Training Around Pain and Injury

Muscle strain. Ligament sprain. Bone fracture. Tendon tear.

These are just a few of the unfortunate diagnoses that for any athlete. While we as Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialists strive to reduce the chances of athletes having to hear these statements, no matter how good the training and preparation for a sport, there is still a chance that an athlete will suffer some sort of injury in their playing career.

We obviously never want our athletes to have to go through the psychological, emotional and physical struggles that injury brings. However, there are ways to ensure that athletes who are working through an injury continue to get stronger as well as stay involved with their teammates. It’s important to keep the athletes training and more importantly engaged with their teammates.

I’m going to give you five ways that training can be altered for an athlete who has suffered an injury. Utilizing these will allow the athlete to continue to develop physically with their team, which will help them cope psychologically and emotionally during their recovery.

Decrease the Range of Motion

When dealing with an injury sometimes the body doesn’t want to go into specific ranges. When you do, pain signals are sent to reduce the range of motion for an exercise. Decreasing the range of motion will allow the body to gain confidence in specific movements and eventually trust the greater ranges you are looking for.

Alter the Training Tempo

Much like the suggestion above, when working with an injury, sometimes the body is overwhelmed. Moving too fast through movements causes it to shut down and evoke pain. Incorporating slower tempos such as eccentrics and isometrics will allow the body to understand the movements and positions which will allow it to feel more confident and less likely to elicit pain.

Change the Plane of Motion

When it comes to training and sport, a lot of times athletes get stuck in a single plane of motion. Usually this plane of motion is the sagittal plane and can be overworked. When dealing with an injury, sometimes changing the plane of motion to either the frontal or transverse will allow the athletes to continue to train while giving the injured area time to rest and recover.

Adjust Training Volume/Intensity

Sometimes injuries happen due to overtraining. The athlete has spent an excessive amount of time in their sport, in the weight room and then club practices, which can be too much for the body to handle. In this scenario, adjusting the training volume/intensity will allow the body more time to recover rather than always breaking itself down.

This doesn’t mean having them stop strength training altogether. It simply means cutting some sets or reducing the reps from what was previously planned. The body needs to be stimulated to grow and become stronger, however it needs adequate recovery to allow adaptations to take place.

Train the Opposite Limb

Up to this point I’ve given tips on how to train around injuries that are more muscle strain and ligament sprain based. There are those injuries that are bone breaks and tendon tears that need time to heal so the suggestions above would not be ideal.

However, even during an unfortunate break or tear the athlete can still train and be a part of the team. They simply would train all other limbs of the body and through “cross education” would actually gain strength in the injured limb. This means that when they are able to start working that limb again, they have already stimulated it to an extent and will be able to hopefully comeback even faster than if they did no training at all.

These are just a few tips to help and encourage athletes to understand that injuries happen but they don’t have to stop them from training and continuing to be a great teammate.