An athlete should never be hurt from training.
Things happen at practice and things happen in competition that cannot be predicted and cannot be prevented. Injuries happen – and, truly, they *just happen* with little to no warning.
Body-checking a defender yet ending up with legs tangled and a cleat deep into your calf… that’s the game. Whacking your heel against the toe board during your reverse on the 115th throw off the day… that’s the sport.
But dropping a dumbbell on your chest or blowing a hamstring during speed work is unacceptable to me as a strength coach. Oh, I know, it happens, but the training environment is the most controlled of all sport environments, so there’s just no excuse.
Now, when it does happen, how do we carry on?
Act I: Triage
Task 1: STOP.
Whatever you’re doing, when the “oh, that wasn’t good” feeling happens, shut down the session. Don’t try to move on to the next exercise, don’t try to back up to the warmup again, don’t try to stretch it out.
Just stop. Send me a text or call me. Get in your car and go home. Probably grab a bag of ice on the way.
Task 2: Assess the damage.
Tender to the touch? Obviously discolored or bruised? Swollen? Just doesn’t look right?
Call your favorite PT or AT or even OT. Text your sport coach. Follow RICE for the first day.
Task 3: Maybe see a professional.
If it’s bad – and don’t kid me like you aren’t sure if it’s bad – go to a doctor. Any kind of body therapist, an ortho, maybe even a chiropractor, but the point is if you need a medical professional, make that happen sooner rather than later.
Act II: Circumnavigation
Task 1: The Warmup aka Regressions as Training
Can you navigate the standard lifting warmup? What about the running warmup? What about the mobility warmup?
If that’s 3 “no” responses, then no matter what happened in Act I, Task 3, you need to see a medical professional. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.
If you can do the warmup, here’s what it should mean: somewhere between the basic exercises that look like training and the actual training exercises that hurt you is a level at which we can keep working.
Your job is to identify that level – it feels fine if I do this, it hurts a lot if I do that, it tingles a little if I do it this way – then report back.
This takes experimentation. You’re going to “lose” a training day or two. Your training is going to be “just” warmup drills.
Get over it. Strength and speed and conditioning is just coordination work against appropriate fatigue. That’s a principle. So if you’re exploring movements that do and don’t cause you pain, if you’re looking for power and grace despite an impairment, if you’re focused throughout the session, you’re still improving your coordination and you’re doing so under mounting fatigue.
Here’s the difference between The Comeback (aka Regressions as Training) and your typical conditioning: you can’t afford to get tired because you can’t afford to get sloppy. Sloppy will lead to backsliding. You need the courage to stop the session early so that you have a chance of coming back for another session tomorrow.
Task 2: Be a Beginner Again
Recovering from injury is a perfect time to get back to basics. That means two things.
Basic A: Fundamentals are Free
Basic B: Repetitions!
This period where all you can do is, essentially, warmup drills pairs up nicely with most unloaded/deloaded technical stools and watching game film. Your training sessions will be shorter than usual, but keep the reserved time on your schedule and fill it up with the basic basic basics of your sport.
What did you learn on Day 1 about how to hold the disc or your driver? What did you learn about race strategy? What did you learn about defensive positioning?
Work your footwork drills at half-speed, work your throws into a wall or net, shadow your technique without the implement…and aim to get 500 repetitions.
This costs nothing but pays dividends.
It refreshes your basics. “The elite are just better at the basics than everyone else.”
It gets you reps on foundational skills. “Practice makes permanent.”
And it provides specific conditioning – your coordination gets better for longer, aka against fatigue.
This is how you come back better after an injury than you went into it.
Act III: Escalation
Task 1: Wait For It
That first day you breeze through the warmup and crush your 500+ repetitions and feel like you have energy to spare…go home.
Keep shutting it down when you KNOW you have more for a full week of training.
Then look at the training week when you got hurt. Back up two full weeks from that and resume.
“Make haste slowly.”
Task 2: Don’t Be Dumb
And whatever dumb thing got you hurt – not stopping the session when you got tired, taking more weight than prescribed because your ego said so, pushing through the training even though you had been in the middle of a major work project and weren’t sleeping well – well, simply, don’t do that again.
So…When It Hurts…
Stop and consult professionals.
Do your basics every day but never get tired.
Ramp up slowly and don’t be dumb.
Seriously, this set of activities is what I’ve built my career on. Return to play isn’t magic. It’s patient experimentation. It’s discipline. It’s courage.
The courage to do less and the courage to only take risks when it matters.
If you get hurt doing your sport, that’s just the sport.
But if you get hurt in training, no matter how poorly planned the session and no matter how unfavorable the conditions, that’s you being dumb, because you could have stopped.
Trust me, I should know: in 12 years of training and competing, I’ve been injured nearly a dozen times…but only once in competition.
Rumor has it that experience is just learning from mistakes. Wisdom is when you stop making the same mistakes again and again.
Learn from my mistakes now while I work on the wisdom.