“I can walk fine and I can jog my mile and I can lift really without noticing it at all. So am I done with PT? Can I train now?”

At some point, every athlete has experienced an injury then had some version of this question. It’s truly unfortunate. Not because athletes get injured – that does suck and it can have serious effects on mental and emotional health, but injury is just a risk inherent to sport – rather because the question reflects all the failures of the sports performance industry like a fun house mirror.

When this particular athlete asked that question on our phone call, I gave a direct answer: Yes, you can train now, with the right progressions.

Naturally, they followed up: what training is okay and what isn’t okay if I’m still worried about it?

Now we’re starting to get to the truth of the matter! Look, from your body’s perspective, there is no detraining phase. There is no physical therapy phase. There is no conditioning phase. From your body’s perspective, there was a disruption (your injury), then there was immune response (acute healing), then there was adaptation. That acute immune response was your sensations of pain, the swelling and heat of inflammation, and all sorts of incredible things which happened within your cells to repair whatever had been damaged.

[Aside: if you had a surgical intervention, recognize that it was also a disruption which triggered an immune response. Surgery is “harm which helps.” Surgery involves a variety of small traumas inflicted upon your body using foreign matter, so it’s a disruption, too, even if the end effect is that your original injury heals faster or more completely.]

The point of all this is that you are either training or not training from the moment you are capable of moving whatever you injured. If you don’t move the area for more than a few days, the message you send your body is that the injured area isn’t needed. Strong muscles and dense bones are metabolically expensive. They require constant feeding and rebuilding. If you don’t move, your body starts stripping away the resources and support structures from the stuff not moving so those resources can be deployed somewhere else. Thus, the moment you can load your injured area, in whatever small way is tolerable without triggering pain, you are training. If you intend to return to your sport, you better start training with the end state of your sport skill in mind. Otherwise, you are training to not move that area.

Assume, like this athlete, you strained your hamstring. While lying on the couch the next day, you should be rolling your thigh inward and outward. You should be pressing your heel into the mattress while keeping your leg straight at the knee. You should exert effort as though you were going to slide your heel to your butt if you are supine or as though you were going to curl your heel to your butt if you are prone. Each of these movements loads your hamstring in a small way. The muscles contract to exert force against your tendons. Your body notices resources being consumed then directs additional resources there for adaptation. If you move too fast or squeeze too hard, you may feel pain. That means stop doing that thing! (…for now.) But everything you can do without pain is fair game.

Don’t wait around for a medical doctor to tell you it’s okay to move your body.
Don’t wait around for a physical therapist to tell you it’s okay to load your body.
Don’t wait around for a strength coach to tell you it’s okay to train your body.

Just train your body! Training is just purposeful exercise oriented toward a long-term goal. Exercise is just moving. Move your body, then listen to the signals it gives you. If all signals are positive or neutral, add more challenge to the movement. If any signals are negative, break down the movement which caused pain into simpler pieces, then experiment with them through movement, too. You are training by experimenting with your pain-free range of motion. When you have full range of motion back without pain, keep training by experimenting with your pain-free static/isometric loading capacity. When you can maintain balance and/or squeeze as hard as possible without pain, keep training by experimenting with your pain-free speed of movement. When you can move through your full range of motion with control at all extremes and as fast as possible between those, keep training by experimenting with your pain-free level of sport skill execution.

In practical terms, again for a hamstring strain on a sprinting athlete, this means adducting/abducting, flexing/extending, balancing, walking, jogging, skipping, hopping, bounding, and sprinting, in more or less that sequence. Because of limitations on care access, scope of work, and knowledge of sports loading, your PT might only get you as far as jogging. Because of limitations on ease of communication, scope of practice, and knowledge of physiology, your strength coach might not think to check on your progressions before skipping.

But you’re the fool if you wait around for them to figure out that you’re not getting the progression you need to return to sport. You’re the fool if you assume any movement professional is going to “fix” you. You’re the fool if you don’t experiment with the body you live in.

Back to that athlete and the truth of the matter: they had been training this whole time. But a minor hamstring strain like the one they experienced could have been rehabilitated twice over in the time that had passed between the injury and our phone call. They associated the word “training” with heavy lifts, big jumps, and track workouts with their team. They associated the phrase “physical therapy” with manual treatment, mini-bands, and isometrics.

Both associations are wrong. Training is purposeful exercise oriented toward a long-term goal. Manual therapy moved tissues around and promoted circulation. Manual therapy was training. Mini-bands and isometrics facilitated and loaded specific ranges of motion. They were training. Walking includes the challenge of balance and the cyclical, elastic loading of the gait cycle. Walking is training. Jogging is training. But skipping and hopping and bounding are the boring basics of sprinting, as I described in the Speed Drill Warmup series. They are training, too.

You can’t skip any steps because training is purposeful and oriented exercise: purposeful meaning each thing you do accomplishes something specific and oriented meaning there is a sequence of progressions necessary to reach your goal. This athlete didn’t know to spend as much time and effort on skipping, hopping, and bounding as they had on balancing, walking, and jogging. This athlete didn’t know the steps before big jumps and track workouts were the boring basics of sprinting. So they were rightly concerned about returning to “training” – big jumps and track workouts definitely would have hurt and probably would have set them back with another injury!

And this, finally, is the failure of the entire sports performance industry: we have presented the human body as a collection of independent parts and we have presented our own areas of expertise as independent approaches. Both are horribly flawed misrepresentations. Both are holding athletes back. Both are hurting athletes.

To borrow from Dan John, “the body is one piece.” And, from my own philosophy, “my body is smarter than me.” Injury was a disruption. Your body has an orchestrated symphony of incredible healing responses which initiate immediately after that disruption. But from the very moment that they’ve done the first bits of healing, meaning you can move the affected area even slightly, you are now training. You can be training your body to be ready for your sport again by moving gradually through purposeful progressions oriented toward your sport skill…or you can be training your body to tear down the area you’re not using so those precious resources can be given to some other area which needs to be built up.

Do not give away your power over your body. You live in it and it wants you alive. To stay alive, you would do well to be functional, healthy, and happy. (Seriously, this is not figurative: depression, chronic poor health, and immobility very strongly correlate to death. Your body wants you happy and healthy and able to move.) You are responsible for making your body better after injury. You are responsible for making your body ready for your sport. You are responsible for moving at your body’s pace.

You are responsible for orienting your body toward the adaptations you need for performing at your best. Don’t assume you need a degree in physiology to train your body. All of us movement experts can help you make progress faster. We can help you spot issues you may be overlooking when you are stressed, excited, scared, or eager to make progress. We should look at you holistically and offer you a sensible plan for getting from where you are to where you want to be…

…but even if we can’t, don’t, or won’t, you just have to experiment with movement. Note if you have pain. If not, proceed to the next experiment. If so, break down your last experiment into simpler pieces, then try again. Repeat until ready. That’s training. It takes time. It takes planning. It takes effort.

Better get to it. Because if all purposeful exercise oriented toward a long-term goal is training, you’re training right now. Are you training to be ready for your sport or are you training to wait around for someone to tell you it’s okay to stop waiting around?