Increasing muscle "injuries" and fatigue as intensity of program increases

Hello,

I've been doing the GB program for 5+ months now (Foundation, Stretches and Handstand 1/2).

I have arrived at a point where the exercises are pretty challenging, meaning, the intensity is higher, progress is slower and it takes me more time to reach mastery.

I am doing the program as coach Sommer and other moderators have recommended to me to plan it during one week namely:

I train every category one time per week and do two stretches per week.

So, one "normal" week for me is:

Upper body / Core / Legs / Handstand 1 / Handstand 2 / Front split stretch / Thoracic bridge stretch

All of the above 1x per week.

I noticed that I still make good progress, without feeling wiped out at the end of my workouts. It took some time to figure out the best way of configuring the workouts. For example, I don't do upper body and core on consecutive days, since I noticed that my upper body still has to work pretty hard when doing core. Therefor I choose to do legs inbetween these two and I combine it with, say, a front split stretch.

This went fine for a while. Lately however, I noticed that I tend to pick up small "injuries", meaning a pulled back muscle or a pulled leg muscle after the workouts (often I notice it the following day and not during workout).

I was wondering if I should adjust anything to prevent this.

A bit of background info:

I stopped doing deload weeks when the interface changed, but this means that now I'm working harder than before (I used to do deload weeks).

Also, I don't do any elaborate warm-ups before exercising, except for some rebounding.

I don't do stretching after work-out, except for when I have to do it within a FSs, MSs or TBs workout.

This didn't cause any trouble for me the past months, but perhaps the problems were slowly building up and now they're expressing themselves.

My thoughts are the following (but please correct me if I'm wrong):

Maybe reintroduce a deload week for myself.

Always do the warm-up coach recommends (the 21/15/9 or 21/15 or 15/9 systems).

After finishing a workout do a specific stretch for those muscles trained, regardless the fact that the stretches are not part of the Stretch modules.

On rest days do fascial release (with a baseball, stick, foam roller etc) or something like a massage.

I did these last two things this week and I noticed an improvement.

Your thoughts and advice on these issues would be greatly appreciated.

I think a substantial warmup is very important, particularly as you progress to more challenging work. 

How far have you progressed so far? 5 months is a good amount of time to see significant improvements but at the same time is not that long when dealing with the remodelling of connective tissue and "correcting" mobility deficits and imbalances. This is something coach puts so much emphasis on. It seems possible to me that your progress could be too fast for your own good, so to speak. 

I'm really not sure on this and am very interested in reading some of the coaches' thoughts. Have you been posting form checks along the way?

Other than that, all of your thoughts seem sensible to me; personally i always stretch after training to some degree. 

Also something to consider is what you are doing outside of workout. What does your day to day life look like? How much sleep do you get? Are you eating enough?

Really many many things to consider. And probably if you're picking up injuries consistently, you've pushed too hard, too often and usually a step back will help correct it. Retesting from PE1s with video footage to make sure everything is as it should be is really useful and i would say probably a necessity if you plan on going far with this system.

Hope I've produced something of use with that rambling.....

Max

Hey Niko,

My first suggestion is to rest the tweaks until they are completely better. You definitely don't want to keep training through those issues. Next, I suggest starting some form checks, beginning with PE1's and their iM's. If you have been progressing with any deficiencies, especially with your mobility, this could be the source of these small issues. 

A proper warmup is of course very important. I suggest some light cardio (5-10 minutes) to get your blood pumping. Then proceed with the warmup you mentioned in your post. Of course, stretching afterwards is a fantastic cooldown option so you also have the right idea with that.

You can submit the form checks to the video review link in your courses or to the appropriate sub-forums on here. 

Thanks to all for your very helpful advice. Probably it is a combination of all factors. I will start by posting form checks, starting with the basics, and I think warming-up before exercise and stretching/massage afterwards (and on rest days) will help a lot.

To be continued...

I only warm up with wrist stretches, shoulder flexion and/or extension stretches, bar hangs and T-spine stretches. For a challenging element like Russian dips I'll also do bench dips, band-assisted reps and negative reps. Haven't noticed any ill effects.