I’m thinking of calling this “Pain Week”. We in the exercise biz give lots of mixed messages about hurtiness, encouraging folks to go into certain kinds of pain in order to get the benefits, while cautioning about injuries. I bet most people have a hard time telling the difference between “good” pain and “bad” pain. Probably because everyone is different, and very few things in life, including pain, can be neatly divided into the good/bad categories. (FYI, I am clearly bad.)
So let’s start off by looking at the benefits of getting hurt, aside from the obvious excuse to lay on the couch and eat Snickers bars (or $40 organic chocolate made on a special cocoa farm in a developing-world country with the proceeds going to pay for a family of five to attend school and buy a goat, if you are a noble binge-r). While injuries cause lots of us dedicated exercisers to fall into a deep, dark hole of depression, there’s actually some nice opportunities to be found in a workout-wrecking boo boo. Just don’t slap me for being a Pollyanna.
When shin splints wreck your regular runs or sport: yep, it sucks to lose your cardio or get sidelined from basketball or whatever. But this, my friend, is your golden opportunity to cross train. We all know we should do it, but many of us are loathe to branch out and do something different. Get on a bike, try rowing, even resolve to learn a different sport. I can assure you that the only things that get me into the always-cold, highly chlorinated pool are 1) training for an event, 2) hot lifeguards, and 3) an injury that forces me to do something no-impact.
If a shoulder or elbow injury destroys your weight training: time to learn the fine art of movement modification. First get a good sense of the kinds of movements you can and cannot do, and then go from there. You might have to forgo overhead lifts or pull-ups, but discover that push-ups still work. Perhaps you have to give up all big arm movements, but get a real chance to work on things like grip strength or lower back power. If you have one good arm, use that, but be careful not to get all lopsided with your one giant, ripped gun.
Knees blow out, and all hell breaks loose. Yes, you never know how precious your knees are until they go, but now you get to focus on upper body and core strength. You can still break a good sweat doing things that require no knees, like bench pressing. Get top-heavy, why doncha?
An injury slows you down, stresses you out, and forces you to exercise extreme caution. It’s hard not to go balls-out when you really want to, but in fitness, slow can be a really good thing. Try doing lots of isometric holds, gently increasing your range of motion, and developing perfect form. My last surgery made me “work the negative” on squats (slow on the way down) which has made me the squat monster (I’ll put that on a t-shirt). Working the negative is great for strength- one easy way to think about it is generally, you go slow and hard on the part of the movement you normally don’t think about (the eccentric contraction) like the “uncurl” part of a bicep curl. If you weren’t hurt you’d probably keep on keeping on, but now that you are forced to crawl, you’ll end up stronger and better for it. Take this tortoise time and kick hare-y ass! Yeah.
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