Steady State Cycle and impact of injury

[Gavin Strelitz]

Hi all,

I am working a Steady State Cycle approach and have completed 5 weeks of the cycle. However, I've picked up a slight injury in my chest and I've backed off the volume and intensity of all the exercises that are hitting this area. I'm going to physio shortly to get this properly fixed. My question is: how do I continue with the Cycle during healing and once I'm healed? Do I have to start over?

I will continue with all the exercises that are not impacting my chest.

So just looking for suggestions on the best way to proceed.

Cheers

[Blairbob]

What did you do to your chest? Does it involve pain in your sternum and breastbone? This is common for upper body strength training, including on the rings.

Was it a training injury or just too much intensity or volume?

[Gavin Strelitz]

The pain is more in my upper chest and extends into my arm-pit. It isn't near my sternum at all. It's very dull but fires with a certain range of motion. When it does fire it isn't very intense, more just annoying. But rather than train through it I'm going to go to physio and get a professional to fix it.

I'm not too sure what has caused it. It may be too much intensity, but I think it may be posture related. I'm guessing really.

[Coach Sommer]

At five weeks into a SSC, you should have noticed a significant decrease in the level of effort necessary to complete your workouts. As you did not, your training has simply been too demanding for your current physical abilities. Whether this was an issue of of the exercises being too demanding or your performing too much volume is difficult to asecertain at this time.

Your first priority is to completely heal. After that your second priority will be to establish and start a new, more appropriate SSC.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

[Gavin Strelitz]

Thanks Coach,

I've backed off and am in the process of healing myself up.

The next question is how to know what is more appropriate in terms of volume and intensity as I don't have much experience in terms of gauging this.

[Gavin Strelitz]

Right, so the physio says it's a pectoralis minor strain and will take a few weeks to heal completely. That gives me plenty of time to think about and design a new programme based on a mix of lower intensity and lower volume.

[Gavin Strelitz]

The injury feels completely healed and the physio has given me the green light.

My new SSC is designed and ready to go. I've dropped back intensity on most exercises relating to upper body work and I've dropped the volume on the whole program from 4 sets to 3 while also reducing the amount of time on handstand work from 3 and a half minutes to 2 minutes. I'll also be working the handstands in the same fashion as all the other static work ie. using half of the max time as a set. I've also dropped the air-baby work. So this is a fair reduction in work done.

My plan is to ease back into things, so for the first week back in I'll do one set of my new three set workout and assess from there. When I feel my body is ready I'll start the actual 8-10 week cycle.

The major goal for me for this SSC is to understand and ascertain my base level of strength from which I can build on slowly. The idea now is to build consistent strings of cycles without down time due to injury.

If anyone has any input or insight on this it would be greatly appreciated.