What if addressing your mindset could transform your physical recovery journey? This episode promises to equip you with insights and strategies that could change the way you approach rehabilitation forever. We are thrilled to welcome Megan Pomerensky, a certified athletic therapist and Functional Strength and Vinyasa Yoga Instructor, who shares her inspiring journey from a dedicated dancer to a holistic rehab advocate. Megan’s personal story of overcoming a career-ending injury and navigating traditional healthcare sheds light on the importance of a holistic approach to healing, where mental and physical aspects are equally emphasized.
For athletes, especially those in strength sports like weightlifting and powerlifting, managing repetitive movement injuries is crucial. We discuss practical strategies for handling those inevitable niggles and inflammations, focusing on setting realistic expectations and building mental resilience. You'll learn to assess pain levels with our suggested scale, helping you to determine when to push through discomfort and when to scale back. Megan and I also delve into the significance of continuing modified training during recovery, providing real-life examples and advice on how to maintain progress and prevent setbacks.
Overcoming the mental hurdles of the re-injury cycle is another key topic we tackle. Fear of movement after an injury can be paralyzing, but Megan and I explore methods like gradual exposure and progressive loading to rebuild confidence. We discuss techniques such as starting with pain-free movements, using isometric exercises, and finding alternative positions to achieve similar ranges of motion. This episode is packed with valuable tips and strategies to help you optimize your athletic performance while effectively managing and preventing injuries. Plus, stay tuned for a special segment on shoulder mobility in deep squats, setting the stage for an exciting live Movement Flow session.
This episode is part of our recovery series. Tune up your body with three of the best in the bizz, Megan Pomarensky, Jeremy McCann and Amie Farmer and be sure to hit subscribe and give them a follow. Megan Jeremy Amie
What if addressing your mindset could transform your physical recovery journey? This episode promises to equip you with insights and strategies that could change the way you approach rehabilitation forever. We are thrilled to welcome Megan Pomerensky, a certified athletic therapist and Functional Strength and Vinyasa Yoga Instructor, who shares her inspiring journey from a dedicated dancer to a holistic rehab advocate. Megan’s personal story of overcoming a career-ending injury and navigating traditional healthcare sheds light on the importance of a holistic approach to healing, where mental and physical aspects are equally emphasized.
For athletes, especially those in strength sports like weightlifting and powerlifting, managing repetitive movement injuries is crucial. We discuss practical strategies for handling those inevitable niggles and inflammations, focusing on setting realistic expectations and building mental resilience. You'll learn to assess pain levels with our suggested scale, helping you to determine when to push through discomfort and when to scale back. Megan and I also delve into the significance of continuing modified training during recovery, providing real-life examples and advice on how to maintain progress and prevent setbacks.
Overcoming the mental hurdles of the re-injury cycle is another key topic we tackle. Fear of movement after an injury can be paralyzing, but Megan and I explore methods like gradual exposure and progressive loading to rebuild confidence. We discuss techniques such as starting with pain-free movements, using isometric exercises, and finding alternative positions to achieve similar ranges of motion. This episode is packed with valuable tips and strategies to help you optimize your athletic performance while effectively managing and preventing injuries. Plus, stay tuned for a special segment on shoulder mobility in deep squats, setting the stage for an exciting live Movement Flow session.
This episode is part of our recovery series. Tune up your body with three of the best in the bizz, Megan Pomarensky, Jeremy McCann and Amie Farmer and be sure to hit subscribe and give them a follow. Megan Jeremy Amie
Welcome to Uplift you, creating strong bodies and mind. Get ready to power up your day with practical strength training tools, inspiring stories and build resilience of body and mind. It's time to uplift you, together with your host, leanne Knox.
Speaker 2:
Okay, so welcome to this special episode that I'm so excited to bring to you today. It's part of a three-part series that we're going to be doing and it's no doubt, something that's going to be dear to your heart if you are a strength athlete, an Olympic weightlifting competitor, a powerlifting competitor or someone that's just really interested in keeping yourself, your body healthy really interested in keeping yourself your body healthy and you train very often. So the person that's coming into our community today has a lot of experience. Her name is Megan Pomerensky, or Megan if you come from Canada, who holds a master's in rehabilitation science. She is a certified athletic therapist in Canada, certified Functional Strength and Vinyasa Yoga Instructor. Megan empowers people to break free from the pain and re-injury cycle, and what goes along with that is also the anxiety of that pain and re-injury, and she loves to help people move and live freely again through a pain rehab holistic approach. So welcome to Uplift you and our Australian audience, megan.
Speaker 1:
Hi, thank you so much.
Speaker 2:
It's great to have you here and I have it on good authority that us Aussies may pronounce your name a little bit incorrectly. I'm just going to keep doing the North Queensland Bogan way and call you Megan for the entire podcast.
Speaker 1:
I appreciate it. I'll embody my Australian weightlifting even more.
Speaker 2:
So, Megan, the first thing I would like to hone in on for our community and our audience is how did you become so passionate about what you're doing helping people, moving them out of the pain cycle and back towards health and performance? So if you could share a little bit of your story with us and with the audience, that would be fantastic.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, it was a really interesting journey that I had through my own sports athletic background. I was a really competitive high level dancer for most of my life teenage years, growing up and then experienced what turned out to be a career ending injury when I was 17,. 18 and went through the traditional health care cycle of things of get some MRIs, go to physical therapy, do a little bit of rehab, and things were never really getting better. But everyone kept telling me I was fine, push through things. And the more I pushed, the more scared I got. I eventually ended up hurting myself to the point where I needed surgery and ended up having a second revision surgery after that because my rehab was going off track and I was really scared of everything.
Speaker 1:
And at that same time I was in school for athletic therapy, which up here in Canada it's a four-year degree where you specialize in injury, rehab of muscle, bone, joint, nerve, concussion, head injuries, all that kind of stuff and everything that I was living was so far off from what the textbooks were saying should have been happening and none of it made sense. And that made me more confused in my own personal journey and in my education and the more confused and scared that I got, the more I started withdrawing from activity and holding back in all other aspects of my life because I was just so scared of hurting myself again and I realized that nobody was addressing that side of things for the longest time of what I was going through. It was just like, well, you're fine, you know what your surgery worked and hurt doesn't equal harm, so just push through it, you'll be fine. And keep going, keep going.
Speaker 1:
And I tried and it got to a point where I was just wearing myself down and eventually broke down until I found the right therapist and mentor to work with who started dealing with my beliefs and my mindset around my injuries and my rehab and helped me get from being completely terrified to do like an exercise on all fours, like having a straight up panic attack on the ground, like just all fours trying to do an arm leg extension bird dog thing.
Speaker 1:
And I was sweating and panicking and freaking out and he was like you know, this might not be about your hip anymore, hey, and I was sweating and panicking and freaking out and he was like you know, this might not be about your hip anymore, hey, and I was just like what are you talking about and having him walk me through that journey as the patient completely changed the trajectory of how I started to view rehab and injuries in my clinical practice. And here we are, 10 years later where I've really turned into more of the holistic approach with things and working from like inside out, from like tissue healing, but also from like your heart and rehabbing your journey and getting through that pain.
Speaker 2:
That's really interesting that you say that you were, you know, on doing a bird dog and if some of the audience don't know what a bird dog is, it's a back strengthening exercise and when you say you were having an anxiety attack doing that, what exactly were you scared of? Were you scared of the pain that you were going to feel?
Speaker 1:
I was scared of any of the symptoms that I was feeling, because I was equating every single sensation with something being wrong, and I think part of that was just nervousness of ruining the surgery that I had, and some of it because I was so used to numbing everything with pain medications and anxiety medications and other things that I lost track of what was common or expected and was just catastrophizing every sensation that I felt. And then the fear and anxiety of not being able to do something again. I was starting to have those moments go through my head too. You were starting to have what, sorry, I was starting to have the realization like what if I can't do something ever again, and if this hurts now and this is so easy, how am I ever going to do something more complex or more weight bearing, or you know, I'm never going to squat again, I'm never going to be able to do a deadlift again if I can't even do this right now.
Speaker 2:
Okay, before you were and during that time, what, what um level of performance were you were you at um, you know, before you sustained that injury, what, how often were you training and how often were you competing? And, yeah, what level of performance were you at then?
Speaker 1:
I was at a very high level. I was dancing up to 15 to 20 hours a week like in the studio training and then we didn't really do a lot of traditional strength training outside of that. At that time I was doing some yoga a couple of times a week as well and competing a few times a year part of the Royal Academy of Dance ballet exam. So it was very structured, high, technical, skilled performance.
Speaker 2:
Okay. So I know that a lot of our audience are people that either are competing or performing at a level where they need to be training at least four or five times a week, where they need to be training at least four or five times a week, and a lot of our audience are also coaches that coach people who want to get results. And I have a really interesting question for you Do you believe there is such a thing as pain-free performance when you are an athlete that who trains four to five times a week or even more, do you believe that you can train pain-free at a higher level where you're competing?
Speaker 1:
I think that it might depend on what your definition of pain is. Depend on what your definition of pain is right. If we're talking debilitating pain, I think it is possible to train without that, but I think there's always going to be some discomfort, and I know that was something I had a hard time distinguishing between at first and I used to think, oh, I'm uncomfortable, this doesn't feel good. Therefore, that is the exact same thing as pain and damage and there is something wrong and I don't think that's realistic. I think if you are training at a high level, high intensity, high frequency, there is absolutely going to be discomfort and that's okay. So I think the nuance is what is pain.
Speaker 2:
Yes, so that that really is a very important question for our audience, because when you are doing repetitive movements, doesn't matter what sport it is, but obviously I'm here, um, you know, my, my world and my audience's world really is in the strength world. So they are doing things like squats, bench press, snatch clean, jerk deadlifts and all of the variations of those movements repetitively, like it's the same movement over and over. And the reason I ask this question is because, from my experience as an athlete and from my experience as a coach, there is not one person that I've coached that is not dealing with some sort of pain somewhere in their body from doing repetitive movements. Because, let's face it, human beings weren't designed to use the same movements over and over again to get their physical activity. If you look back, you know hunters and gatherers we would have been doing a wide variety of activities, but now that we're in the gym, we hone it down into very repetitive activities.
Speaker 2:
And when I started weightlifting as a master at 40 years old, I remember listening to all the other masters and they said oh, you know, I've had knee surgery, shoulders back, the whole thing, and I've worked through it, but you know, I've had this injury and that injury and I remember saying to them I just want to be able to train and compete without being injured.
Speaker 2:
And they said to me that's not going to happen, leanne, we guarantee you you're going to get injured. And 12 years on into my strength journey, they're absolutely correct, but injured in a way that I believe it's about managing small, like things get inflamed because of repetitive movements. So what would be and this is one of the biggest things that we deal with, that I hear from my audience day in, day out it's not the big injuries, because when you get the big injuries, like when you snap a tendon, when you tear it completely off the bone or you dislocate your elbow right, that is a big injury that needs to be rehabbed to get back into performance. It's the small niggles that create people the most. What, as you described, anxiety and that story that you're talking about, that, oh, I feel pain, it's got to be bad and it's just going to keep going. So how do you, as a therapist approach that type of, you know, re-injury and fear of re-injury you know, re injury and fear of re-injury.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I'm in a very unique position too with my clinical practice that I get to work with the quote unquote injury prevention side of things with people Like you don't have to be injured to come see me, and in those situations I find it's all about expectations and recognizing that accidents and injuries are going to happen. So it's more about what can we do to mitigate them and make you as strong as possible and make you as resilient as possible from the physical side of it, in terms of like tissue quality in your muscles and tendons, and also from the mental resilience as well. To get through these moments and I think a lot of the times people, like you said, have this expectation that everything's going to be like sunshine and rainbows and it's going to feel amazing all of the time. And then they get over-medicalized by people too, where you have a lot of physios and ATs and doctors who are like, oh my God, stop everything right off the bat. So now we're getting so many mixed messages.
Speaker 1:
So the key comes from expectations right from the beginning and providing that information to our athletes of like this is going to feel uncomfortable and you can prepare for that and you can practice for that. And then, when it does happen and you're in that situation that is physically or mentally stressful, looking for certain keys of is it staying the same or is it getting better, or is it progressively getting worse? Right, Because if that sensation is really really ramping up in intensity, you may need to scale back at that point, partly physically and also partly just so your nervous system doesn't go haywire and cause other problems. But if that discomfort is staying the same and most of the time you're also going to find it even gets better the time- you're also going to find it even gets better.
Speaker 2:
So, um, when, at what? At what point, uh, do you, do you um suggest, you know, when you say, is that discomfort getting better? At what? What point can an athlete feel like confident to be able to move through that, like confident to be able to move through that bit of discomfort and know that they're not doing more damage? Because this is the ultimate question in performance, if we accept that we are going to have discomfort in common areas and in lifting, it is often the supraspinatus, it's the shoulders, it's the two tendons in the shoulders because there's a lot of overhead work and a lot of rotator cuff strain, and then obviously it's the knees, because they're doing deep squats and a lot of deep squats, and the lower back, the um, lower back, um. So at what point, um, could you say, what do you have? Like a, like a bit of a protocol, an assessment protocol, so that athletes can go righty-o Well, like, for example, my physio says to me don't let it get any more than a three out of 10.
Speaker 1:
The only danger I see in that is that some people's three out of 10 might be another person's seven. Yeah, exactly, it's all relative. I tend to give people ranges when it comes to that and think about it like a one to three out of 10 is a green light. You're likely safe to continue going on as you are If you're in that four to seven range. That's that caution yellow light of let's be really mindful and tune into our body and see what we're feeling and doing. And then that eight, nine, 10 of sharp, acute, stabby, burny type pain. That's when we got to scale back.
Speaker 1:
And then I think we also have to look at the context of what's happening in these situations and like the specific situation that that athlete is in like, is this discomfort starting because of poor technique, where they are truly doing something that is unsafe, and like impinging and jamming their shoulder because they don't have the mobility? Maybe we don't push through that Compared to. Is it just they haven't warmed up enough? Did they have a bad sleep the night before? Did they eat really crappy food the past few days? How can we address all those other factors to help them then work through it? Because there's that difference right of this is tissue damage and injury, like something actually happened, versus, oh, this is creeping up slowly there in the background. So I look at all of that. And then the last thing that I found really helpful with a lot of my athletes is teaching them the difference between joint pain and muscle pain.
Speaker 2:
I think that creeping up in the background is teaching them the difference between.
Speaker 1:
Can you repeat that last thing, that you said, please Teaching them the difference between joint pain and, like muscle, soft tissue pain.
Speaker 1:
That's where I find a lot of people get mixed up. So if we talk about the shoulder, for example, and you're reaching overhead, if the pain is more at that top or front part of the shoulder, like the angle that's closing or getting smaller, that's probably coming angle. It's likely going to be soft tissue and something that would get better with you know, some foam rolling or get the lacrosse ball in there, do some more of your mobility drills before you go lift. So that difference of open versus closing angle applies to almost any joint in the body. So bottom of a deep squat is your ankle pinching at the front and a really hard end feel of like ew that feels like it's just stuck and running out of room, versus at that back achilles calf stretch. Those are two very, very different things and if we can get specific on that, when the athlete's experiencing pain, that tends to then lead into okay, this is safer to work into versus this is not.
Speaker 2:
Yes, yeah, and when you say safe, that brings to mind for me what we were talking about before, in when people have already experienced that pain, you know, many times, and they've tried rehabbing it, and they've maybe gone backwards, and then they've tried rehabbing it again and then it gets a little bit better. That's what you call the re-injury pain cycle. How do you approach the mental part to that? Because a lot of people will at some point start avoiding the movement, the very movements that actually might help them strengthen that part, because of that, just because they're sick of feeling that pain and they're thinking this is just going to be a lifelong pain. For me now, um, for example, I had years ago, about five years ago, uh, six years ago, when I finished off my um, I was there goes my dogs.
Speaker 2:
I'm really sorry, it's okay they're excited it's one of the guests really sorry coming on to the show. One of the guests who are coming into the into the podcast has a lot so, um, so years ago I had bicep bicep tendonitis from lots of overhead work, but done with my shoulder rolled forward. Okay, I can look back and see that now, but at the time I I couldn't see that because I was new to the sport and coaching yourself. Um, when you don't have a coach beside you constantly watching your movement patterns, then that's one of the dangers of not having someone monitoring you. So, anyway, I had this bicep tendonitis and I put it up with it for two years because I was not stopping lifting, I was not stopping all those gains that I'd spent, you know, three years trying to get a 95-kilo jerk and I just pushed through the pain. So that range of motion where just that, you know that, uh, halfway up, basically that's where the tendons are most um, stressed, um, that's, that's what I would avoid. So I avoided anything with my elbow out to the side, because that made it. It actually made it worse.
Speaker 2:
And then when I worked with a physio, she said well, are you doing dumbbell presses with your elbow out to actually strengthen that tendon. And I said absolutely not, because that hurts way too much. And so I I was avoiding um, loading that tendon all together. And then she said to me let's start doing don't go over three out of 10, but let's start doing some heavier dumbbell presses. And after a couple of months I thought this is magic. It's actually worked, because I had avoided what I started, avoiding what hurt completely and therefore I didn't allow any. I didn't allow that tendon to be loaded and to be strengthened. So how do you approach, you know, that fear of that movement? And here comes our guest that you've all had to listen to five minutes of barking before. So worth it. So yeah, going back to that question, megan, how do you approach people's fear of going into the pain? But that, the pain that you?
Speaker 1:
know that may actually help them get, you know, actually rehab, what they've been avoiding. We have to load it right. Like injury is always going to happen if some sort of load exceeds the capacity of what that tissue or structure is able to do. So if we're not loading it to raise that capacity, that is nine times out of 10 where re-injury happens. Because now we have this really dense scar tissue, crappy tissue quality tendon that has never been exposed to a movement or load. And then you're like oh yeah, I'm going to stay down in neutral and only train here, and then all of a sudden I go overhead. Your body's not used to it, so it's going to get hurt again.
Speaker 1:
So it comes back to that gradual exposure to that position. And I find the best starting point for that is coming from a place of showing the athlete or client first of all how strong they actually are, because a lot of times when we're out of the gym or we're out of our sport, we can forget what we're actually truly capable of. So going through some of the other things first that they're really good at and that don't cause any pain at all, or maybe even in a completely separate body part, but start training somewhere else, just so we're getting back into that mindset of like I am strong and capable and I can do things. And then in my situation I'll go through and test their shoulder in all of the different positions and once I know what their injury is, I know what's going to be easy for them and what's hard. So I test all the really easy things first, again to help them build some confidence and see like, okay, yeah, I'm good, I'm strong.
Speaker 1:
And once we've gone through that physical exam and they see, okay, I'm good, I can do all of these things, then we can almost regress that movement a little bit and maybe do it laying on the ground first or put it unloaded or use a resistance band or just manipulate their body against gravity so they're going through the motion in a partial range and then flipping it around, because half the time they don't even realize that. Um, like shoulder flexion for example, it can be really scary to start lifting a weight up overhead, but a lot of the times we can go into a downward dog in yoga and that feels amazing. And if you took a picture of them in downward dog, they're in full shoulder flexion and there's a load going through their arm. It's just closed chain from the ground, and those types of exercises start to help build the confidence mentally where then we can go, put a weight overhead and in some of the other cases where there is maybe higher levels of fear, that's where I find it really helpful to go into isometric exercises so we find the painful range back off, you know 10, 15 degrees, and then do isometric holds, or maybe I resist their movement in all the different directions, and then we don't get an inflammatory response nearly the same way with isometric exercises.
Speaker 1:
So you can often get to the point of muscle soreness and still feeling like I got a good workout, but without creating all that inflammation that tends to ramp up pain. And you also get this carryover effect right Of. You're not only getting strong in this 90 degree angle, you're, you have a window of probably 10 to 20 degrees each way. So then gradually we can work our way up into that position again.
Speaker 2:
So you you, can you actually focus on what the athlete can do, rather than what they can't do?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, that's the key to it, and I think that's where a lot of therapists go off track, because we're really good at finding things that are wrong with people, and like dysfunctional movement patterns, and standing there with our little clipboards being like, oh, your scapula winged two degrees too soon or your collarbone rotated five extra degrees. And if that's what I focus on, that's what the client's going to focus on, and if I keep asking them, oh, does that hurt? They're going to be like, yeah, it should hurt. So I'm going to say it hurts, and then they back off. So it's a dynamic between the two of us, and if I get scared, they're going to be scared. So that's why I start with the easy stuff that I know they're good at, and then we can both move along that path together.
Speaker 2:
Right? Yes, that's a fantastic point, because the words that we're using as coaches and therapists are very important in pointing the person's mind into what they're trying to achieve. And pointing the person's mind into what they're trying to achieve. So if you're constantly using words, like you know, does that movement hurt? Then they're looking for the hurt instead of asking a question does that feel good, do you feel strong there? And it's empowering the athlete to do what they can do to allow the you know that whatever the injured part of their body is time to to regenerate.
Speaker 2:
And I like to use the analogy of.
Speaker 2:
You know, a lot of people come to me for weight loss as well, and especially after they've had babies, babies and I say to people you know that it takes nine months to you know, for the baby to grow, and during that nine months your body goes through a lot of changes.
Speaker 2:
So therefore, it's going to take at least nine months for you at least to get back to where you were. So can you briefly talk to us about the concept of time in injuries? And I know that in our world, in the strength world, the majority of injuries are tendon-based and we know that tendons heal slower than muscles and soft tissue. So how long would you be looking at like if someone had a obviously not torn, but quite a lot of information and we'll just stay with the shoulder for now. In in the shoulder where they were in quite a bit of pain through inflammation, how long would you expect and I know it's. You can't give absolutes but, um, you know what. What is your common time to heal? Supra-spinatus is definitely the most common one for us, where it's in quite a bit of pain.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, that's the most common one that I see in most athletes as a whole, and it's 9 to 12 months, I think, for the true tendon healing to happen. When we're going through that physiological healing process and then also the rebuilding and remodeling process as well, and there's a lot of false hope and expectations out there from I think social media plays a big role in that too of like let's bulletproof your shoulder in three magic exercises and you're going to feel amazing. And yeah, that's true short term because you're having an effect on the nervous system. But strength building takes so much time, Like when we look at deadlifting. How long does it take to add five or 10 pounds to a deadlift when you're already at a really strong, like max capacity? It takes months. Like we're talking one pound at a time sometimes. And that same principle applies to tendons. It is slow and step-by-step and people don't like receiving that news and I think therapists also don't like giving that news either. It goes both ways.
Speaker 2:
And and and, like we said before, as as a coach, as a strength coach, the first thing I do when someone has some sort of any type of injury is I immediately focus on the things that they can do, because a lot of people, especially if they're new to training a lot, they go well, I'll just stop training and I'll rest. That is like such a common reaction and that's actually what their doctors tell them as well. This morning I had a lady in the gym and the stenographer is it the person that did the ultrasound said to her don't do any bench press for two months. That was his, and it wasn't his place anyway to give her that advice. But he did say to her do not do any bench press for two months. And I'd already you know, we'd already been working on the strengthening, you know, the the tendon and the rotator cuff, and doing all of that work with her. And I said well, so the bench that we've been doing, which is a modified bench, has that been hurting you, rhonda? And she said no, and I said so, why would you stop doing something that has no pain in the movement? So yeah, it's finding.
Speaker 2:
Do you agree that it's finding the things that people can really feel good about and feel like I'm still making progress, and when my shoulder knee back, whatever it is, when it is better or to a point where I can go back to that movement that I really want to do, then I'll still have the strength to be able to step back into that and not be set back a 12 months, because it's a numbers game in the strength world. You know, when I got injured I might have been able to do a 65-kilo snatch right. I hurt my shoulder. I've had to step back for two or three or four months Straight away. My head's going. I'm going to come back and I'm only going to be able to do a 50 kilo snatch. And is it going to take me 12 months to get back to my 65 kilo snatch? So how do you approach? What advice do you give to people when? Or firstly, firstly, have you heard those type of stories in your work and and what would you say to those people?
Speaker 1:
yeah, I see that often where that spiral just starts very, very quickly and it's a very quick funnel down to. For often some athletes like hitting rock bottom of mentally not being able to bounce back from that because of that fear yeah, how long is it going to take or what's it going to feel like? And there's also a big struggle, I find with people where they're so worried about creating more imbalances by training the uninjured side or training the rest of the body that it's like, oh, I don't want my other side to get that much stronger than my injured side. So therefore we should just stop doing everything and forget about the fact of, like the hormonal change that you get with strength training that's going to help healing and the neurological crossover training effect is going to help the injured side heal faster if you're still training the good side. So the more you withdraw, now you're creating the mental barrier of getting back into it. You're decreasing the hormonal changes that you have and overall, like cardiorespiratory strength as well, and then just the exposure to movement, your body is going to feel stiff and yucky because you're so used to doing a lot and now you're doing nothing that you create all these other cascades of problems.
Speaker 1:
So having that conversation in those terms, I think, is very powerful for the athlete to recognize that you can still do a lot of things and even though it's indirect, it is still going to help the injured shoulder and it's only going to make you healthier and once that injury heals, you're going to notice that gap closing a lot quicker, like we don't have to worry about training the good side and like raising the ceiling that much more because the injured side sorry, the non-injured side is going to be slower progress anyways, because you're already at such a high level that that gap is going to close. So if we can have that conversation, I think that sets the tone more than anything else, because it's just a lack of understanding from, like you said, doctors and therapists who are like, oh, just do nothing and rest because that's all they know and they're not experts in this like the strength coaches and athletic therapists are. So in.
Speaker 2:
In summary, um, because we, we, I know with there's there's so much more that we can talk about with um, this whole um injury re-injury process and the stories that go along with that and the fears that go along with that. Because we're talking on this particular podcast about performance, especially about people that are really concerned about their performance. They want results, they're competing, they don't want to take time off. So, in summary, what would be if someone had that low level niggling pain, because unfortunately, that's the thing that they think they can push through? What would be your top three strategies for those particular lifters, athletes, people that are training at a high level, um to to ensure that they're going to get the most out of their performance long term? What would, what would you recommend if they, for example, started feeling quite regularly let's go to the knee Every time they squat. They're in a five or six out of 10 pain what would be your top three things for them to take note of and take action on?
Speaker 1:
Number one would be to have the conversation with the coach about technique and training volume overall and make sure that we're in a reasonable load volume management phase of things and that their technique is solid, because that reassurance is going to go a long, long way in the rehab side and just making sure that they are truly being safe. And then the second thing would be to look at recovery strategies. Are you putting yourself in a position to recover from your workouts? Are you getting good sleep? Are you drinking water? Are you eating well to prepare your body to take on these loads and then recover from it? And then, from a movement rehab perspective, are we training in a way to create muscle balance where we need to, in the joints, and to minimize excess force and then to raise that capacity more and more? I think if you do those three things, you'll be in the best position possible.
Speaker 2:
Okay.
Speaker 2:
So that's a great place to leave this particular episode and I do have more questions from our guests, from our community, which we can address in the next episode, because at the very outset of this podcast I didn't get to tell the audience that Megan has been very kind to offer her other speciality of a movement flow class, where we get to focus on the mobility and the movement that will help our joints function optimally in our strength world, and that particular session is about to start, in about 10 or 15 minutes.
Speaker 2:
So in order to get that underway, we're going to leave this episode here and we're definitely going to continue it with some more audience questions. I've got one of my very good clients that's got a question about her knee and she'll be in the movement flow class. Perfect, so that'll be interesting. So thank you so much, megan, and if you have a look in my show notes, you'll be able to find Megan's services. You'll be able to see Megan, you can quickly tell us where people can find you, so that they, so that you can, if they want to explore further some of the concepts that you've told our audience today, they know where to look.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I'd love that. I work with athletes all around the world online and you can find me on Instagram at Megan Pomerensky, or my website is wwwMeganPomerenskycom, and we've got one-on-one sessions available. I also have an online mobility subscription available where you can train all these really fun end range positions and get stronger in your deep squat stronger in your deep squat or can you use your shoulders while you're stretching your hips at the same time and all of these fun things, as well as some more traditional yoga and energy-based sound healing yoga as well. So it's all super fun and I'd love to have you there yeah, that's fantastic, megan.
Speaker 2:
I don't think I can use my shoulders while I'm in a deep squat, so we'll we're gonna find out that sounds a bit we're gonna find out.
Speaker 2:
In about 20 minutes, I think I might be joining the online. Um, yes, yeah, we are. So thank you so much for your time and for those for the audience. If you would like a recording of the movement flow session that we're out to do with us, just get in contact with me and I will email it to you and you can see Megan in action and myself and Kate in action too. So thank you, megan, and we'll connect on Zoom in a minute for our Movement Flow section. Very excited, thank you so much. Thank you so much, thank you.
