Training when injured

As some of you may know, I’ve injured the back of my upper arm a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately, the injury was worse than I initially thought and I had to change my training quite a bit. I can’t do any pulling exercises and had to stop my OAC training. Fortunately I’m able to do most pushing movements without any pain.

The most important things I learned from the injury are: Don’t focus on the things you can’t do, get creative, concentrate on other exercises you want to master and finally, DO NOT STOP MOVING!!! An injury is no excuse to get lazy. In my opinion, if the body doesn’t get external input that it needs to move daily it will get lazy too and the injury might take forever to heal.

This doesn’t mean that one should train through pain, no, but fortunately the human body has many, many muscles and joints that can be moved. ;)

Nevertheless, I still think it is of utmost importance to move the injured body part too, as long as it is not or only slightly painful (of course, the degree of pain depends on the injury, there are injuries where you shouldn’t go into pain at all).

What does that mean? Loads and loads of joint mobility and strength exercises in the ROM that is possible at the moment.

I’m going to show you an example of what I am doing:

I have been doing lots of joint mobility for many years so there was not much I could add in this regard.

Because of the fact that I can’t do pull ups without pain I tried to find a pulling exercise where I didn’t feel any pain: towel curls with a kettlebell. I never do curls and really dislike them in general (not because they are bad per se but because I simply do not enjoy them) but boy do they hit the biceps. I started with the 24 and worked up to the 32kg bell. The cool thing is, because the exercise is completely new to my body, I actually gained so muscle mass in my biceps without even trying.

I also wanted to find a way to keep the OAC groove. This is where dynamic tension comes into play. If you don’t know the system, Kung Fu master Harry Wong has a great book about it, which was even endorsed by Pavel Tsatsouline. If you have never done this kind of training and you really put all of your effort in it, be prepared to get an unbelievable pump. I usually do 5 x 3/3 reps as I want to keep the tension as high as possible. Just make sure to shake of the tension after each set.

I’m extremely curious how this kind of training will translate to my pull ups when I’m finally able to do them again. So there’s actually a cool thing about my injury, I can test the strength building value of this system J

I’m also making lots of gains with my free HSPUs. Because of the fact that I can’t do any KB ballistics, my arms regenerate much faster and I can train them every day and still stay fresh.

I’ve started to train for the planche again, using Coach Sommers method. Last time I did it, I neglected wrist pre-hab and paid for it, a mistake I won’t make again this time. At the moment I’m at the advanced tuck planche, doing 6 x 10 seconds to get one minute, 3 times a week.

And finally, leg training. As I’ve written in the past, my pistol training revolves around perfect form (at least I try to) so my focus is quality over quantity.

I’ve added one legged towel curls for my hamstrings. I got to say, this is one of the best exercises I have done for the health of my legs. The cool thing about the exercise is, that it trains both functions of the hamstrings, meaning hip extension and knee flexion, which I have neglected for a long time, resulting in a strength imbalance and minor knee pain. Since I started doing them my knees feel so much stronger, something I never achieved with swings or one-legged kb deads.

Last but not least, I’m doing quite a bit of dynamic and static flexibility training.

By the way, here’s a small tip for all of you who are into stand up martial arts: In the past, the order of exercises in my morning routine was joint mobility first, then dynamic stretching. These days, I always do my dynamic kicks first thing in the morning, followed by joint mobility. Since I started doing it my cold dynamic flexibility has increased dramatically. If you want to try it, please let me know about your experiences with it.

Summing up, I hope I was able to show that being injured doesn’t mean one can’t train or even make progress! If you really want it there’s always a way to do something, no excuses!

Take care & a happy new year to all of you!

PS: I just received the new pull up program by Dominik Feischl and Dr. Till Sukopp and I will write a review as soon as I have watched it! I greatly respect Dominik and Till and judging from their previous work, I know that this is a top quality and excellent product, every serious trainee can benefit from. Please check it out here:

http://www.klimmzuege-trainieren.com/start/