The I Word… Don’t Say It Too Loud Or It Could Happen 

You sit back and see it happen to your peers, you say it won’t happen to you, but I hate to tell you,  it’s going to happen to you. The dreaded injury. It is as likely to happen in the gym as outside the gym, but one thing is for sure: it’s going to happen. This is not the space for me to tell you again about blah blah do your core work, do your accessories to reduce your risk of injury, you know this. Now is the time to talk about dealing with it.  

There are extreme routes people take when the injury happens.  

1. The head in the sand: Pretending it isn’t happening, trains through it. If this is you, you run a high risk of making it worse and having long term effects.  

2. The boy who cried wolf:  The person who every time there is a slight niggle or bit of soreness can’t train for a week. You’re struggling with confidence in what your body is capable of.  

Neither of these paths are good paths to be on. You need to be in the middle spot, where you acknowledge you have an injury, listen to your body and then work out what you can and can’t do. With the number one goal, being to be able to still do what you enjoy most, crushing kilos.  

But something that is often never considered or thought about when it comes to recovering from an injury is the psychological side. In my opinion this is the greatest challenge to rehabbing an injury. Just like the injury, the worse it is, the longer it will take rehab.  

The big question is how long does it take for you to rehab the psychological side of the injury? From personal experience, I would say it is up to twice as long as  physical injury and potentially even longer for more serious injuries.  

Tools that have helped me overcome my long list of bumps and bruises  

1. Accepting you have the injury  
2. Understanding that it is completely normal to be nervous around lifting coming back from injury. Everyone goes through this. 
3. Rehabbing an injury is not linear. Repeat this to yourself please. You do not go from broken to fixed in a straight line, you will have regression and this is normal. 
4. Actually follow the plan your coach and health professional writes for you.  Don’t skip out on the exercises you’re given or half ass them and then wonder why nothing is fixed yet. You need to be accountable to your own rehab. 
5. 1000 reps . When I first Met Dr Andrew Lock he gave three exercises for my back, and said I had to do them 3-4 times a day. This is the first Physio to ever prescribe me this. He didn’t say once a day he said 3-4 times a day. So I use the saying 1000 reps to rehab an injury you can do 1 rep a day for a 1000 days or 100 reps a day for 100 days. Rehab is just this, the more you put into it, the more you will get out of it.  
6. Talk to others who have had similar injuries to know that there is light at the end of the tunnel. 
7. Challenge yourself when it is safe to do so. Don’t let there be any exercise you avoid doing due to thinking you “can’t” do them.  
8. What you look for you will find. If you come into a training session thinking about something going to be hurt , I bet it hurts. You need to change your self chat around this, tell yourself you have done the recovery, my body is strong.  
9. Be patient returning to full training. You are far better off coming back to full training one week later than one week too soon. You come come back one week to soon, and you risk pushing your recovery time out by weeks or even months  

This list comes from my own personal journey with injuries, meniscus tear, bulged discs, inflamed bursa, torn labrum, fractures, torn muscles. I have done the opposite to every one of the things on this list,  resulting in my physical and psychological rehab process taking way longer than I wanted. Use my mistakes as your opportunity.  

PS Even to this day I still get nervous around conventional deadlifts nine years on from blowing discs out my back. But nowadays I enjoy the mental challenge of pushing myself through this. I know I have done all those steps above and I am strong enough.  

With my upcoming competition I have hurt my knee so I have had to swap to conventional deadlifts. This has given me an opportunity to push my conventional into the competition. This has me very excited. Just last week I hit 220 kg x 5. A rep PB post 2014 when I injured my back. I am excited to see what I can do next. 

Just to show I’ve had a few bumps 

Report from 2014