Training Around Injuries | ETP#161

This week on Episode 162 we discuss what types of injuries and limitations we’ve personally dealt with over the years and how we’ve worked through them or around them.

TIMESTAMPS
0:00 - Life/episode updates
19:52 - Disclaimer: WE ARE NOT DOCTORS
26:50 - Knees/Quads
39:02 - Feet/Ankles
44:47 - Hamstrings
48:59 - Low Back/SI/QL
57:21 - Elbows
1:08:05 - Wrists
1:13:14 - Shoulders/Chest
1:20:44 - Upper Back 

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Transcript

0:25

All right, well first let me figure out what episode this is because I closed my, I think it's 160, is it 161? Yes. Q &A was 160, yeah. okay, yeah, I closed this. which reminds me, I'm going to pull this. Hopefully it doesn't blow up. I'm running a little bit hotter on my hardware. So I'm unplugging my external monitor just to, hopefully everything makes it through the first episode before I get greedy with my resources. Okay, here we go. What's up guys, happy Tuesday for everyone listening on the podcast platforms. Monday for those of you who catch us on YouTube, welcome to episode 161 of Eat, Train, Prosper. Today, Brian and myself are talking about training around injuries and some anecdotal experience we have on recovering from them. So as always, before we dive into today's topic, Brian, can you kick us off with some updates, please? Yeah, it's been two weeks since we've had some updates. So I'll try not to bore you guys to death here. But I had a trip to Wisconsin. I think I teased this on the prior episode before I left our annual trip. We take our family there. Kim's mom lives on a lake, which is beautiful and really kind of free and cool to be outside in nature. And... instead of boring you guys with stories about how hard it is to be on vacation and parent two kids without a lot of babysitter help, I'll instead talk to you about things that are a little more relevant to what we do here. So the thing I thought most interesting about this trip, and I also noticed this on my trip to Costa Rica back in March, is the difference in respiratory rate or efficiency and or efficiency as well as heart rate. like resting heart rate at sea level versus the elevation where I currently live. And it's like, I always forget this when I go to sea level. And then I wonder why my heart rate is so low when I wake up in the morning. And it's a matter of, you know, five or six beats, but that's pretty significant. If I wake up here at 43 and I wake or 42 and I wake up there at 37, that's the difference between like, Hey, I feel very prepared for the day of training versus I'm a little elevated. Maybe I need to dial it back a little bit type thing. Five beats is, it's not huge, but I do think it's, it's a sign of some stress within the body when you see that deviation at that level. The other thing that I find really interesting is, is respiratory rate and efficiency. If that's the word to use, it's just so much easier to breathe. I, I at elevation, you know, when I, when I lay down at night, I mouth tape. And I have to actually like work myself into this state where I can breathe very clearly through my nose in and out with the mouth tape on. And I have to do some like kind of exhale breath holds to clear my nasal pathway and stuff like that. At sea level, it's just a non -issue. Like I just naturally breathe through my nose and don't have to really think about it. So I find that also really interesting. And so it also makes me begin thinking about like longevity and and where you live. If you Google it, it says that the ideal elevation to live at for longevity and health is somewhere around where I live, like somewhere around that five to 7 ,000 foot elevation range. But literally last year, there was a podcast where Peter Attia was talking about this on one of his Q and A's. And he was saying that for every thousand feet of elevation that you live at above sea level, there's a marginal percentage decrease in longevity. And so I couldn't find any research or data on that. But he was talking about how living at elevation is a stress for the body, et cetera, et cetera. And so I think that more aligns with what I'm experiencing than with the notion that being at elevation would be better for longevity, because it does sort of feel like a stress on my body in some ways. So anyways, I just thought that was really interesting. And maybe listeners have some or input on that as well, if they've lived at different places. Kind of continuing on the theme of my trip to Wisconsin, for the first year that I've gone there in the last few years, I didn't borrow a bike, which I have always done because I thought that I would lose all my gains if I didn't bike for, you know, seven to 10 days or whatever. This time I decided not to mess with it just because biking, it takes a really long time. You have to commit a long period of time to bike to get an effective workout in compared to running. I guess running would be like the alternative. And so this trip, I just decided to run. And along with me deciding to run, I had also started reading the book called Born to Run. And this literally all just happened in the last like week and a half. I started reading the book the day we left for Wisconsin and I could not put it down. So within like a week I finished the book and that's with parenting and work and working out and like all these other things going on. But I was able to finish an entire book and anyone that knows me knows I'm not like a huge reader. I digest most of my information through my ears. I do books on tape and podcasts and things like that. So to sit down and actually read was like a once or twice a year experience for me. I really did enjoy it though. And the book was so intriguing. Like I really thought it was going to be more of a manual, like a scientific manual on how to run, but it was really much more of a, it read much more like a fiction story that was told in first person, even though it is in fact nonfiction. And it was really cool the way that he would weave in some of the running technique stuff and kind of optimal approach to running in general within the story that was being told in the book, which was just a captivating story overall. and so of course I was inspired by, by reading this and given that I had no bike and I had to run anyways, I ran. And, so one day I did intervals. Another day I did like a short jog. And then the final day in Wisconsin, one of my kids had a ear infection. So I had to, or a pained ear. I don't know if it was an infection or not, cause we didn't actually do antibiotics, but I ran to Walgreens. And my intention was I'll run to Walgreens. It's 2 .5 miles away and then I'll walk back or I'll do some intervals back or something like that. But I ran all the way to Walgreens, quickly ran in, bought the ibuprofen. It was like less than a minute. And then I turned around and I ran all the way back. So I basically did five miles with like a one minute break at the turnaround point. And that is by far the longest that I've run since I was 17. Like I remember clearly being 17 and I was actually running at that time for basketball. And I just went out running and I was like, this is great. I'll just keep running. And by the end it was six miles or something like that. So I ran five the other day and that's the second longest run I've ever done in my entire life. And it felt great. once my calves went numb, like the first, the first mile, my calves were just screaming at me and then they went numb and it was, it was fine after that. but my breathing was fine. Like I felt so good and so strong throughout the whole run. I probably could have kept going. And so I guess, man, I have like a lot to say on it, but I'll reserve some of it. Two of the lessons I took from the book that I think helped a lot. One is minimalist footwear. Like the book talks a lot about barefoot running and how if you run barefoot, it corrects all running problems. And it reflects a lot on this. era we had in the late 90s and early 2000s where all the companies were coming out with these super cushioned shoes with the big like heel lift that would allow you to essentially heel strike as you run and how that was causing so many injuries. And then they had a big section talking about how if you just take the heel away and you go barefoot or wear, you know, Vibram five fingers or something like that, that you will run properly because when you heel strike that shit hurts. And so I wear minimalist shoes, which I think is it's their zero, zero shoes. I love them, but it's kind of like something in between the two. And so I felt like that, that really helps improve my running form. But the other big thing is cadence. And so the first time I went out running and actually tracked cadence was last year. And I was running at 140, 140 steps a minute, which I thought was high. I was like, that means I'm taking over two steps a second. That's really fast. It turns out that if you're actually a good runner, you run more at like 180 steps a minute. because your feet are supposed to be directly under your body or even landing slightly behind your center of mass. When you watch most people run, they land in front of their center of mass, which essentially kind of puts the brakes on and then you have to get going again. But if you do these like teeny little pitter -pattery steps where you're just landing directly under your body and pushing off each time, that's a much more efficient stride and obviously has less impact on your joints and things like that. So that was what I was trying to instill when I did that five mile run and I got my cadence up to 160, which is the highest I've ever ran. Still a far cry from 180, but much better than 140. Either way, man, I really talked way too long about that. So my plan is to begin running one or two times a week on top of my biking. So instead of biking five times a week, I'll probably bike three and run two. And I'm kind of excited about it. I'm gonna... try to run because I've always sucked at running. I've always felt heavy and lumbering and just like I wasn't born to run. But I'd love to feel like I was born to run. So yeah, that's that's kind of part of my cardio plan going forward for the rest of the summer. And we will see how that plays out as we get into the fall and things like that. So let's kick it over to you. I know you have some awesome updates about getting back into training and stuff. And then I have a couple to finish up here. Yeah, it'd be hard for me to I've been refraining from using the term training. Right. And I would say because I've come to like to I don't want to say like gatekeep the word, but training is training. You know what I mean? And I think there's a there's a pretty clear indication if you step into a gym of people who are working out or training, you know, and I am definitely not training right now. I would say I'm doing some working out. Yesterday was four weeks post -op for me and I was doing some journaling which I try to do but I very often forget or just don't do it towards the latter end of last week and I was struggling mentally a bit which happened which you and I kind of talked about a little bit as well and I just wrote a note that like I'm going back to the gym on Monday. Monday will be four weeks post -op. I'm going back. The surgeon had told me six weeks. light training 12 weeks for like real training. Upon some further questioning, he unfortunately for him divulged that the six and 12 week comes from animal model studies, which we know in the hypertrophy and nutrition world often do not very tightly correlate to humans. So I was like, well, if some rabbit that they're cutting open heels in six weeks, I think I can do it in four. you know, with a high protein intake, collagen intake, the recovery peptides, growth hormones. I should be able to do it faster than that. Also, I'd have zero, like zero pain or discomfort for 10 to 12 days before Monday. So I'm like, I feel good. I feel, I feel literally completely normal. I'm going to go lightly test the water. So I'm doing like six to eight sets. I'm kind of going to do like a push pull legs. Everything is a goal of 20 reps. Exercises I do not have to support myself. So like yesterday was like a high cable row, upper back focus row, a unilateral pull down and some biceps. And today, you know, cable or sorry, not a cable seated chest fly, a seated chest press, seated anterior delt press machine and a single arm tricep, you know, push down. So like very, very conservative. Fortunately, two days now, zero pain, zero discomfort. So I will kind of continue that. I'll probably take tomorrow off, then do legs, seated unilateral leg extensions, seated unilateral leg curl, maybe two sets of calves. Next week I may put in some body weight lunges, but I'm going to be very conservative this first week. I get to move a little bit. My biceps are actually pretty sore, which is kind of funny. I'm actually like a good moderately sore, which I thought was funny. And I'm just excited to be able to start turning the dial slowly of returning to normalcy, which is the biggest thing for me. Dude, that's awesome. I'm really amped. I mean, I actually love that you gatekeep the word training. When you said that, I was like, yeah, that's a myth. Like you need to spread that. That's something that's almost worth like an entire Instagram post about gatekeeping the word training, because that's such a cool concept. And yeah, I love it. So yeah, really amped that you're back to lifting. I'm sure that must be a great mental relief for you. And... Like I said, when you first got injured, I couldn't imagine going four weeks without really doing anything. It's great that you were able to get in some cardio as soon as you could, but man, I depend so much on those endorphins. We actually, we had a great question in the Instagram Q &A, I think last month in May, where someone was asking about being addicted to exercise, and we had a great discussion about that. So yeah, I'm just glad for you that you're able to get back into it and get that kind of good mental juju. And that's exactly it. The kind of next little note that I had here, which is it's hard to enjoy the little things in life when the big things aren't in place. And that's literally what I've been experiencing. The first week post -op, I was able to put my positive cap on and it stayed there. The wind wasn't blowing, but the negativity winds started blowing after a bit and blew my positive cap off. Monday, Tuesday, I'm fortunate I have a lot of client work, high client communication. It fills my time. But then as I get into the latter, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, I have less client work to do depending on where the other businesses are or various amounts of responsibility that I have. And that's where the negative thoughts set in. And I just would find myself pretty miserable. And I feel kind of... guilty saying this because in various aspects, like life is wonderful. I have a great relationship. We live in Bali, which is, you know, sometimes a dream sometimes drives me absolutely fucking bonkers. You know, business is great, you know, saving money, like things are objectively very good, but I would find myself very miserable because the things that I wanted to do and progress upon, I am just physically incapable of right now. And that would really, really eat at me. So that was a big thing that I've noticed fortunately, hopefully with this week, as long as I can remain intelligent and prevent setbacks, it should be little incremental improvements over like the next two to four weeks per se. And then lastly, I had my first session in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, which is... pretty much this tube that they pressurize and pump in pure oxygen that you breathe through like a mask. And there's actually a lot of pretty decent research on it. You increase the rate of red blood cell production in the body. There's other kind of research supporting more, I don't want to call it fringe, but things that I wasn't as concerned with, but I just wanted to really increase red blood cell production for repair and in and regenerating of new tissue and that sort of thing. So it was interesting. It was killing my ears because of the pressure. But then eventually you settle in and then I ended up booking like buying five more sessions and I'll go back like twice per week until I'm back. I'm throwing every dollar that I have at this because of how much of my well -being depends on being able to progress on something that I care for. So it was an interesting... I tried to take a nap, of course. I don't do well with naps. I basically just lay there thinking about shit in this little chamber for an hour. But it was pretty interesting and hopefully after the next session or two, I might have a little bit more helpful tidbits about it. And that's it for me. That's cool. Do you know if the research on it is mostly related to like cardiovascular output or has there been some on, you know, strength training as well? I, there is some on performance improvements. I don't know whether they were resistance training based or cardiovascular based. I imagine based off of what I know about the increase in red blood cell production, it's probably cardiovascular based or maybe sport performance based. I don't think it's gonna help you deadlift more in a one rep max, but I really kind of was like, is there enough research that I can spend? It's like 18, no, it was like 40 bucks or something like that. And I was like, sure. I skimmed some abstracts. I'm like, this looks like there's enough evidence for me to throw $40 at it. I will go do that sort of thing. Well, jumping into, I guess, my final updates here, lifting's going great, biking's going great. I'm not gonna expand on that right now, but we do have new Paragon programming cycles starting on July 15th. So I guess by the time this episode comes out, they'll be like, already started one day prior, but still great time to sign up. The new cycle is like a hybrid cycle, which is perfect for. the journey that I'm going on with running and biking and combining kind of lifting with these two pursuits. So this is kind of replacing what would usually be our metabolic stage of our year of periodization. So we have our long hypertrophy phase. Then we have our strength phase where we drop the reps, take longer rest periods, kind of decrease our cardiovascular output. And then we jump into what usually is a metabolic cycle or we call it a metabolic cycle. Now we're going to be calling it a hybrid cycle and it's similar, but what we're doing with this hybrid cycle is we're actually including cardiovascular exercise into the programming, cardio of your choice. So you can run, row, bike, elliptical, whatever, whatever you prefer. And a couple of the training days are going to be a little bit shorter. So like 45 minutes of lifting with 20 to 30 minutes of cardio. And then some of the days will just be full lifting days. There might be like, depending on the program, you do maybe a full cardio day. So kind of a somewhat unique way of creating this metabolic stimulus instead of just doing it by doing circuits in the gym and doing supersets and high rep sets and things like that. You can achieve a lot of the same adaptations by actually doing cardiovascular exercise. And so I think the way I've combined cardio and metabolic training into this hypertrophy focused cycle is kind of this really cool blend of things. And if you've been considering, you know, jumping into some of my programming, maybe you haven't experienced before, or maybe you've done strength or hypertrophy cycles, but never done something similar to this. I do think this would be kind of a cool experience. And it's a six week cycle. So nice and short, get a little bit of cardio and improve your conditioning. And then we'll jump into a longer hypertrophy cycle and you'll have a better base kind of set up to be able to get more out of the hypertrophy cycle after going through the six week metabolic phase. So that starts July 15th and it's available across all of the Paragon Training Methods Physique programs. We have three day, four day, five day physique and we have the three day, four day, five day for full gym, home gym or dumbbell only. So check that out and I think we're ready to jump into the topic. All right, let's do it. So the first thing before we get into this, right, a little bit of a public disclaimer here. Brian and I are not doctors. We are not physical therapists. We are not professionals in the rehab, injury repair, et cetera field. Think of us in this as an episode of us providing our anecdotal experiences through a walk, two long histories of training. working around injuries and returning to sport from them. So just a proper disclaimer there. If you have a serious injury that you get from anything, go get, in my opinion, two opinions, right? I wouldn't just go to the first one, especially if it's an injury that typically could go one of two ways of healing. Go get your two opinions and make some informed decision from professionals there, please. With that said, Brian, let's dive in. Yeah, well said, I think that's super important. So I think the best way to open up this is probably for you and I to discuss what sort of injuries we've had before without going into the details of how we dealt with them. Just kind of put it out on the table, hey, I've dealt with this, I've dealt with that. And then the way that we're gonna organize the episode is to break it down into body parts. So we have eight or so. different areas of the body that we'll talk about and then kind of discuss how we might go about training around those injuries or and or rehabbing them. But for me, like I've talked about on prior episodes, I've been extremely lucky with serious injuries in my life. Like when we talk about broken bones, I've only broken fingers and toes, not going to go in there. Never broken anything big. And as far as we talk about tears, I tore my, my labor room. I have a slap tear in my right shoulder from 2012. we'll get into that in, in, as we get going. but it's basically asymptomatic now with, without surgery. So hopefully I can provide some value there for you guys. And then, I had, I guess you'd call it knee tendonitis during CrossFit with like a small meniscal tear that I chalked up to tendonitis until I actually got an MRI and realized it was meniscus tear. But also asymptomatic now without surgery. And then I've dealt with little bits of tendonitis issues in my elbow, elbows over the years. One wrist injury that was somewhat bad from Olympic lifting in the CrossFit days. And I've had foot injuries. Yeah, I've mentioned on the show in the past, I've had two, two foot things occur one from dropping a weight on my big toe and one from tearing my plantar fascia while running, because I didn't know how to run properly. And, and then I've pulled hamstrings and stuff like that. But but honestly, like when you look at 25 years of, of lifting 25 plus years of lifting plus athletics as a kid, I honestly feel like I've gotten away mostly scot -free. I've never had to take more than a few days, maybe up to a week off of training. Like Aaron talked about, you know, training, putting it in this bucket, gatekeeping the word training. Like I think I was always able to train through and or around these injuries. And I was never just completely left on the sideline. So, so that's my background. A lot of injuries, but mostly pretty mild. And I know you've had some kind of more serious ones. Yeah, actually, like just thinking back onto him, like I'm like, OK, I remember that one. I remember that one. And then I'm like, as you were thinking, I've I started remembering uncovering like more strange ones that I had. And I guess I'll start with that one. I played American football growing up in my freshman year of high school. I took a. Sophomore year of high school, I took a bad hit on my humerus early in the season and I got this hematoma. and my arm swelled up massive and I had to take some time off and they basically like I bruised the bone like really badly and all this blood pooled. And I think I had to miss a couple of weeks and then I had this whatever thing rigged up so to give me like an extra padding on the arm and that injury came back every single sub -subsequential year. I would take one bad hit and it would blow up again. So that was like kind of the first bigger one that was kind of a pain in the ass. I had my first slapped hair in my right shoulder when I was 17. I had that surgically repaired. That was by far my worst surgical repair of recovery. It was just, it was like 10 months until I was normal again. That one was very, very not fun. In 2013, I ruptured my Achilles doing CrossFit. You witnessed that one in person, Brian. That one was pretty not fun. That was super scary, man. That was the moment where we all questioned whether we should be rebounding box jumps or not. Some like various knee tendonitis in the years proceeding that. And then I tore my patella tendon in my left leg. I had to have that surgically repaired. And I also had a torn meniscus that the doctor was kind enough to fix while he was in there that I didn't know I had there. That one was actually a pretty minor. It was a Vertical tear I did not rupture it horizontally. It was a partial tear. So that one wasn't quite as bad That was 2017 and I just had my hernia repair, you know four weeks ago I'm sure there's probably a someone missing various small ones. Okay, I get these weird injuries I had one where I like severed the tendon in my finger and then I couldn't move my think couldn't straighten my finger for for like a couple months But besides those, no minor tendonitis, big one, golfer's elbow, tennis elbow, that sort of thing. Fortunately, no broken bones, I don't think. And I think my bone density is hopefully high enough now that I shouldn't have to worry about that in the future. Yeah, and then I'm sure we've both had, you know, a number of these things that pop up. Like we've talked about that mid -upper trap thing that used to happen when you would press overhead. So that would happen to me a decent amount during CrossFit, like once a year or so, I would end up tweaking something in my like mid to upper trap, rhomboid area. And then I've had a series of blowback stuff. throughout CrossFit and then a little post-CrossFit. And so I've been able to ameliorate most of that through the way that I train now. But I do think there was probably a little bit of cumulative damage done to QL, SI, different areas of the low back, upper glute and stuff like that through those years. So that's the basis of it. And if we kind of just begin with this list here, knees and quads is our first. section. And so like, I personally don't know if I've ever had a legit quad injury. Like I, like, I know I've never torn my quads and, I've certainly had knee things that could be a result of quads. For example, IT band syndrome can affect knees and that, I guess that's not quad is kind of like on the lateral side, but it's in that area. And then, you know, I've pulled the ductors, which are officially, I guess, part of the quads and the hamstrings, but nothing really super severe in the main, you know, for bulk muscles of the quadricep, but certainly a few, a few knee things. But maybe we'll start it over with you because you tore your patellar tendon and had that meniscal repair. So yeah, what was that like? And kind of what did you do as you went through that? Yeah. So the biggest thing there was I think I was on crutches for three weeks, something like that, maybe a little bit longer until I was, was, was load bearing. but one of the things I remembered is once I was kind of greenlit past the, Hey, you, you're probably out of the woods on, on like a spontaneous re rupture under, you know, normal thing. I was back riding the exercise bike. I had to put the seat a little bit higher, I think, because I didn't have the full kind of flexion range of motion. But that was like one of the first things that I was doing just to get some use in range of motion back. And then I really wasn't doing any. lower body at all because it was a load bearing sort of thing. So it was like no calves, no hamstrings, anything like that. And I was training strictly on machines so that I didn't have to maneuver plates around. So pretty much like pin loaded or functional trainer, those sorts of things. So just doing what I could there and fortunately like, you know, what we've talked about many times on the podcast before maintenance. Volumes and what it takes to maintain muscle over shorter periods of time. Let's call it like six weeks or less is pretty I don't want to use the term encouraging but a lower lower threshold than you would may otherwise think so so I think Fortunately in that regard I was able to cover most of my major, you know pressing and pulling patterns upper body and was able to you know, tangentially work around that while I worked on increasing range of motion, getting, you know, inflammation down. And then the bike is nice in that there is, it's concentric, but you're at least getting some tension into the quads. And then once I was able to walk doing load bearing, which helps with, you know, obviously preserving the muscle mass you do have. Yeah, I think one interesting question here, and this would apply to injuries all the way down the board here, not just to the knee, but were you training the opposite leg? Because when we look at the research, we can see that, man, I don't know the research super well, so I don't want to misquote here, but it's something like 20% benefit goes to the immobilized limb when you train the active limb. And that's coordination based. strength based and maybe even hypertrophy based. I'm not entirely sure on the last one, but I know there's certainly some neural and skill based pieces and strength that, you know, you can transfer over to, to the leg that actually isn't working. So yeah, how did you kind of implement that? If you did it all. I don't think I did. And if I'm being completely honest, I think I may have just kind of forgotten about it because I do remember after my Achilles rupture doing some unilateral leg work. And I want to say it might have been like you who was telling me about it, you know, all those years ago. I think with the knee, I potentially just forgot. And really ironically, I don't really have a lot of memory around the time following the knee injury. which is kind of strange because it really wasn't that long ago, but I really just don't remember with that. Yeah. I think when you were, when you had the Achilles one, I remember was it, it might've been that injury where we had you rowing and you were putting your bad foot on like a skateboard or something so that you could, yeah, yeah, skateboard. Yeah. So, I mean, there's so many ways that you can be creative to work around injuries like that. I also think it's probably important to touch on what you kind of alluded to when you were saying you were training upper body a lot is that it's kind of a cool opportunity to turn training to not gatekeep the term because you are still training into an upper body specialization phase. And we made a note of that in our document because I think that that really applies to any injury across the board is is how can I if I can't train this one area of my body, how can I take the volume and fatigue that I would have put there and transfer it to a different area of the body so that maybe I can do these potentially outrageous levels of volume. to stimulate growth in an area while another area is being rested and recovered. And so how did, did you feel like during that injury that that's what you did that you really kind of put extra volume into the upper body or was it just still similar volume to what you were doing and maybe just allowing your body to recover? I think with the knee, it was probably a similar amount. And then I was in like, I was spending a considerable amount of time doing like knee rehab stuff. With the knee, because it wasn't a full rupture, I was able to be load bearing like significantly faster. So I was able to get into like rehab earlier. And then I just wanted to get back to normal, wanted to get my range of motion back. So I remember being very, very proactive in doing a lot of like, my rehab drills like at the gym. So that would took up, I would say at least two sessions per week. What we're specifically focused on that. And then I think I was just more maintenance volume on the upper body training. Yeah, so as we get into my kind of experiences with knee issues, the first, well, if we go way back, just doing CrossFit used to mess my knees up and not like they were injured, but just overuse, fatigue, tendonitis type stuff. I remember in the heart of the competitive CrossFit days, I would have to struggle to get out of my car and in my car. would have to hold the roof for support or push off my leg just to lunge out of the car. I was taking hot tubs at my apartment complex every night just to kind of relieve some of that inflammation there. And it didn't stop me. I remember just going to the gym being like, okay, I guess I have to warm up for a half hour today. There'd be barbell mashing and banded distractions and light sets and all this stuff just so that I could then do cleans and do squats. like that. And I didn't question it too much because I'd always had a history of knees bothering me, like even during basketball in high school. Like everyone gets growing pains as you're a teenager. And I think that's normal for joints to hurt a little bit. But I remember even in high school having to wear knee braces and stuff like that just because the pain after two hours of practice, six days a week of pounding the floor, it was just pretty immense. So then The CrossFit days, toward the end of my competitive time in CrossFit, I want to say maybe 2015, 2016, we were doing a workout that was triples on back squat, immediately into a 50 yard sprint. And I've done that workout many a times and no issue, but one of the days I went to do it and something tweaked on my sprint and... I immediately knew something was wrong because I went to unwrap the barbell for the next rep. And I was like, Nope, can't even descend down to do that. And so as it turns out, that was where I tore my meniscus, which I never found out actually until years, years later, because, when I tore my plantar fascia, I was on a boot. I was in a boot that was about two inches high. And then my other foot was obviously set lower. And that discrepancy between the heights as I was walking and I had kids at the time. So I was kind of like having to parent and chase them around and stuff. It created, it exacerbated whatever was going on in my knee from, from years prior. So like from 2015, when I hurt my knee, the plantar fascia tear was in 2022. So we're talking like I was having no knee pain. Then I tear my plantar fascia, start walking funny. And suddenly the knee pain is like it was back in 2015 when it first happened. And so at that point, I went in to see the sports doc and we decided to do the TRP? Is that the thing I did in my knee that you've done in your shoulder before, your elbow? You're muted, you're muted. Yes, I forgot about that. I've had those numerous times on various different injuries. I just, I just probably like a whole four injuries that I just completely forgot to cover in my intro. Yes, platelet rich plasma therapy. Yes. so I did the PRP in my knee and at that time, that's when they discovered that I had the torn meniscus, which I think was from 2015. So anyways, that's my history of knee injuries. The PRP was amazing. Aside from the fact that as I've discussed on this podcast, I went out hiking on day four and he told me not to do anything for two weeks. And so I elongated my recovery period from the PRP, but once it actually settled in and worked, maybe 10 to 12 weeks later, I was, man, my knee feels amazing. Like my left knee oftentimes even feels better than my right knee and my right knee's never actually been injured. So that was my situation there. And during that time that I was recovering during PRP, because I actually think that that recovery was more dramatic and forced more changes in my training than actually tearing the meniscus itself back in 2015. Because at that time I just kind of like was a hard -headed. CrossFitter and just kind of continued working around it or through it. But in 2022 with the PRP, I actually couldn't do anything really on my legs for a long period of time. And so for the first six weeks, at least, I had to do all single leg work. And that's basically what I did, like single leg leg curls, single leg leg extensions. And then once I could start incorporating movement again, it was light single leg leg extensions with the with the bad leg. And actually, you know what? I think I could actually still do hamstring work even when I had the bum knee. So I think I was doing bilateral hamstring work and unilateral quad work. And then that was able to progress into like light sets of hack squats and then obviously heavier sets of hack squats. And then we go from there. So definitely more time than I intended to spend on knees and quads. We should probably jump on to the next one unless you have anything to add. Now, I always say that. I say no and then I start talking. The only thing I would add there is there's going to be an individual amount of variation. I have a client right now who's battling a bad knee tendonitis sort of thing. He's had multiple rounds of PRP. RDLs are a no -go. Just that stability, stabilization, he gets very sore after. Seated hamstring curls are also a no -go, but prone hamstring curls are fine. There is a pretty substantial amount of individual variability to what may exacerbate the issue or maybe perfectly fine. Yeah, that's a really good point. The lying leg curl versus seated leg curls into very interesting one, honestly, I'm kind of surprised by that, but I'm sure there's reasons for that that are beyond me at the moment. Okay, so the next one we have is kind of staying in the lower body here, feet and ankles. And I just recently during the knee one was talking about tearing my plantar fascia. And so that's one of the two injuries that I've had to my feet. As far as ankles go, I have sprained and twisted my ankles an uncountable amount of times through the years of basketball. But sprains and twists are what they are. Like it's, you know, two to four weeks and you are on crutches. And that was mostly before I ever really even lifted weights. It was more just basketball stuff. So I'm not going to focus on that, but as far as the foot injuries go, I tore my plantar fascia in 2022. I dropped a 25 pound weight on my toe in 2018. And that was actually kind of a funny story. I'll just quickly tell you because I was in the gym in San Diego, which is like the most broist bodybuilding professional IFBB type gym you've probably ever been to. And there was this girl doing a legit supplement ad wearing basically nothing. in the corner of the gym and there was like cameras around her as she was like, you know, bending over and showing her butt and like holding a thing of supplements. And I was just like so intrigued by what I was looking at that I'm going to like pull this, this 25 pound plate or the 45 pound plate. I was pulling the 45 pound plate off of the weight horn and not looking. I didn't realize there was a 25 pound plate on the outside of the 45 pound plate. So I go to pull the 45 pound off and then Next thing I know, my foot is smashed and there's a metal 25 pound plate on top of my foot. And I knew immediately it was bad. Like I went and took my shoe off and I was like, yep, my toe is smashed, like legitimately smashed. And so those two injuries were honestly probably pretty, like pretty severe, both of them. Both of them, I was in a boot. Both of them, I couldn't really do much for a number of weeks. but I do know that with both of them, I did get back to training as quickly as I could, where, where I went initially, I did unilateral training, like literally from the get -go. I think I took two days off of training legs both times, and then it was unilateral work, or bilateral for any movements that I could do bilateral. And I remember by like, that's when I smashed my toe, I remember getting into the hack squat machine at like the 10 day mark. and still being able to hack squat with both legs because I would just push through my heel. Like I would literally lift my toes off of the platform. So I would just be pushing through my heel. So you would call it like a glute dominant hack squat of sorts. And I was legitimately doing that from the get -go. I was doing RDLs from the get -go just by having my toes hanging off the edge of a plate. Like I was standing on a riser with my toes hanging off. And so as long as I wasn't pushing through my toes and the ball of my foot, I was pretty much able to do everything. It just needed to be a little bit lighter. And so that was kind of a similar situation, or that was how it went with the toe smash with the plantar fascia because it was my entire foot and not just relegated to a small part of my foot. I had much longer period of time where I could only do unilateral stuff, but it was fine. I continued training and... And in both cases, I did up the volume for my upper body. I remember in both of those situations, kind of immediately changing my split to like a push, pull, push, pull, push, pull type thing. And then just incorporating legwork, you know, at the beginning or end of sessions where I felt I wanted to or could. But basically every session was like, hey, one day I'll do push the next day, I'll do pull neck, then push, then pull because they're they're non competing muscle groups. And so you actually can kind of really amp the volume up and get a lot out of your upper body in those types of situations. So that's my foot and ankle story. How about you? Any foot and ankle stuff? I mean, I guess technically the Achilles is foot and ankle. That one. It was a little different. You're in a cast, right? So you are pretty largely safeguarded from yourself. What I remember during that time we were training in the CrossFit gym, so limited on equipment. I was doing chest to bar pull ups and dips every single day, every single, every single training session I went in. I remember not really. every obviously everyone was kind and would like help me load the barbell for benchpress but I didn't want to be a bother to people so I was like what can I do where I don't need people to help me I was like I can do pull -ups I can do dips so I ended up doing a lot Those I did once I got some confidence because I was like, if I. onto your good leg. Like you would always, I remember both legs being up and then you would always, you had the coordination and the confidence to be able to kick down onto the good leg. Yeah, but that wasn't an immediate thing until I kind of got a little bit more confident. And then I do remember riding the assault bike with my cast on, which was pretty doable in the rowing with the skateboard. So just finding ways that I could move in a meaningful capacity, because especially with the injuries in the lower body, like, let's say below the knee, they don't have wonderful blood flow. And obviously, blood flow carries nutrients, the red red blood cells for repair. So things that you can do in your body to increase the overall blood flow through tissues is going to help deliver some of those things. So just getting moving is really important, really in any facet with an injury, provided that you can do it safely. Yeah. Yeah. Good points. I don't think I have much else to add to that one. As we move on to hamstrings, we're still in the lower body here. So a lot of the recommendations that we have are going to be pretty similar across the board as far as how you can go about training with prioritizing the upper body and doing unilateral work and things like that. When it comes to hamstrings, my only hamstring injury was a couple of years ago. also running. So I tore my plantar fascia running and then I tore my hamstring or pulled my hamstring one of the bad. If I had to say, I guess I would say that I think it was a small tear given the length of healing that it was, or maybe a bad pull somewhere in between that range. But basically I was sprinting. My third step, I felt my hamstring kind of ball up and I was a mile from home. So I remember walking home and limping the whole way. I was supposed to go and take my dad on a ski trip for his birthday, like 10 or 12 days later. And I remember thinking like, I should be healed by then. Like I iced it, I slept that night, I woke up and I was like, it feels like 70 % better. Like I should be good to be able to ski in 10 or 12 days. And then it just didn't really improve that. Like it got 70 % better overnight the first night and then it just like stayed for like a really really long time and that's why I think that it was like a small tear as opposed to a pull because even like like I was packing the car to go skiing and and I and I I bent over to pick my skis up and I was like that's not okay like like I could ski if the conditions were perfect like if I knew I wasn't gonna fall I wasn't gonna have to turn and avoid some snowboarder. And I just could expect this like perfect line down without falling the entire time. I'm like, I could ski. But the reality is that skiing isn't perfect. And there's tons of adjustments that you have to make on the fly. And so I remember calling my dad super bummed and being like, yeah, dude, I really thought this hamstring was going to be healed by this point. And it wasn't. So we still went on the ski trip, but instead of skiing, we went to dinner, sat in the hot tub, did the steam shower. So we still got like a cool trip out of it, but I wasn't able to ski and I remember it being Bad enough even for weeks after the ski trip where it was really probably five or six weeks total Until I felt like I could confidently get back to doing RDLs and leg curls and things like that with the loads That that I that I knew I could use For sure leg curls came back before RDLs because of that stretch lengthening that occurs at the bottom of the RDL. So I remember doing short overloaded leg curls where I was avoiding the lengthen position. So I would stop the top of the rep where my knees were still bent and then go down and I set the machine. So it was very short overloaded. So it was much harder at the contracted position, very little tension in the, in the lengthen position there. And I didn't lean forward or anything. So literally no, no stress on the lengthening portion of the hamstring. And, and you know, the interesting part about that injury is that even though it was in my leg, like in my thigh, I was not limited at all on quad work, like not even a little bit. I remember going and doing my hack squat sets and being like, wow, I just legitimately PR'd my hack squat in the midst of having this hamstring injury where I can't really even do hamstrings. So in some ways it turned into a quad specialization cycle, which is weird because it's a lower body injury. But again, every injury is unique. And so the way that you go about kind of working around that injury really depends on. you and how you feel in that moment. So I could have made it an upper body specialization and just done a lot less on legs, but I felt really confident doing quads. And so I did a bunch of quad work and that was really effective for that time as well. So how about you? Any hamstring stuff? I actually don't think I've ever had a hamstring injury, which is pretty crazy. Because they're quite common, but I mean, yeah, I don't think I ever have. So that's one win for Aaron. Yeah, yeah. This next one I know we've both dealt with. So we have low back and then I put SI and QL as kind of the big ones that you would expect people to have injuries on in the low back. Obviously there's other musculature in the low back. It could be hip stuff like TFL that ends up kind of aggravating something in the low back. But I know that for me, The one that I have can pinpoint that I had over and over and over again chronically during the CrossFit days and then post CrossFit was QL, which is quadra loram bodice or something like that. I should probably look that up so I know the actual name, but it's something like that. And it's QL is for short. It's kind of like this soft. Fleshy area that's above the the bony part of the low back. on the side, it kind of connects in toward, the middle of the, the spine or the lower part of the spine rather. But I don't know. Like the pain usually is more on the S I'd call it like between the lateral side of your low back or the TFL glute area. And then the spine, like it's kind of somewhere in between that and that like soft fleshy area where you could reach around and kind of poke your thumb into if you wanted to. But QL for me was always the area. Like we would do high volume deadlift workouts and CrossFit. And it wouldn't always just be that low back pain where it's almost like good muscular pain. Like, yeah, it sucks you bend down, you drop your toothbrush, you're like, fuck, I gotta pick my toothbrush up. But that's still like in most cases, it's muscular pain. I'm more talking about like pulling the QL, that pain where like, if you're driving and you have to turn your body to like go look behind you. You're like, I can't actually twist at the torso. So I need to like turn my entire body at the same time. And so, you know, I always would know I had that issue where Kim would be like, you're moving very robotically as I would turn to look at something instead of just turning my torso, I had to like literally shift my entire body from the lower portion up. And those injuries always took a long time. to get better. Even post -crossfit, it used to happen to me doing RDLs because I had so much ego attached to the RDL. And like, you know, I wanted to RDL 385 for eight or 405 for four or whatever it is. And... it would be the result of not always moving horizontally with my hips, like not always moving hips back and then hips forward, but more bending over at the waist and then standing up and bending over and standing up, maybe getting a little bit of shifting in spinal position. The spine should be able to shift, but we don't want a lot of drastic shifting between, you know, arched and flexed. So those would always happen to me. And the really unfortunate thing about that is that that type of injury affects your entire lower body training. Even though it's in the low back, like you maybe think it would affect upper body too because of its placement, but I really found that if you could find stability in upper body movements, there was no issue with doing those. It was much more anything in the lower body. So hamstring stuff for with hinging was completely out for a few weeks and curling with the hamstrings was totally in. So I remember anytime that injury would occur, I would do like six to 10 sets of leg curls. And I'd just be like, Hey, like at least I'm getting some direct hamstring work in. I'm getting a bunch of leg curl stuff all good there. Quad work. Obviously you couldn't do any spinal loaded movements, but if you could get yourself into a leg press or a hack squat type type machine, I couldn't push to failure at heavy weights. because there is just like some internal shifting that occurs as in that moment, even in a back supported machine. But as long as I was doing sets of 10 to 12 plus, and maybe stopping a rep or two shy of failure, I was able to continue training quads through those moments. And then, so it would kind of turn into a bit of an upper body specialization again, just because legs weren't going as heavy, you weren't doing any hinging, there's a little bit of fatigue that you save in those situations. Yeah, I dealt with those for a number of years. And then the honest improvement that occurred was probably five years ago when I stopped attaching ego to hip hinging. It's almost as if that injury just went away. I think I've had it once in the last five years. And I already yell with much more precision now. And I make sure that it's a load that is putting the emphasis onto my glutes and hamstrings. and not into the low back as much or to the point where I would need to compromise for him there. And so, yeah, that's my experience with low back. How about you? I've had it twice. in, in, in, in, ironically, it wasn't until like, I think the first time it happened in like late 2022. And then a handful of months ago, I bent over to like, literally pick up a piece of paper off the ground and it locked up on me. It's always been at times where I was neglecting my mobility in those tissues, in the glutes, in the, in the mid back. I am, I have notorious. typically very tight spinal erectors. And this is in my unprofessional opinion, I think it has to do with like tightness in my traps and rhomboids, it kind of pulls everything up, much less slow in my glutes. I do get like, I would say like the glute med is pretty tight on me, and maybe that's the piriformis or whatever is kind of in there. But when the upper back or mid back gets tight for me is when I will feel that and if I'm gambling with, hey, I know these things are tight, but I'm gonna still push it or whatever is when it's typically bit me in the ass. So I've found that basic body mobility and maintenance using lacrosse ball, a firm hard foam roller, those sorts of things has really, really been a necessity for me as I've aged. And I've found, come to find with clients, Some people are unfortunate and get injured a little bit like earlier, but I find when clients who've been, you know, athletes and get into training, start hitting those like late twenties is where I see that starting to show up more. And it's typically that lack of body maintenance because you just haven't, there's just not enough miles or time of things to go wrong, you know, kind of in little thresholds. But, but that's something that I find. Like I have a client right now where I'm like, yeah, dude, you're like 26 now, like you're. getting to the age where you have to start taking care of some of the accumulated mileage on your body. And that's how you manage some of these things. Yeah. I think another interesting point about low back and specifically QL injuries is that they've happened to me twice from non lifting related things. both times actually picking my kids up, unprepared. So like, you know, I'm cold, I'm not warmed up. It's the middle of winter. I'm sitting on the floor and my daughter is like to my left. And she's like, pick me up dad. And instead of me like turning my body and facing her and doing it properly, like you should, I'm like, she's 28 pounds, who cares? And I like twist my torso around and go to pick her up. And then I'm like, my QL, you know? And it's like literally just as bad as it would be if I was already yelling 365 with a round back or something like that, but picking up a small child without being in position. if you're not properly warmed up and prepared for it can cause the same issue. And I know other parents out there have experienced the same because I've had a number of people DM me and say like, yeah, those like non -contact low back injuries. So yeah, it's certainly a common thing and being able to work around it and continuing to do like back supported movements, leg curls and upper body specialization would be a great way of approaching that. All right, so next one is elbows. I have a decent amount of experience with some tendonitis here, but why don't we kick it over to you to start with this one. Yeah. So, I mean, I've had a lot of, I mean, literally a golfer's elbow, which is, I always forget if golfers elbows on the inside or the outside, it's golfer. OK, tennis is on the outside, golfers is on the inside, and then we have triceps tendonitis, which you get on the on the backside. I have I get all three of those. The easiest way that I like to work around the golfers and tennis elbow is not doing pulling with fixed position like supination. or doing very, very heavy grip intensive lateral raises. So that is when I find my golfer's elbow gets really, really bad when I'm doing like a lot of dumbbell lateral raises or anything kind of pushing out laterally where I am fully gripping something. This is where the cuff comes in that works really, really wonderfully or. not doing straight supinated pull ups using like a semi supination or a D handle that allows me freedom of rotation at the wrist. So just not fixing those positions is what I find is a very manageable way to work around those. And then honestly, my favorite thing for doing some kind of like prehab rehab on those is the putting a barbell in a rack. I put one plate on one side. The other side, I attach a band to a kettlebell and then you're just doing like the rolls, the forearm roll ups, the dumbbell rolls up, the band rolls on itself. And then I reverse that. I'll go like up and down three to five times in one direction. And then if I was rolling forward to lift the dumbbell, or the lift the kettlebell, I'll roll backwards to lift it and work through that. And I mean, that's just slow controlled, eccentric and concentric loading of the forearm flexors and extensors. And that's typically why we get those kind of overuse injuries. We're doing a lot of heavy pulling which you know puts tension, you know in here under the under the my god, what's that called that? Something medial media Epi -medial epicondyle epicondyle. I think that's it. So you get a lot of like heavy, you know tension and pulling on that and something that's I don't have any research on this. It's purely anecdote when I stopped using, when I started using my VersaGrips exclusively for all pulling is when I would start getting the really bad elbow stuff because I was literally not using my gripping strength ever. In putting this, it was like a zero work on the forearm extensors or let's say flexors, but I would still be pulling a lot of that stress through the tendons as they attach on pulling. As I started doing some of that work and then stopped using the VersaGrips for everything, I would still use them on certain things that made sense. But for example, maybe like a pronated, traditional lat pull down with a straight bar, you're not so strong in that position that you're gonna fail on your forearms. I would start doing that without it and that would, I would get much less pain. when I would actually be using my gripping muscles as opposed to just using the VersaGrips for everything, which is pretty interesting. Yeah, that is interesting. It's kind of counterintuitive, I think, in some ways. Okay, so it is called epicondylitis. And I think that's in relation to that bony structure you were pointing at, but it's medial epicondylitis is golfer's elbow and lateral epicondylitis would be tennis elbow. And I've dealt with both. The tennis elbow or tricep tendonitis, I actually don't know whether they're the same or different. Like you pointed to the back and it was tricep tendonitis, but I think they both pull on the elbow similarly So I'll just kind of use them interchangeably and then golfers elbow would be more more supinated based so When I was training max ot style back in the early 2000s It would be really heavy barbell or easy bar skull crushers that would light up the back of my elbow and So I remember the key there was just to stop doing that movement. Like there really isn't much you can do in that situation aside from just stop doing the movement that bothers it. And so I remember subbing in some cable movements instead, which is a theme that I'll get back to later on when I talk about this. As far as golfer's elbow medial on the inside, that one hit me the worst of all of them. And it was right at the end of my CrossFit journey. So it was... maybe 2016 ish. And I was trying to make one last run at competing in CrossFit after I feel like my time had passed. So I was doing a lot of chest to bar pull ups, a lot of legless rope climbs. And it just got progressively worse and worse. It reached a point where I couldn't even do pull ups. I couldn't even do rope climbs. I couldn't even like pull at all. And I think I let it progress. way beyond the point that I should have just because I was being hard headed and trying to continue training. And it honestly took about nine months for it to go away. It actually took through the time that I was deciding that maybe I shouldn't compete in CrossFit anymore. Maybe I wanted to be done with CrossFit. Like as Anders and I were going through this process of selling the gym, I was still dealing with the stupid golfer's elbow. And I essentially had to stop everything that involved pulling. So I couldn't do any sort of vertical pulling. I could do some moderate weight horizontal pulling, focusing more on what the elbow is doing, moving in toward my waistline and less on actually pulling with the arm. But the thing that actually was the most responsible for me improving was actually the Voodoo Floss. So like Kelly Sturrett, And it was super big at the time with Supple Leopard and all that and the Voodoo Floss this, you guys might know it, but it's like this long kind of thick rubber bandy type thing. And the protocol that was recommended for improving this very specific issue was to wrap the thing just above the elbow, the band just above the elbow really tight, like you remember how this was. And... And then once you have it really tight, there's a few steps you go through. So the first thing you do is you take your arm and you hold it out straight so that it's parallel to the ground. And then you just bend it. You basically do like air bicep curls with your arm straight out. And because the band is on so tight, it's like legitimately almost like a tourniquet, like cutting off circulation in a sense, but it's distracting. It's breaking up a lot of the... scar tissue or inflammation that's in there. And so just that process of bicep curling with the band on was so painful. So you would do like five or 10 of those. And then we would go over to some rings, and I would hang from the rings and twist my body. So there's almost like a little bit of lateral and internal pronation and supination of the hand from a vertical orientation with the band still on my elbow. And then you get off the rings and you're screaming in pain because you've just done these two drills. And then you go and you do like 10 pushups with the band on. So now you're, you're basically attacking the inflammation and the scar tissue and stuff that's in there from all these different angles. The whole process maybe takes a minute and a half or two minutes. And then you take the band off and the amount of relief that you feel immediately is insane. Like I could legitimately go from not being able to do a single pull -up to being able to do a normal workout. just from that like two minutes of banded distraction work. And one thing we missed when we were talking about the knees is that we used to do that for the knees as well. He would wrap, you know, above and or below the knee. You'd do some air squats. You'd do some like leg extensions with the band on. And the same thing would happen to the knees. Like you would go from not being able to squat to suddenly being able to squat totally fine. And so a lot of that was acute, at least initially it was in the moment. It was like, I couldn't train and now I can train. But I think that doing it daily, long-term, actually was the primary catalyst for me healing from that elbow injury. And so I'm a huge proponent of that. Anytime anyone in my groups is injured in the elbows, that's always the recommendation that I go for. And then kind of circling back to the idea of swapping out movements for cables, that really is the best solution that I've found as I left CrossFit and went into more hypertrophy -based training. When I first left CrossFit, I was still doing almost entirely free weight movements. Like I was still doing skull crushers. I was still doing, you know, barbell curls and supinated pull -ups and things like that. And then as soon as I started subbing out all of my direct arm work from free weights to cables, all of the issues that I was dealing with in my elbows all subsided. And so that's another recommendation that I always give when people are dealing with elbow issues is to switch everything to cables. And it might not be immediate, but over the course of time, this will allow you to continue training those muscles and you should improve your injury recovery over time as well. Yeah, really well put. The whole Voodoo floss, man. There so many things are purported as like, you got like this instant relief and like, you know, nine point five out of ten times like they don't fucking work. But that thing was really like that zero point five. Like that shit fucking worked. It was wild. I wonder if it's like still heavily used in or if it's just like falling out of favor. I mean, I haven't I don't know what happened to mine. Like I haven't had it. I haven't used it in easily. seven plus years at this point, but that would you would literally go from I can't bend my arm to like, I can do pull ups now. It was really wild. It was effective. have mine. I found mine in the bottom of a bag somewhere like last year. And then I was like, this is cool. I should remember this. And then I don't know what I did with it. So it's now somewhere again, but training hypertrophy is so forgiving that I haven't needed it at all. So that's good. All right, let's see. What do we got left here? Go ahead. wrists, I'm fortunate. I've never really had any wrist issues. Some things with forearms being a little bit too like blown out, like, but that was really not really wrist, but just limitations, movement limitations by forearms being too pumped. I've been pretty fortunate there. I would say though, with some of the wrist things like let's say, pressing, right? I would imagine like the wrist being back too hard is too challenging on like pressing or something like that. Modifying, you know, using like a false grip on or like false grip with fat grips potentially on a movement that wouldn't be inherently dangerous, like not on a bench press, but maybe a chest press or something like that allows you not to have to go into like full, would this be, I don't know this position, extension of the wrist I would imagine, and this is flexion or, correct. Okay, yeah, so you don't need to be nearly as flexed. You can use more of the palm to press and then, you know, wrap your hand around the fat grip, giving you a larger surface area to press against. Gripping stuff using cuffs is going to be a very wonderful solution for anterior delt type cable stuff, lateral delt type cable stuff, which is pretty common. But fortunately, I haven't had to deal with much wrist issue. Have you, Brian? I had one wrist injury and it was during CrossFit. I went to catch a clean PR in like 2012 or 11 or something. It was a 2011, because it was right before we were competing in the NLI event. I don't know if you were part of the gym at that point. But we were doing cleans. I caught a clean. It bent my wrist back and then slid off and I tried to save it. So it was like, it was caught and then it started sliding forward and I tried to save it. and it just like immediately I felt my wrist completely give out. It was actually a pretty bad injury as far as injuries for me go over the course of my life because I couldn't clean for a number of weeks, if not months. And I remember the main event, the barbell event in the NLI for that section was a squat snatch. It was AMRAP five minutes of squat snatches at 135. And that was like a great event for me at the time, like in 2011, I was pretty good at that. And so what I was able to do was actually, I couldn't clean at all for a really long time, but over the course of a couple of weeks before the competition, I was able to snatch up to 135 if I caught it like perfectly with my wrist completely straight. Like if I caught a snatch awkwardly and my wrist bent back, I would lose it and it would hurt really bad. But because my PR was like, I don't know, 225 at the time or something, 135 was pretty manageable and I could do most of them pretty well. So I put on this like really diesel wrist wrap, one of those ones that basically keeps the wrist from moving at all. And I was able to snatch 135 for the competition. I think there was one event that I couldn't do. Very well, I think it was handstand push-ups because how am I supposed to bend my wrist back to be able to do that? But as far as working around the injury Using the wrist brace helped a lot to keep you know, the the wrist completely straight But I couldn't do a lot of upper body and The thing that I could do was was do things with neutral grip. So I did a lot of push -ups with parallettes because I could put my wrist in that perfectly straight locked position where it didn't have to extend backwards. And I was able to do a lot of pushups that way. I could do handstand pushups that way. And unfortunately, you know, there were just certain movements that I couldn't do. Like, I remember I wasn't able to bench press because no matter what, my wrist always would bend back a little bit. Like, yes, you want to keep it straight. That's the goal. But under load, it would, it would bend back. So maybe I could bench press like really light. I don't remember. But given that during those days we didn't have access to machines cause it was all CrossFit. I remember being very limited on what I could do. And so I would do the upper body stuff that I could do with parallettes. And obviously I could do, I could do pulling, I could do rows and stuff like that. I think I could do pull ups even maybe not kipping, but I did some upper body stuff, but mostly it turned into lower body specialization. I remember doing a lot of back squats. That was actually the time where I think I began to get really strong at back squats for the first time because I was always less into training legs growing up. And then even in the CrossFit days, like I knew I had to train legs, but there was never like a great impetus or reason to do it. And then as soon as this injury happened, I was like, well, fuck, what else am I supposed to do? I may as well just back squat a lot. And that's what I did. And I finally started to kind of get strong at squats. So yeah, wrist injuries are a real bummer. because they affect you both, they affect all your upper body stuff and they can affect some lower body movements depending on what you're doing. In CrossFit, it very much affected my cleans and my snatches, which were the thing that I loved at that time. And so I was really, really bummed about that. But yeah, that's my experience with wrist. We are taking way too long on this episode. So let's try to quickly move through shoulders and chest and then upper back. Upper back should be short. So shoulders and chest. I know we've both had slap tears. What's your experience with that? I think it's I've had two slapped hairs actually on the same shoulder. The second one I opted just to go to through numerous rounds of PRP to help improve. And it's pretty fine. I think it's positioning really in knowing what positions to avoid in controlling things like so much pressing. You watch people, some people have like very, very poor pressing mechanics. And I know I am insanely guilty of that in the past. and you're just putting yourself at a higher risk because of some of those pressing angles and not understanding that. So as I've gotten somewhat wiser, I guess I could say, and stopped avoiding those sorts of things, sorry, not those sorts of things, those pressing angles, I've had significantly less shoulder injuries and I've also controlled tempo, I would say, is how working through those to a pretty large degree. I do think there is something related with the upper back and the shoulder, which we can potentially touch on a little bit, or we can punt to next episode where we're bringing in a PT. Actually, it's very great timing for these episodes. But yeah, with the shoulders, I would say pressing angles, knowing what grip widths to use for your bio, what would be the proper terminology? Is that anthropometrics, biometrics? yeah, for your anthropometry, yeah. can significantly reduce the stress that you put on them in the compromising positions you may put yourself in. So you're talking about that more from like a prehab perspective more than just like, hey, when it's injured, this is something to focus on. The shoulders are really hard because if you have like an injury, I mean, you are pretty limited in upper body related stuff, even like typically it's more pressing related. But even in certain things, I've had injuries where our shoulders were like pulling bothers it really badly. Obviously in a commercial gym, lower body, you're going to be able to train pretty, pretty much exclusively depending on the positioning of the shoulder biceps and triceps may be pain free. They may not. But the shoulders are probably, unfortunately, one of the most common injuries and then one of the more complicated ones to navigate once it is injured, from my perspective at least. Yeah, no, I agree. I mean, it really does affect like the rotation, there's shoulder rotates in such a manner that it affects both pulling and pushing movements. Yeah, so my experience was, Anderson and I were doing a Olympic lifting specialization cycle in 2012 with Dave Miller. great Olympic coach in the San Diego area back in the day. And we've gone through this great cycle. We were ready to set PRs. And the first day was clean and jerk. And then the second day was snatch. And on the clean and jerk day, I caught my PR, cleaned it, went to jerk it and caught it with a soft elbow. Caught the jerk with a soft elbow and went to press out. And as soon as I went to press out the jerk, I knew something was wrong. And it just got progressively worse over the next few days. Like I knew it was bad because instead of getting better, which most injuries do, it got worse. And it actually reached a point by like day three or four where even carrying groceries, like it would feel like my arm was just dead. Like that feeling where you're just like, it's in such pain. Like it feels like it's dangling on a thread almost. And so I think a week or two in, I... man, I didn't have that much money back then, but I paid $800 to go get an MRI, which confirmed that I had a 270 degree, labrum tear or a slap tear. And, I almost wonder whether it was even worth doing the MRI because I didn't, it didn't change what, what I did as a result of it. Like, I think if you're going to go spend money on a procedure or something like that on a, on a, on a exam, then you want to have an actionable a piece of actionable recourse of if this, then that. But I got the diagnosis and I was like, well, I can't afford the surgery, so we're gonna do nothing. So great that I know that I have a slap there. But I guess what it did do is it made me less bullish on continuing to train through it and more to accept that I had to train around it, which I did. Like I couldn't snatch for a really long time, but I could clean. So the cool thing was I cleaned a ton. Like I always preferred snatching over cleaning, but this injury allowed me to get better at cleaning and do more cleans, do more pulls, like do clean pulls, do more deadlifts, things like that. Obviously I could still squat. I couldn't low bar squat because it would put my labrum in a weird position. I actually still struggle with that to this day. But the thing that helped the most in healing that one. is these band pull -aparts and banded face pulls. And I don't remember who it was that told me to do this, but someone was like, carry this band around with you. And throughout the day, 10 to 12 times a day, so literally like on the hour, every hour, do 25 banded face pulls and 25 band pull -aparts. And so I did that for like months and months and months. And then once it started feeling a little bit better, the person told me to include pass-throughs with the band. And the pass -through is, you know, the dislocates or whatever they're called. Usually we would do them with a PVC pipe, but the cool thing about the band is that it stretches. So as your mobility increases, you need to stretch it less to achieve the same amount of dislocate or whatever to get it over your head. And so those things I did like literally on repeat, like a robot for months and months and months. and just continued kind of training around it, mostly doing lower body stuff and a lot of core. I remember doing a ton of GHD sit -ups. And now it's asymptomatic. I mean, asymptomatic in the sense that there's no pain associated with it, but I am very much still limited in range of motion, which is something you would expect when you tear your labrum. So like when you do the back scratch test, I can do much more range of motion with my left arm over and very little with my right arm over. Same thing coming up from the bottom. I can get more range of motion coming up from the bottom with my left arm behind my back, then with my right arm behind my back. So I'm missing a lot of range of motion there, but it hasn't affected me at all as far as pain or function goes in daily life. And with hypertrophy training being as forgiving as it is, I just, it's, it's just a non -issue. Like I don't even think about it ever. Like this episode might be the first time I've thought about my injury in years. So I think the banded stuff has been really helpful to get blood flow in there and kind of help the process. Continuing to train with weights once it felt better to rebuild some strength and function in the tissue. All of that stuff is super positive. And so, yeah, I don't know if I have much more else to add there. I'd love to get some mobility back, but I don't think that mobility is gonna come back without a surgical procedure at some point. And I don't know, maybe later in life, it will reach a point where it does begin to bother me as we age and joints disintegrate and things like that. But at the moment, I feel great and continuing to train with no issue. And yeah, and then the final one is upper back. And so me personally, upper back, my only upper back injuries that I can speak of are tweaks. Like we talked about in the very beginning, you know, pressing overhead and getting that little kind of rhomboid mid trap thing where you go to turn your head and you can't really turn it because it pulls on it. And that's happened to me a number of times throughout the years, but much like the QL low back thing that I talked about earlier, It hasn't really happened maybe one time since I stopped CrossFit. So we're talking seven years at this point. I've had it one time, whereas during CrossFit it would happen like almost every year. How about you? Same exact thing overhead pressing. I would like lock up a rhomboid or something like that. And then more recently this year while I was training back twice per week and purposefully including a lot more of like a high elbow style row, I would tweak something like in the mid back again. And I think that was a little bit of overuse potentially maybe some overlapping, you know, not soreness, but not being fully recovered. But what I found the best to work around it was fortunately those injuries do seem to be soft tissue related. So making sure that I'm keeping the tissues, let's say, I don't want to say softened, but not like I would roll out my back like, yeah, pliable mobile. I roll out my back like very, very frequently, almost daily at points. And that significantly reduced the likelihood of something there. So I think Like I said, I just have a tendency, could be because I sit so much, you know, with work or maybe just some poor movement patterns that I have is kind of like a susceptible area to me that I've injured just numerous times. So I'm just much more cognizant now of ways to mitigate that. And that's just doing some a few, two, three minutes, you know, before I am I pulling sessions or hip hinging sessions of mobilizing those tissues. Simple. One interesting thing about that injury or that, I don't know if I call it an injury, but that tweak is that it has no limitation on my training because as miserable as it is when I'm cold, like if I'm just going about daily life and I am very aware of it, like I turn my head and like, or like I bend over or I twist in a certain way and I like get that shooting pain through my upper back. It's also very, malleable, amicable to, to just being warmed up and then being fine. And so what I've always found is like, despite the pain that I'm in during the day, when I get into the gym, if I just do like some kind of warm up for that area, whatever it is, like it can be lacrosse ball plus some band pull aparts and maybe some like light Y raises or something like that. Maybe a couple like a horizontal pulling rows at like a really lightweight, but basically as long as I warm up gradually, it has no impact on what I can actually do in the gym. So it almost starts feeling better to the point where I forget that it's there and I'll go through my whole workout and have a really quality back session. And then it'll be fine for like 30 minutes as the blood flow is still in there. And then I get cold and I'm like, yep, there it is, you know? So it's still there, it didn't get better, but I was able to train as if it was a non-issue. And so that's kind of the cool thing about those types of injuries, no matter where they occur in your body, I think. if you're self -aware and you know it's that type of injury and you can warm it up and get blood flow to it and then keep training, that's probably a good thing because it will help it heal faster the more blood flow you can get to the area. So, yeah, that's always kind of how I've approached that type of injury. Yeah, I agree. And that's the nice thing with some of those soft tissue injuries in some of those larger muscle areas, like in the back, for example. Yeah, yeah, cool. Well, I really am running late and need to get the kids to camp. So we have Kyle Baxter next week. I know you're excited about this guest. He's a PT, right? And so, yeah. Yep, it will be a very, very interesting episode of an intersection of lifting some some unconventional physio type stuff. And I think it will be a very engaging and insightful conversation. So look out for that next week. Kyle Baxter on episode one hundred sixty two. As always, guys, thank you for listening. Brian and I will see you or sorry, talk to you next week.