I would like to take some time to go over a few concepts concerning injury prevention. Actually, a better term for this would actually be injury "mitigation". It is important for you to understand that you are currently in a fitness program that is built to push you toward the limits of your physical capabilities. As with any method that elicits this type of response there is going to be bumps, bruises, scrapes, sprains, pulls and tears along the way. Here are a few things that I use to minimize my potential for injury and to manage injuries when they occur. As you read over these think about your own issues and start devising a maintenance plan to keep you training.
EVERYDAY-
It is extremely important for both injury prevention and power generation/performance that you identifying your own tight joints. These are the areas that you find are limiting factors on some of the basic movements like dead lift, shoulder press, and squats (back, front, and OH). Tight joints will be ones that you find have a limited range of motion and hinder your ability to demonstrate your true strength. One of the best examples of this would we watching a guy try to overhead squat with poor shoulder mobility. As he lowers into the hole his chest inclines forward and the weight he is holding overhead shifts forward as well. Since he does not have the shoulder ROM to pull the weight back over his mid-foot he is pulled forward by the weight and is not able to OHS much more than half of his body weight. The guys that I typically see in this scenario are easily strong enough to overhead squat the weight but are limited by range of motion issues (mainly in the shoulder but sometimes the hips and ankles as well).
I am not going to go into all of the tests and trick that we use to identify issues at Koda. If you do not know yours get with your local trainer to help you identify the ones you need to work on. I should take the time to say that there are a few people who have been gifted with genetic flexibility or where dancers for the past dozen years.
After you have identified your tight joints you need to develop a daily strategy to slowly correct the issue and, in doing so, avoid future impingement. I recommend setting up a quick warm-up and cool-down that includes some fascia manipulation followed by some ROM work under tension/load. "Fascia manipulation" is anything that digs into a relaxed muscle and breaks apart the sticky fascia that is holding individual muscle fiber together. When your muscles are tight the individual fibers are glued together by the fascia and resemble clumps of clay. Ideally, our muscle fibers should be supple and move past each other like silk on silk. Fascia manipulation greatly resembles a deep tissue massage and uses tools like a foam roller and lacrosse ball. "ROM work under tension/load" refers to placing the joint into its end range of motion and allowing some external force to push past it. This could be as simple as getting into a deep squat with the barbell in the racked position and allowing the weight of the BB to force a deeper squat than would be achieved by and ordinary air squat. By doing the fascia manipulation first you will allow your joints to be in a better position for the ROM work. I know that this sounds a little confusing so here is an example of what I am talking about.
Braden is a jacked, 25 year old beefcake that can squat the house and curl a ¾ ton Ford. He has huge traps and reminds all the girls in the gym of a real life Ken doll. On the surface Braden looks like a killer CrossFit competitor. That is, until you get him to squat while holding weight overhead. At that point he looks like he had never lifted before and loses all his previously mentioned sex appeal. In order to get Braden the shoulder ROM to have a respectable OHS we need to follow the 2 steps discussed earlier.
First, I will get Braden to work the muscles around his scapula by lying on the ground and rolling out with a lacrosse ball. This is the "fascia manipulation" step of the process and will create more available length in the muscles that were previously holding his scapula down (without scapula rotation the shoulder joint is not able to direct upwards and a stable overhead position is not achieved). After he worked one scapula for 2-3 minutes I would have him stand and place his arms overhead so that we could see if his treated side was able to get into a better position than his untreated side. Braden could also use the lacrosse ball to work his pecks and the roller to work his lats and t-spine as each of these will create space within the shoulder joint.
Now that Braden has finished his fascia manipulation step I would have him move on to ROM work under tension. My go-to move would be the "Dolf Stretch" (named after the famed, Kristen Dolf) using a stretch band to apply tension. We want to focus on creating good external rotation of the shoulder while adding pressure at the limits of his current ROM. Over time he will be able to see his ROM slowly increase as his overhead position gets better and better. There are other alternatives to the Dolf Stretch and I would have Braden rotate between a few of those for his warm-up and cool down.
By adding these two techniques into his warm up and cool down routine Braden begin to see marked progress in his shoulder ROM and his ability to control weight in the overhead squat. I follow this same process for my shoulders, hips, and ankles almost every day and vary the focus depending on the movements that will be in that specific workout. Devise your own warm-up and cool-down routine that targets your tight joints and you might see your chance of injury decrease while your performance increases.
-Brice
P.S. Get signed up for Steve dMiller's Olympic Lifting Seminar
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