S05E167: Preventing Injuries in CrossFit: Strategies for Sustainable Fitness Journey
Can you truly prevent injuries in high-intensity fitness programs like CrossFit, or is it just a part of the game? Join coaches David Syvertsen @davesy85 and Sam Rhee @bergencosmetic as they offer indispensable advice on navigating the physical and mental challenges of fitness injuries. From categorizing injuries by severity to sharing personal anecdotes, we explore how to maintain your training momentum even when setbacks occur. Discover the power of community support and adaptive strategies to keep your fitness journey on track, no matter the obstacles.
Transitioning into CrossFit from other sports? Your athletic history could either be your greatest asset or your biggest challenge. We discuss the importance of understanding past sports experiences and accumulated injuries, emphasizing how they can impact your current performance. Effective programming and coaching are crucial, and we dissect the differences between good and bad gyms, underscoring the need for a cautious yet positive approach in maintaining a safe environment for all fitness levels. With insights into how CrossFit programming has evolved, we aim to enlighten athletes on the best practices for injury prevention.
Don't underestimate the significance of mobility, warm-ups, and recovery in your fitness routine. Prioritizing these elements can make the difference between a sustainable fitness journey and the risk of recurring injuries. We offer practical advice on integrating mobility into your lifestyle and adjusting workout intensity based on recovery and lifestyle factors. By redefining self-worth beyond gym performance, athletes can achieve long-term fitness success without compromising health. Join us for an engaging discussion that promises to transform your approach to training and recovery.
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S05E167: Preventing Injuries in CrossFit: Strategies for Sustainable Fitness Journey
TRANSCRIPT
Speaker Names
David SyverstenHost
00:05
Hey everybody, welcome to the Herd Fit Podcast with Dr Sam Rhee and myself, coach David Syvertson. This podcast is aimed at helping anyone and everyone looking to enhance their healthy lifestyle through fitness, nutrition and, most importantly, mindset. All right, welcome back to the Herd Fit Podcast. I am Coach David Syardson. I'm here with my co-host, dr and Coach Sam Rhee, and we're going to talk about a topic today that just often gets brought up in CrossFit gyms. From a coaching perspective, from an athlete perspective, just any interaction, any conversation, even outside of CrossFit. This is a very popular conversation and it centers around injuries and, unfortunately, really high intensity, diverse programs that put your bodies into a lot of different positions with really high intensity levels. In addition to people that love to work out four, five, six, seven days a week, in addition to people that love to work out four, five, six, seven days a week, in some cases twice a day, injury talk, injury situations are going to be brought up no-transcript. These are conversations that you need to have with yourself and with others, and what we're going to talk about we're not just going to talk about injuries today. We're going to kind of dive into the root cause of an injury and what we can do to prevent them as much as possible.
01:47
Even at the highest level of physical performance pro athletes injuries are rampant all over the place. Some are accident-based. You know a freak thing we had an athlete fall off the pull-up bar a couple months ago. Some are a lot of soft tissue injuries, like you're simply just running down a field and you pull a hamstring, even though you are primed and ready to go and you take care of yourself. Injuries happen. They're inevitable if you're going to be doing anything that is physically challenging. So I want to kind of get to some of the root causes of why they happen and try to get you guys thinking about being proactive rather than reactive. And try to get you guys thinking about being proactive rather than reactive, meaning don't wait until you get an injury and then try to react to it. It's what can we do to prevent them from occurring? Sam, you've been nicked up over the years, right, and if you're going to stay into the game until 10, 20 years, you're going to be nicked up again Mentally what do injuries do to you?
Sam RheeCo-host
02:47
Yeah, Injuries are challenging, but you also have to accept that they're part of life, Right? Literally, if you live, if you exercise, you're going to get injured. There's no way avoiding it unless you just sit on the couch all day. Right, You've been nicked up. I've been nicked up. I mean how many injuries probably double digits, you would say over your career in.
David SyverstenHost
03:05
CrossFit. How about this? Before we get into the mental side, let's define an injury. Okay, because I do. There's definitely I want to say there's different degrees to injuries, right, injuries that need a surgery. We know athletes that have had that Yep Shoulders, knees, backs, hips, injuries that. So that would be like that would say to me like a level one. If we're going to relate this to our programming, that's like the extreme.
03:30
You had an injury that was so bad you had to have a surgery. A level two surgery, which I think is most common in CrossFit, is something that really hurts when you do a certain thing. You know you got an MRI, you got it looked at, nothing's torn, nothing's ruptured, but it still causes a lot of pain, there's a lot of inflammation and it prevents you from doing things pain-free. In some cases that makes you not do it. The other case is, hey, it just hurts a lot while I do it. And then the level three, like a scaled back, would be like it bothers me, but you know what, it kind of feels better as I go. So like that to me that there's like three stages of an injury. You always want to avoid that.
04:12
Level one, the injury based one, the surgery based one in terms of treatment. But if you want to say how many times you, I've never had a surgery because across it. So let's say, level two, level three is basically where I've been. Level two are the ones I don't want to deal with because it impacts training. Level three is, you know, I'll kind of manage, I would say like those level twos where, like, something really got strained or really got hurt and I had to change something up.
04:30
In my 12 years across it, I would say it's been over a dozen times. Yeah, maybe even two dozen. To be honest, it's pretty typical, it is. Yeah. So on average, every five to six months, yeah, that's a lot, it is a lot, but it's normal, it is normal. I want to dive into before the roots of why this is such a big deal and why I think we need to talk about it. Because, from my perspective as a coach, as an athlete, the mental grind of dealing with it gets worse and worse and worse, to the point where you will start questioning whether or not you want to do it anymore. Because would some sacrifice 15% of fitness if it meant they got injured a lot less frequently? That's something a lot of us need to think about and I want to get your pick your brain on when you do, nick, something up shoulder. You know you didn't do kipping pull-ups and kipping toes bar for a long time what does that mentally do to you?
Sam RheeCo-host
05:26
It's disappointing, obviously, when you don't feel like you're working to your capability. It's tough, it weighs down on you, especially if you feel competitive and you look at a particular workout and you have to change things up. It can definitely make you feel like you're not operating at your full capacity. Before I forget, the person who fell down off the pull-up bar is doing totally fine. Nothing of any lasting issue there. And then the other thing is that these are all anecdotal and we're not acting in a medical provider way, and if you have anything that you're really concerned about, you got to go talk to an expert and make sure you get care, whomever provider that you want. But absolutely, I've gotten nicked up a bunch of times shoulder, back, wrist, elbow where it's taken time the way you've mentioned, like a level two, three, and you feel like you're out of the game, right, you feel excluded almost, and that's what I see from my coaching perspective.
David SyverstenHost
06:26
When someone is banged up and then you really need to change up workouts for an extended period of time not a week or two, like a month, two months they start to feel disconnected from the rest of the gym, even though we all as a community do our best to say no, no, you're still with us. You're showing up. That is a big deal, that is a huge victory for you. But us, you're showing up, that is a big deal, that is a huge victory for you. But, yes, you're scaling everything. Every time you go above your head, you're not doing it, we're giving you a different movement. You get really bored with the same movements and you feel like you're not working hard, even though you are, because you're doing something different and when that happens often enough, it gets you to the point where you don't want to come anymore. That alarm goes off early in the morning and you're a little less motivated to get up and go Because you know it's no longer going to be this fulfilling. I feel like I'm winning conversation that we've been having when I go to the gym, and in some cases I do think athletes need to accept that is not the purpose of going to the gym. It's not always about having fun and feeling like you're winning. We definitely want that to be involved at some point. But we bring this up because injury goes far beyond your elbow hurting. I think there's a mental impact on any injury level one, level two, level three that if it keeps happening over and over again, I think it's going to lead some down a path that you just you're eventually going to quit and you're going to go in a different direction and in some cases maybe you'll view that as a positive. In my opinion it's going to turn into a negative. Either now or down the road You're going to lose a lot of fitness. I think you're going to lose a lot of yourself and a lot of the benefits that come from doing a program like this. So we want to prevent problems from happening as best we can. And I mean, look like, as Sam said, we're not going to give medical advice here. It's anecdotal. I mean, if you're listening to the Herd Fit podcast for medical advice, that's on you, that's right. But I want to now kind of dive into the meat of this podcast and finding why they happen.
08:26
Why do injuries happen? If you're new to CrossFit, you've probably have read or heard someone say oh my God, that program's too intense, you're going to get hurt at some point. And if you make a lot of mistakes you will get hurt at some point. I would say, if you do CrossFit for 10 years, you will get hurt at some point. I would say that about marathon run training. I would say that about high rocks training. I would say that about intense F45 or Orange Theory or bootcamp or bodybuilding or paddle. Yeah, anything that you do with a lot of physical effort over and over again will eventually lead to some sort of injury. Even pickleball, yeah, absolutely so.
09:04
Let's consider your history. Okay, so let's really try to think about yourself. Only, as we dive through this podcast, try not to think about anyone else or any story. Think about yourself, your history.
09:16
We did an episode a long time ago on training history and how much it impacts someone's upside and downside within the sport.
09:24
If you're someone that played a lot of sports growing up, past high school, into college in some cases pro right you probably trained really hard for a really long time, while most college students go and every now and they go to the gym and they go out and party and have fun. They're not grinding their shoulders and knees and backs like a lot of athletes are and for my anecdotal position as a coach, I have seen the injuries pop up those level two, level threes and in some cases level one to the former athletes that did something beyond little league baseball and little league football. Touch on that a little bit and how much you think an athlete's history of what they did to their bodies leading up to now will impact and want something they should be aware of as they approach the intense stage of crossfit I would say pre-existing conditions are the biggest factor in terms of what I see, also as a coach for level one type injuries where they've had chronic knee issues, they've had knee surgeries or shoulder surgeries or some other sports related trauma.
Sam RheeCo-host
10:30
All our ex-football players have some. They never got out unscathed. Everybody has something in that category, and so when you come into CrossFit a lot of times, your body what is the stereotype? Your body's cashing checks or no, your mind is cashing checks your body can't pay for, or whatever it is it is right. So, uh, I think our ex-athletes are some of the most, uh, the people I'm most mindful of in terms of watching what they do and mitigating risk of injury.
David SyverstenHost
11:07
The, the. Yeah, there's a catch-22 with being an athlete growing up, I do think there's a stronger base to work from. I've noticed that, like they get, they get to a higher level usually because they're just working. They're starting from a further up the ladder. Um, they understand competitive nature, long-term training, doing ABC. So at the end of the year you get to X, Y, Z like they. They get that mentally. But the. The other side of it is they're beat up. They're just there's more scar tissue to deal with, there's a there's a little extra like micro tears and the tendons and the ligaments and the rotator cuffs. And because of how much they did. And if you're an athlete or a former athlete coming into CrossFit right now, or you've been in a long time, you're trying to figure out what am I doing wrong? That that is something that should be considered. It might not always be the answer, but your training history and sport history undoubtedly needs to be considered when you're trying to prevent certain injuries to certain joints and body parts and muscle groups.
Sam RheeCo-host
12:04
Do you remember the NFL athlete who came here for a while, the ex-NFL guy? Yeah, he had tremendous strength in some capacities but his function was so limited because of all of the injuries that he had sustained during his career. It was crazy, and that's and that's a the highest level.
David SyverstenHost
12:19
That's a pro athlete. You know a lot of our athletes are hey, I played in high school and college cool and wasn't at the highest level either, which is still, you know, it's still work, it's still grind. But now these guys go to the nfl. Now you're talking about a whole different level of competition and physical contact and and and. That guy was a big boy, cool, he was huge like that.
12:36
It's really hard for for some bigger guys to to do this at a high level without getting nicked up every now and then. Uh, the next thing I want you to consider when it comes to injuries why do your injuries happen? Is to be honest, with you coming from a programmer and a coach programming and coaching that. That is a huge part of the bad rap some CrossFits will get. That does lead into macro level CrossFit. For those that have never done it before, they don't know a good gym from a bad gym. They just know CrossFit and they know a lot of people that got hurt at a bad gym with a bad program Then that could be something that just tarnishes that reputation for a long time. Now, fast forward to you like you are in the gym. You've been doing this a couple weeks or you've been doing this a few years.
13:22
There is definitely a part in injuries where programming and coaching comes into play, and it's hard because there's not an a clear, objective, scientific answer to what is too much programming, what is too much, what is not enough? How do you balance the people that want to get really good at this and really push and they do everything outside the gym correctly and then also the people just here for the hour. That's the only time they think about health and fitness. That that's where you could say this is probably not the best program for everyone in the world, because there's just such a gap in people that truly understand what it takes to do this at a high level versus the people that just want to show up and work hard. If you want to dive into or be critical of your gym for programming and coaching, what would you tell someone, sam, because right now you're a little biased about us, right? But again, in the sake of being humble, it does our coaching at Bison, does our programming at Bison lead to injury and we could be honest about it?
Sam RheeCo-host
14:27
I would say less than most other programs I've seen. So, having seen some other programming, seen what people do, I think a lot of CrossFit programming is set up that you can't really work out every day. You really might need to only go three days a week or maybe four, and I think programming overall in CrossFit has gotten better over the years. Think programming overall in CrossFit has gotten better over the years. People aren't being silly like programming heavy cleans three days in a row or squat snatching two days, two, three days in a row, and I do.
15:06
After seeing what you've programmed over the past 10 years, I do know how deliberate you are in terms of how much volume, what body parts are being moved in what sequence over the week. That being said, there's no doubt I'm a Thursday coach. I coach on Thursday, yep. And I do the Monday, tuesday, wednesday workouts most weeks Yep. And so when I come in on Thursday as the coach and then I also see my athletes, who, many of them, are very durable, they are extremely dedicated to their fitness, and they come in Monday, tuesday, wednesday and I see them on Thursday. They're beat up Like it's a lot, it's a lot of volume and I think, as a coach, when you put it on the coach, I've almost gone too much the other way, where I'm not just like rah, rah, go max effort and like kill yourself right, blow out your peck or something now, and I've gotten the feedback that I'm almost like watch out, yeah, don't do this, this is dangerous.
16:04
Like, uh-oh, like watch out for this wad, like. And so now I'm trying to figure out as a coach, how to balance, like, my concern for people on a Thursday with the enthusiasm and positivity of this is also a great workout, right. But just like be aware about a couple of things in this workout that you might want to. You know, see, in terms of you know if your back is acting up, you know there's a lot of flexion extension, or you know shoulder movement like blah, blah, blah. So it's a skill and a talent to be able to program well and to coach athletes to get the most out of that workout but not run the risk of overdoing it.
David SyverstenHost
16:46
Yeah, note, I think if you're an athlete and you're listening to this and you don't know how to look at a month worth of programming and say I don't know if this is too much, right, like I know I've had people say like hey, any workout with over 150 reps is too much. I'm like, well, you can't use that. Like what if the workout's air squats and pushups? Like no one's going to come to the gym and do 75 air squats, 75 pushups and go home? That's not enough. I'm sorry, that's not enough. So you can't use objective numbers because there's different loads and different movements and different capacities with each of them. But what you could do as an athlete is talk to the programmer and I would have a conversation with any member about this at any time. Well, not any time, don't text me at like 10 pm but I would have this conversation with anyone. And it is why? Why this workout? Why did you set this one up this way? Now, you might not like the answer, but I will have an answer if, if you ask a programmer, hey, why are we doing this on monday but this on thursday? Um, why are we doing clean and jerks on tuesday and then again on friday. Why are we doing uh lunges on tuesday and step ups on Thursday? Like you can ask and there should be an answer. Now, the answer is not always a scientific algorithm. It can be like hey, if this is too much, you should probably take one of these days off. Example, when I send out programming on Sundays and there are some weeks that flow better than others, because it's not a template system and we have different things that we're working on. I will every now and then put in there hey guys, like, if you have low back issues on certain movements, you're probably going to want to take off Tuesday, wednesday or Thursday. I'm not going to tell you to take off, but I'm going to say, if you are, have a sensitivity, there's probably one of these days where you should either take a rest day or scale back your intensity, scale back the weight, scale back the effort that you're putting into every single movement. Um, and that that's where I think you can kind of differentiate coaching. Sam just said that he's changed a little bit. I think I have too as well, and this is kind of adapting and learning to.
18:55
You don't need to tell the room to go all out all the time. The people that want to, they're going to do it regardless. But you also don't want to be soft, I'm sorry. You don't want to be a wuss coach where it's like hey guys, 20 wall balls, that's a lot of wall balls. You might be sore. You should probably do five and rest 30 seconds, like if you ever said that to a classmate bro, what are we doing here? You know.
19:20
But you know on the other side and I think this is more common because on that was an exaggeration I do think it's like go all out, go all out all the time. And this is where a coach needs to read the room. Who are they talking to? If I tell alex to do that, he'd be like he'd start foaming at the mouth and say let's go.
19:39
You know the other 90% of the gym that doesn't really like that feel, or they're starting to digress a little bit as athletes and how much they want to put into it. That can really rub them the wrong way and make them do things they don't want to do, and that is usually when the injuries start to pop up and then they start pointing fingers, all that good stuff. So to kind of wrap up the programming coaching side of this conversation. I think, athletes, you have every right to ask any coach or programmer why and what are my options here to prevent my injury. Because I want to get to the root cause of why I keep getting nicked up every time we do squat cleans.
Sam RheeCo-host
20:19
I think one of the things about CrossFit I love the most is the intensity. But I now have, as an athlete, been very careful to pick and choose where that intensity is and, as an athlete, that's what we all need to do. I know, and I know you, dave, that when you are, if I'm going to ask you for advice in terms of how to approach a workout, 94.8% of the time you're going to say go unbroken, go as hard. You know, see what you can do. You know, as far as you can, I mean, of course, you know, obviously there's strategy. You're like, okay, you know, don't blow yourself out on the first round, yeah, but you know, pick it up on the second, third, fourth. But you are a programmer and a coach who loves to see intensity, yeah, in your athletes. And so, because I believe in the CrossFit methodology, right. So as an athlete, if you gravitate towards CrossFit, you should also really lean into intensity at the appropriate time, right, not every time when you feel like it's appropriate, and you might not know it right away, but that's where we're here to guide you and I think, as coaches, we are doing a better job about that.
21:37
But you know it's also on me, so sometimes I'll start slow I always start slow on the first second round and I will pick it up and I will try to bring that intensity if I'm feeling okay. I'm checking all my body parts, I'm like this is okay, let me go a little harder. Let me go a little bit. And I think most athletes, if you're going to govern yourself and put you know you control your accelerator, you control your brake, listen to what the coaches have to say, but if it is CrossFit that you're doing, not something else, then sometimes you will have to lean into that intensity. And is that good or bad in terms of injury? Yeah Well, sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't. But that's something you have to learn and I've always learned from every injury I've gotten anyway. So just deal with it people that run that stuff.
David SyverstenHost
22:43
Mobility, work and warming up this is a huge part of what can lead to an injury and I can, you know, without throwing anyone I mean, if there's anyone that's going to get thrown under the bus I want to be one of us and I do think, when my knees, to this day, when they still act up, I can almost always look back on I have done a bad job. Properly warming up, like when I'm in a good spot, when I'm feeling great. One of the common grounds I've had is I show up an extra 10 to 15 minutes early and I really drill out my prep work for my quads and my knees and a little bit of extra stretching. And I know a lot of athletes that come here that get frustrated about getting nicked up but they show up like at the start of class, like literally at the buzzer with sandals on, clearly just got out of bed or clearly just got out of work. And in some cases that's what you got to do, especially the people that are coming from work Like you don't really have options a lot of time.
23:37
But I wonder sometimes could we help prevent injuries? For athletes, one of two things put it on them to show up a little earlier and start warming up and getting your body going. Part two could be do we shorten workouts a little bit and spend more time warming them up, because in most cases, athletes are not going to do that much warming up on their own. That just is what it is and could. Could we do that as as coaches, could we warm them up better? And we have an episode coming up about that. It's really exciting, by the way but I do think mobility is is mobility, the combination of mobility and stability are probably the two body reasons why people get hurt A lack of ability to put your your body in certain positions safely, because you're simply not mobile and stable.
Sam RheeCo-host
24:23
As an athlete. I've seen you now and for most workouts you will come early, yes, way early, like 15, 20 minutes early. You're warming up, you're doing all of the mobility work Alex so much warming up, mobility work and he's such a young guy you would think, who needs mobility and warmup? Guys who are old, like me? No, it's the ones who chase intensity and are really, um you know, focused on performance. So if you are like me excuse me, who don't?
24:53
Uh, who come in at the start of class? Don't have a whole lot of time, right? Listen, we have lives, we're busy, we got kids, we got all this stuff. Then know that and adjust your workout accordingly. Don't come in right at the start of class and think, okay, I'm ready to do my power cleans at 125 or 185. You're going to have to take a big chunk of your first part of your workout to warm up if you don't do it beforehand, and so you have to adjust it. Don't expect that you're going to do the same as Alex or Dave or anyone else if you're not spending that time beforehand to work out. I mean to warm up, and that's okay. Like I said, that's not an indictment on anyone. That's our lives, but that means you have to dial it back accordingly.
David SyverstenHost
25:39
Yeah, no, thank you for saying that, because I did want to make sure this is not coming across tone-wise as, yeah, show up earlier or you're not dedicated. That's not what we're saying. That's saying if you want to do high-level shit in the gym, you got to do high-level shit in your warm-up, right, and that in most cases does mean you have to show up earlier. If that's not in the cards for you, 100 support that. But that means you're not going to do high level shit safely. You might still be up to do it and get a little lucky right. And that's why sometimes I use this illustration that I learned from kelly stirret. That obviously still sticks in my head.
26:13
I read this book 12 years ago and he said the supple leopard one, yeah, the um. Picture a rope, a climbing rope. And he said every time you do something you're not supposed to do, you cut one strand of that rope. And if you've ever seen the fragments of rope that come down at the rope climbs, it's amazing how dense those things are, and probably a million strands in there day. Eventually that rope will snap and you that that like a picture of that being a muscle, a tendon, a ligament, a rotator cuff that you will get away with poor warmups and poor mobility for X amount of time. It we for years, sam. But if you can kind of stay ahead of it and know that guys have been doing this a long time coaching athletes and we've been nicked up, we've seen coaches getting uh, athletes get nicked up, that the prevention part of this is mobilizing, warming up properly or being smart with your movement and weight selection.
27:08
If you don't come in and warm up early, you don't come in and mobilize, you don't stretch at home, you don't read about stability and mobility on your own. Because it's a lifestyle more than it is an action at the gym and that that's really where that mobility and warming up phase comes from. It it has to be a part of your workout routine and that's why I personally like to move in warm-ups, because that you can all these reps. We're doing that. I know you don't want to do air squats and burpees in the morning. I get it, but like I'll sometimes do it, it's like, hey, it's just part of my workout, but it's not for time, it doesn't stress me out. I get some reps in it, but it also warms me up for the higher level stuff.
Sam RheeCo-host
27:49
I can't wait for our warmup episode.
David SyverstenHost
27:50
Yes, that might be our highest rated ever, or lowest. Here's the most common reason why I. In my opinion, the root of an injury from a non-doctor is overtraining. It's a pretty simple one. I think eight out of 10 of my injuries if I said I've had two dozen over the past 10 years have come from overtraining. And I know that and that's part of the bet I made is I wanted to get to my highest possible level in the sport.
28:17
In my opinion, I had to do a lot of training. I can't show up to class once a day. It would not be enough for me to get to where my goal is. So you are now overtraining and when you overtrain you're just cutting a few more strands of that rope at a time, like you're taking a chunk out of them rather than one at a time, especially if your movement isn't great, your mobility isn't great. So, again, from the perspective of the athlete that doesn't want to get hurt I really never want to get hurt, I just want to get fit. You really need to monitor what is proper training for you and you have to monitor how well you are recovered before you come back to the gym. Have you struggled with overtraining in the past? Completely.
Sam RheeCo-host
28:53
My body has told me what to do and I don't listen to it, especially when I had a lot of elbow tendonitis. It's because when I was doing a fair number of cleans, I would start to feel it a little bit and I'd be like, eh, it's not so bad, I'll just keep working out on it. And I would do more and then more and more, and I'm ignoring the warning signal. Most of the time when I've gotten injured not all, but most there has always been a blinking sign on my body dashboard and I don't I didn't listen to it. That's why I said injuries teach me, because I have now began to heed the overuse, the multiple, repetitive injury type of injury by cutting back. Now can I overdo it? Yes, and that's where you have to find the balance as an athlete. You can't be like, oh, my back's a little sore, I'm not going to do any of this today. Like, no, it takes a while to be like, okay, I'm feeling sore, like you've talked about this right Sore and injury and injury. So a lot of times I'm feeling sore, but I do need to move.
30:03
There was one. So thisnesday we did the um, the open workout, the dumbbell, snatch, burpee one. Some of us did. Yeah, the, the dedicated ones. Is that what you're? No, no, no, no, no. So well, I will tell you, I did it and my back was so lit and literally brian, de carlo and staunton are next to me and I came in and, uh, I'm literally trying to pick up the kettlebell to do the warmup on the kettlebell swings and it feels so tight. And DeCarlo's like what are you doing? Sam, are you just contemplating life? Like what are you doing? I was just sitting there looking at the kettlebell. I was like I don't know, my back feels really tight. I'm afraid it might spasm, but I started really slow. This is pre-workout. This was in the warmup.
David SyverstenHost
30:43
Okay, so in the warmup for Wednesday's workout for the dumbbell.
Sam RheeCo-host
30:45
No, no, no, no. This was after for the next day, oh, the Thursday, no the Friday with Keith he was coaching, Okay, the Friday. So this is two days after that workout. It was two days and I felt so tight and I was like, oh my gosh, do I just not do this workout? I went so slow, loosened up, felt so much better after. But again, it's you as, like us as athletes, we, it's incumbent on us to know what's sore, what's blinking light, injury risk. And because if you are overly cautious and you don't, you know anytime you feel a little something, you don't move through it. You're also hurting yourself. So it's a really, really hard line sometimes, especially with overuse and repetitive movement, knowing what is what.
David SyverstenHost
31:29
Yeah, and so, and I would not classify that as overtraining. Another reason why I wouldn't classify that as overtraining is you did not work out Thursday, right? Because you coached yeah, I coach. You did not work out Thursday, right? Because you, as your coach, yeah, I coached, and you worked out Wednesday. You were off Wednesday. So now you're looking at showing up Friday morning tight yeah for sure, yep, but that was you know. You're 48 hours of rest at that point, yep.
31:57
So that's where I think the overtraining you know, home it's going to be an internal discussion and decision, but I do think a lot of the overtraining it's not necessarily you working out too much, it's you not recovering enough. And that is where I've kind of changed my mindset. I'm not really monitoring how much volume I'm doing of certain movements or overall it's. Am I recovering? Am I going to the gym feeling like I did recover a little bit? Yes, there's. Am I recovering? Am I going to the gym feeling like I did recover a little bit? Yes, there's days I'm sore, I'm tight, and then I'll look at how many days I've worked out in a row. But this will kind of bleed into the next part of the discussion about injury prevention and it's the lifestyle and when I know that I'm really struggling with the recovery that leads to a sense of overtraining, it usually centers around my lifestyle and that, more specifically, is saying I don't sleep enough.
32:44
Sleep is the key to recovery. It's the key to recovery and this time of year, like I have four nights a week where I'm sleeping four to five hours and that really does compile to a point where your recovery is going to be trash, but I'm still going to go work out, and that's where it becomes overtraining. It's not overtraining because I did 100 wall balls today and 58 squat cleans on Thursday, two days later. That's not the overtraining. It's what was the recovery like in between?
33:11
What was the lifestyle around those workouts that can lead to that injury? Because if I show up to the gym working out, I'm going to work out. That decision has been made, no matter how I feel and that is where I've put myself into some trouble sometimes is that I feel like I should be able to do something in the gym, but because my lifestyle outside of the gym was not good. It made me move different, it made me feel different, it made the recovery component less and now I'm putting myself. You know I'm touching the flame now, as I like to say Lifestyle. How much does that contribute to someone's injury?
Sam RheeCo-host
33:46
Completely, and I think for most of us as athletes, that's, like you said, a huge component. You had a client dinner the night before. You had three Casamigos and club sodas, and now you got like only four or five hours of sleep and then you show up at 6 am and now you're like okay, I usually do 165 on the barbell. Well, you know what you should show up. Maybe you're going to go down to 95 or 115. These are the kind of decisions you need to make in order to further or mitigate your risk of injury. Should you not show up? No, you should show up if you can, if you are feeling appropriate to that, but maybe you really have to figure out what that workout's going to be for you. Yeah, that's a good point.
David SyverstenHost
34:33
Now, some people like objective answers, objective advice. So here's something is a lot of people's social lives revolve around alcohol, like they won't go out with friends unless there's some sort of alcohol involved, or if they do, they feel like they're shaking if there's not alcohol there. Right, what if you made a rule for yourself? Or this could be sleep-based you know I have kids, right, they woke me up through the night. When I show up to my next workout, I have to scale something back because I drank the day before. Now, come on, dave, I'm fine, you are fine. But again, think about the rope. Eventually you won't be, and eventually, when these injuries pop up, I do think alcohol is a very sneaky but enormous factor to people getting hurt. I really do, and it's anecdotal advice for myself when I'm not drinking, I'm usually in a good spot when I see people that are often nicked up. They do drink a lot, not a drinking problem, that's just their social life revolves around it. But they still show up, which I give them credit for. But what if you made a rule for yourself that every time I go out to drink, if I'm going to the gym the next two days, one of those days I'm going to have to scale something back that I normally wouldn't. What would you do? Would you change the workouts you should? Would you change your lifestyle to maybe not drinking that one weekend? Have you ever tried not drinking for two, three, four months and not a weekend? That's not enough for you to actually see any tangible difference. Eating well for a week is not going to do much for you in the gym. You're going to have to do something for a few months. Have you ever thought about that? If you're constantly nicked up, have you ever tried going dry for an X amount of time to see if it helped you sleep better, if it helped your joints feel better, helped you make better food decisions at night when you get home? These are factors that I think lead to a lot of injuries that I hate putting it all on an athlete. I really do. I feel partially responsible for people here. I always have, always will, but I don't know if just the way our world works now it's usually people pointing at other factors rather than what are you doing inward for yourself, and I think this is one of the biggest things I've seen. Huge.
36:46
Last one the intensity and the volume. This can be hard for athletes, and I empathize with you guys in that you don't really get to decide how much volume you're doing unless you scale it on your own. You show up to the gym, you're doing the workouts and that's on the board. And that can be a reason why some people will kind of take a step away is they want to have a little bit more control on what they're doing. But the intensity level, I think, is something we've kind of touched on a few times already.
37:09
Do you really need to go all out all the time and then you have to go back to the number one decision what's your goal? Why are you here, dave? I want to be healthy, be fit, I want to look good, cool. You don't need to go crazy when you work out here, you don't. You don't need to do level one, you don't need to do level two. You don't need to have the best times on the board, you don't need to beat your scores from three years ago. That's max intensity. You do want intensity, you want to try hard and get your heart rate up and pursue something. But I think that's the number one thing before you get into your intensity volume discussion. What is your goal? So, sam, let's use you as an example. What is your goal right now? Why are you coming to the gym right now?
Sam RheeCo-host
37:48
I need to stay fit and I also have some ego to it too. Absolutely, I think I try to put up. It's a balance. I try to put up good numbers, but my numbers are not what they were and they certainly aren't compared to a lot of the athletes around me. But when I come out of the gym my goal is to feel like I did the best that I could under the circumstances for that day. And sometimes it's a great number up on the whiteboard and sometimes it's not. I think for a lot of athletes and I've learned to live with that I think for a lot of athletes it's really hard.
David SyverstenHost
38:27
It is and.
Sam RheeCo-host
38:28
I think a lot of people end up giving up or finding something else because it's they're just so performance based and they look at their number and their number is not good and they know the smart thing to do is, because of their lifestyle, because of all the things we talked about, is to cut back, but then they have to put up scaled 20 minutes and everyone's finishing at RX and 15. That's a you know, when you are an ex-athlete, when you are a high-performing person, when everything else in your life, like you said, feels like a win, doesn't feel like a win. You are getting fitter, you are safer, you are avoiding injury, you're mitigating the risk of injury, but it doesn't feel like a win when you have to do it, and I think that that is one of the hardest things for so many of our athletes to accept.
David SyverstenHost
39:13
That's going to be an episode coming up at some point. It's on my list Just because it's something that Tim said when he was here with us and we've had that it's. It was a great line that he said and we talked about it ourselves all the time about about feeling like you're winning at the gym, not losing um. So I don't I don't want to dive too deep into that, but the intensity level derives from me feeling like I'm winning and I do want people to understand, in terms of this podcast, the injury prevention. You don't want those level one injuries. You don't want the level twos. You'll deal with the level threes because that's part of that, could be a little bit more of part of life, but you want to avoid those ones that really impact your life in and out of the gym. The volume can be consideration, but I really think it's going to be first about the intensity Example. You know the workout on Friday, I think, has 24, 48, 72 wall balls. I think that's the number. I know it's not that important, but I think it's 72 wall balls on Friday. If that kind of thing really makes you sore, beat up, like would you ever consider just going with a lighter wall ball, because that's intensity right there, you know, and that's something that I think we could put some thought into. That. No, no, no, I want that RX next to my name. That's the discussion that we're going to get into. You're feeling like the winning and losing.
40:35
The one piece of advice I would talk about in terms of your injury prevention, in relation to this last point, we're talking about the root of an injury. The intensity and volume Don't define who you are by your fitness and I know that's really hard for some to do, but you want to be something more than a fit person. You want to be something more than the best athlete in the gym, because I always say, if that is how you define yourself, at some point you will realize it's a bad decision. At some point you will realize it's a bad decision and it will often rear its head in with it with an injury that the intensity levels should not chase or pursue fitness defining you at how good you are at something in life, because that that is going to end up a losing battle and that can really lead you to that injury path. So, guys, that's going to wrap up the root of the injuries and I hope that you guys could reflect on that a little bit and look at all right, what can I do to prevent my next injury, whether it's level one, level two, level three and there's a lot in that, what we just talked about.
41:35
I'm sure two or three of those probably apply to you, but I'll say this from coming from a coach and programming perspective. I'll have the conversation with anyone at any point that you know it. Are these workouts causing injuries? It's something I think about every single week when I'm sending that stuff out for 10 years straight. It's never, hey, is the workout cool? That's part of it. But we do want to keep people safe and get them fit because we want them to stay on track, not have to get on and off. All right, thank you guys. We will see you next week. Thank you everybody for taking the time out of your day to listen to the Herd Fit Podcast. Be on the lookout for next week's episode.
