You’re Not Fragile

All too often I hear people voice their fear of training itself in terms of perceived injury risk. Most of these concerns are based off of outdated, unsupported claims that rely solely on anecdotes and speculation. Everyone’s heard the story of their friend’s cousin who hurt her back while deadlifting, or their neighbor’s therapist who told him that lifting anything overhead is practically a death sentence, or that any kind of squat is “just bad for the knees” – all claims that are entirely unsupported both in the body of scientific literature and in the scope of normal human biomechanics.

Why is it that so many people are willing to set aside the time to train, yet waste that time training unproductively due to these illogical fears? Are we really the fragile creatures that we sometimes make ourselves out to be?

The resounding answer to the latter question, at least for the overwhelming majority of us, is “no.”

As for the former question posed, I believe I can offer some insight as to why many people get duped into a fear of injury from training, what can actually form potential injury risk, and how to be realistic about the whole process.

Disclaimer: Please note that the following material is not intended for those who are already injured and are looking for a fast track to recovery. The following recommendations are not intended for the treatment of any existing injury or disease, nor as a substitute for any kind of medical treatment. Use of the following recommendations is herein at the sole choice and risk of the reader.

“Prehab” & “Activation”

I’m not sure where these terms originally came from, but I have a feeling that they crept in from therapists treating people who are actually injured into the realm of trainers and coaches who train perfectly healthy folks.

Every week I see a new trainer displaying a new protocol they’ve developed that is supposedly imperative for you to complete before you do [insert exercise or workout]. Now, I’m not saying that warming up is inherently bad, and going through a brief routine of basic movements or a short dynamic warm-up prior to starting a workout can absolutely be helpful for a lot of trainees.

What is an issue, though, is some of these protocols taking just as long to complete as the actual workout itself, combined with the fact that many of the exercises involved are seemingly made-up and don’t have any proven evidence to enhance performance, aside from a placebo effect. It’s like trainers and coaches are racing each other to see who can come up with the next new drill to activate the [insert specific muscle] so that it’s safe for you to do any kind of exercise that requires nothing more than normal human movement.

So if you feel you need to go through a separate warm-up routine before you train, go for it. It’s usually no harm for most, but do yourself a favor and use the majority of your time in the gym for actual training. The realistic need for you to spend half an hour foam rolling your piriformis or “mobilizing” every single joint in your body is likely non-existent.

One quick side note: if you walked into the gym on your accord and without a limp, you probably don’t need to spend time “activating” anything in your lower extremities. I’ll leave that one at that.

Perceived Pathology

Another source of injury fear comes from a related fear: that we are indeed already broken and don’t realize it. Movement screens involving circus-like bodily maneuvers are continually conjured up by coaches and trainers to convince you that yes, if you can’t do all of them perfectly, then you’re already broken. Furthermore, they demand that you do a myriad of correctional maneuvers so that you don’t get more broken. Train? Nope, not until you pass what’s-his-name’s top-secret-ultra-technical assessment. Only then can you train.

Here’s the real assessment you should look for: can you execute your prescribed exercises with proper technique in a consistent manner? If so, then there’s likely no variables tied to the exercises themselves that would inherently lead to injury. Even then, there are a few normal physical conditions that I’ve noticed pseudo-pathologists love to cling to. The two most common culprits for convincing trainees that they’re broken (aside from any kind of pain) are subjective inflexibility and crepitus.

Subjective inflexibility, in this sense, refers to a perceived limited range of motion in a joint. I say “perceived” because in many cases, a trainee will have seemingly normal range of motion in a joint, but not when compared to a hyperflexible individual. Therefore, the inference is made that the “normally flexible” trainee is in fact “inflexible.” Be aware of what standard you’re being held to in terms of flexibility. Again, if you can execute the exercises properly, you’re probably doing fine in the flexibility department.

A couple more side notes: hyperflexibility is not necessarily a good thing. Being overly flexible in a joint correlates to less stability in the joint, which is something you should value greatly when that joint is bearing load. Also, having “tight” muscles should not be a medical diagnosis. Just because you have tight hip flexors or hamstrings doesn’t mean you’re debilitated. If it really bothers you, stretch and train those muscles through as full of a range of motion as you can.

As for crepitus… as much as that word sounds like the name of a medieval plague, it’s much less serious. Crepitus is the name for those unwarranted popping and crackling sounds you have in your joints while moving through normal ranges of motion, usually without any pain.

There’s some debate as to what exactly causes crepitus, but most experiences it to some degree. Here’s the take-home message I’ve gathered from the research on it: it’s probably not a big deal… at all. For example, I recently read a study in which over a hundred subjects who reported having crepitus were screened for any kind of joint pathology. Only one subject was found to have an actual objective joint pathology, while the majority of subjects didn’t even experience symptoms, and those subjects who did experience symptoms had previously been told their crepitus was a symptom of worse things to come, which makes a strong case for psychological perception of symptoms.

So yes, if you have some joints that routinely pop and crack without pain, just know that so do I… along with the majority of people on this planet. However, the majority of people on this planet are still able to move around normally without developing joint injuries or disorders.

Undertraining, Overtraining, & the Gradual Incline

So what does show to lead to injury risk? Aside from very poor technique, most of the research points to the act of biting off more than you can chew. In other words, training with loads and/or volumes that you are nowhere near adapted enough to be doing, either in a single workout or over the course of a training mesocycle.

In this circumstance, both undertraining and overtraining play a role in burning the fuse at both ends. Being undertrained will not properly prepare you to handle the kind of work that makes up  a training program that will give you significant results. Attempting to complete the physically demanding program anyway will likely leave you overtrained, as you’ve far exceeded your body’s current recovery capacity.

It’s this outrunning of your natural recovery abilities that notably increases your risk of injury from training, so it’s important to see the long-term view of training here. Aside from doing exercises with dangerous biomechanical form or just putting way too much weight on the bar, the majority of injuries from training occur when we are under-recovered and thus physically underprepared.

So how common is it to overtrain and how do you know if you’re pushing it too far? The two loudest ideologies in the whole fitness industry seem to be yelling one of two theories at everyone: you’re always overtrained and need to dedicate lots of time to special recovery methods (cue the prehab and activation gurus) or that overtraining is a myth and you just need to work harder no matter what.

As with many concepts that exist on a spectrum, I think the most accurate position is somewhere in the middle, both extremes being absurd exaggerations in either direction. Following the “constantly overtrained” group will probably keep you undertrained most of the time with your progress stalled, while being in the “never overtrained” camp will likely keep you too beat up to train effectively enough to progress.

Yet another side note (last one… I promise): something uniform to all human biology when presented with a repeated training stimulus is to accumulate training fatigue, given that enough of the training sessions present progressive overload. This is why you take a deloading period at the end of a training cycle, not after a session or two. Therefore, if you try to sound tough and claim you never need to deload, by definition, your training doesn’t actually produce the overload necessary to accumulate training fatigue. So before you start thinking you’re just tougher than everyone, maybe consider that you don’t actually train as hard as you think and are in fact undertraining.

No matter where you are in terms of training experience, all training still operates on the stress/recovery/adaptation paradigm. Over the course of time, training demands should depict a steady, gradual incline, not a zigzagging line full of peaks and valleys. Always know where you stand and be patient that in time, you’ll get where you want to be. It’s always better to take a few weeks to steadily ramp things up than to jump in headfirst, get injured, and not be able to train productively for months. Don’t sabotage future training for the sake of what your ego thought you should do today.

Negating Injury Risk

I’ll end with some main points on how to go about keeping the potential for injuries to a minimum… no magic protocols, snake oil, or copious amounts of extra time spent at the gym required.

• If you want to include a warm-up before your workouts, keep it short, simple, and specific to the exercises you’ll be doing.
• Keep your flexibility at a level where you can safely and correctly execute the exercises in your program. Hyperflexibility is not needed.
• Always use biomechanically safe technique and don’t put on a weight you have no business doing. Duh.
• Make sure your training demands follow a gradual incline over time, and that you’re doing enough to prepare you for the road ahead. Your training should build upon itself.
• Even if your recovery habits are on point, take a deload when needed, or at least at the end of your program.

Feel free to comment with any questions or thoughts; you can also contact me directly at strengthscrolls@gmail.com

As always, thanks for reading.