When To Say When

[Jason Stein]

I saw this quote in a post by Mark Sisson (of Primal Blueprint fame) today and thought it was a nice way of summing up an attitude to training ... especially relevant regarding wrists and shoulders!

Furthermore, it’s the small muscles that ought to be telling us when it’s time to stop, or that we’ve hit our “max†(or even that we should take a few days off).

Bypassing that critical feedback only places a greater burden on larger muscles and joints – or calls into play unusual or unsafe “workarounds†as the body intuitively tries (without our even knowing it) to recruit fibers from other areas to perform the intended work. The result is often a biomechanical imbalance that simply transfers the load to an inappropriate muscle or area, often leading to injury.

In my own case, I re-learned this after I foolishly chose to go for a PR on the bench press some years ago. Because I have small “runners’ wrists†I would wrap my wrists tightly with the leather Velcro band that extended from my lifting gloves each time I trained heavy on the bench. This “small muscle/wrist bypass†enabled me to eventually achieve a one rep max of 275 at the age of 53 (I weighed 164). Not bad for an old skinny marathoner, but in the process I developed a rotator cuff injury and almost tore a pec muscle because I was doing more than my overall fitness was capable of handling in a balanced fashion. I should have used my wrist weakness – my weakest link at the time – as the ultimate indicator of what was prudent.

[Brendan Coad]

It seems rare for anyone to understand the importance of restraint and reasonable training load that reflects their current ability until they hurt themselves. I know I had read warnings and experiences from other people but always wanted to push harder and harder.

Maybe its just hard for people trying to figure it out on their own, I'm sure coach Sommer's kids do OK. Or maybe most people do it the right way and its just all the knuckleheads who post their experiences online 8)

[Animalonfire]

That's a very nice quote. I find that looking through peoples workout logs once they've settled into the process that there are generally PR's and smiles OR complaints about injury. Of course I stress that this is not a concrete statement. I heard of a study of soccer teams on the radio (so no great detail or recollection) that saw almost perfect correlation between non injured players and games won.

[braindx]

Yeah, in general your joints will often tell you if you have an imbalance or weakness around them by signifying through pain or weakness.

Listen to your body and lighten your load while you implement prehab/rehab protocol and learn from it.