This video from eight years ago of me crawling across the gym floor showed up on my Facebook timeline this morning.
It may not look like much, but it was about what my left arm could do at the time. (You don’t have to look too closely to see that my elbow was stiff and my arm and shoulder looked like they’d never been exposed to hard work.)
Eight or nine weeks before that video, I’d had surgery to reattach my left biceps tendon. After surgery I spent seven weeks in a hard sling, during which time the only thing I was permitted to do with that arm was move it with the other one—passively rotating and extending it a couple times a day with the aim of getting slightly farther each week.
When I could finally completely ditch the sling, I started picking up very light objects—mostly pads of paper, coffee mugs, and water bottles—by squatting down far enough to reach whatever it was, grabbing it without extending my elbow, and standing back up. (Which is a slightly grand way of describing isometric contractions with household objects.) And a week or two after that, I started crawling.
Why crawling? Because I basically hadn’t done anything active with that arm for almost two months, and starting over with the stuff we all did before we could walk seemed like a logical way to train it to function normally again.
As you might suspect, there was a deadline driving all of this. My brother and I were headed to Italy for a StrongFirst event, with a couple of climbing days planned on either end, and our flight was scheduled to leave about thirteen weeks after surgery. I wasn’t going all the way to Italy to not climb, so I tried to walk the line between pushing and not re-injuring myself.
All of which brings me to the point of this week’s tip.
Your injury is on a clock—but the rest of you isn’t
When you get injured—whether that’s a tweak, strain, or sprain or something that requires a sling, a cast, or a surgeon—that part of you goes onto a schedule you don’t control. Tissue heals at the speed that tissue heals—and no amount of motivation or effort will speed that up (although you can certainly slow it down by eating poorly and getting too little rest).
But that doesn’t mean the rest of you needs to abide by the same schedule.
Now I’m not suggesting that we should be chasing major goals when we’re hurt. The body has only so much adaptive capability, and we should plan to get a little extra protein and sleep to provide as good a recovery environment as possible when healing from an injury.
Still, it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that one injured part means our training needs to be trimmed, scrapped, or redirected toward a different goal. But in many cases, we can often continue whatever we’re doing with a few targeted adjustments.
Two broken arms, two adjusted programs
Two particular cases of applying the targeted adjustment strategy with TNT members come to mind: a firefighter with a broken wrist and a skier with a broken humerus (upper arm). Both had been cleared† to do anything that didn’t involve the injured limb, so that’s what we did.
The firefighter continued to attend group training regularly and simply switched to doing everything—swings, (kettlebell) snatches, presses, rows, racked (front) squats, and carries—one-handed. In the case of get-ups—something that really requires the use of both hands—he switched to windmills. While not quite the same, both movements train rotational strength and shoulder stability; but the windmill only requires one hand (and can be slightly modified when “switching sides”).
The skier—a personal training client—did basically the same, although I replaced barbell back squats (which require both arms) with one-arm kettlebell front squats and temporarily dropped snatches and swings (which require some contraindicated-for-him free-arm movement) in his program.
The point is the same in both cases: we started from what each was already doing and simply made adjustments that both aligned with their goals and accounted for their temporary movement constraints. (Of course, both of them had to do some targeted rehab work after the injured limb was healed and cleared†, but they were well prepared when that time arrived, at least in part due to their ongoing training.)
This implies having a plan
The contrast between having and not having a plan when an injury occurs can be stark.
In a recent tip about adjusting a plan due to a tweaked triceps, I applied this targeted adjustment approach—although I didn’t specifically call it out for what it was—and continued to progress while I was healing.
But I ended up doing something subtly different with my biceps injury: I simply asked myself what I could do if I couldn’t lift heavy.
That probably sounds reasonable—but it’s not necessarily the same as “what’s in line with my current training while considering my constraints.” Instead of starting with what I was working toward and adjusting around the pieces that were off-limits, I only considered my body’s limitations and built the list from scratch.
What I came up with—a little time on an exercise bike, some rows and presses with my good arm, and bodyweight squats—was certainly better than doing nothing for two months. And I was able to climb in Italy, so it worked out OK. But in hindsight and based on other personal experiences since, starting earlier with activities that affect climbing—for example, farmer carries (grip), hollow holds (torso strength), and heavy rows on the good arm (pulling strength)—probably would’ve worked better.
The only explanation I can come up with for why I chose what I did is that I hadn’t (yet) been focused on prepping for the Italy trip when the injury occurred—and I defaulted to taking inventory of only my body because there wasn’t much of a plan sitting there to adjust.
Putting it into practice
If you’re currently nursing any sort of injury: Make a list of everything you had been doing prior to the injury, and cross out anything that irritates the injury or that a doctor or physical therapist has told you to not do. You can (and arguably should, in most cases) still be doing whatever remains.
As for the stuff that’s crossed out? In some cases, you might still be able to safely perform similar movements that avoid the injured area. For example, I could have done suitcase or single-leg deadlifts while holding a kettlebell on my healthy side instead of barbell deadlifts, had the latter been a priority before my biceps injury occurred. That said, choosing a good alternative is harder than it looks. Run your pick past your doctor, physical therapist, or a knowledgeable trainer before you add it to your routine.
For anyone not currently injured (which is hopefully most people reading this): Consider taking a few minutes to run through the practice above anyway. It’s a useful skill to have in your training toolkit before an injury occurs so that you miss fewer beats if one does.