience had a profound effect on my coaching of clients of any age. Coaching kids makes you a better coach overall and here’s why.

4. Athlete Journal: Julie Warren: Why Would You Do That? (Julie Warren)

Our newest Athlete Journal – Julie Warren, ultra-endurance athlete. Ever think to yourself, “Why do they DO that?” Julie gives us her answer in her first entry and it’s not quite what you think.

5. CrossFit Wannabe – One Mom’s Fitness Dilemmas and Their Simple Solutions (Nicole Crawford)

As a mom on the hunt for something to keep me physically fit, I’ve found myself becoming a CrossFit wannabe. But is it right for me? I took a good hard look at my time, money and EXCUSES.

6. Product Review: YogaToes (Becca Borawski)

They might look a little crazy, but YogaToes actually provide a very gratifying experience for your feet! Let your toes free from your shoes and give them a little yoga.

7. Athlete Journal Entry 3: Competus Interruptus and Second Chances (Valerie Worthington)

Here’s a recap of my PanAms experience, and an explanation of “competus interruptus,” as well as what’s in store for me soon in Abu Dhabi!

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