Episode #46: How to Stay Injury Free & Hit PRs in Barbell Training

Episode #46: How to Stay Injury Free & Hit PRs in Barbell Training

In barbell training, we want to make as much continued progress as possible without having setbacks or getting injured. In order to accomplish this it’s important to monitor training stress, fatigue, and recovery and make responsive and proactive training adjustments to improve your performance and reduce your risk of injury. 

In this episode of the PRS Podcast we talk about the importance of making changes before things go awry or seeing a decrease in performance. By having a flexible and dynamic program (and mindset) that is adjusted to keep training stress and fatigue in check, you can significantly reduce your risk of injury, avoid setbacks in training, and keep making progress. We also talk about key elements of equipment, training preparation, and recovery that support your safety and progress under the barbell. 

Resources:

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GET IN TOUCH WITH THE SHOW!

Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC: [00:00:00] Welcome back to the Progressive Rehab & Strength podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Rori Alter, here with my lovely co-host, as usual, Dr. Alyssa Haveson. And we are continuing on our barbell strength training journey here with you guys. This month we started with talking about the Beginner Barbell Strength Training Program and then moving on to the importance of technique and the lifting manual and how those principles and the lifting manual are related to the squat bench press, deadlift, and overhead press can be applied to any variation thereof of those exercises. And, you know, eventually, you won't be a beginner anymore, and you won't be on a beginner program. So kind of where do you go after that? Well. You might move on with coaching here at Pierce, but we don't expect everyone to do that. So you'll find some type of template or perhaps you'll write your own program or you'll do something like the Texas method or 531 or follow a style program. And one of the biggest things that we see here at PRS are injuries. And as physical therapists, as strength coaches, we've been the last resort for a lot of people, sometimes the first resort when they have an injury, but oftentimes the last resort, when their coaches can't figure out what's going on with their injuries, their doctors tell them not to lift their physical therapists, give them random exercises to do, and then they go back to barbell training and still have the same problems over and over again.

Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC: [00:01:32] And it's not usually your technique alone. It's not usually your program alone. It's not usually an isolated muscle or labrum that's bothering you. It's usually a combination of a lot of things. So what we want to talk today about in this episode is all of the things that go into. Beyond the program, beyond the technique, all the things that go into making your training sustainable, keeping you healthy under the barbell, regardless of the technique that you're using and regardless of the program that you're running in terms of your training program. So we do have two free resources that I'll just shout out at the beginning of this episode. We have our Sustainable Training Builder. It's a free resource for you guys. You can click the link in our show notes to access that, but basically it monitors all of the things that we monitor in our athletes to help us make training decisions to keep them healthy.

Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC: [00:02:36] And we also have the Healthy Barbell Training Guide, which is an ebook filled with the simple things that you can check off and address to make sure that you're supporting your recovery, you're supporting your technique. You're supporting your programming to keep your body healthy under the barbell. And we suggest doing all of these things in Healthy Barbell Training Guide or at least looking at them and understanding them before seeking help out and assessing, are you doing these things? Can you implement these things or are you already doing them? And because you are doing them, you know that you really need help. So. Shouting those out. They're both linked in the show notes. But before we talk any more about that, what I want to talk about with you Alyssa are what are the key elements of programming that we monitor in order to help us identify a healthy range for training that leads to productive and meaningful training that leads to progress without injury. So what are some of those things that we're looking at when we're assessing someone's training or response to training?

Dr. Alyssa Haveson, PT, PRSCC, CSCS: [00:03:58] The big factors are relative intensity and then performance, which we're monitoring through estimated one rep max. So we really want to see, you know. How hard is somebody working on a session, a session basis and that that might not just be how heavy is the weight? It could have to do with what's going on outside of training their recovery, their sleep, their work stress, their life stress, and all of those things really play into that. I mean, we're ultimately monitoring the whole person when looking at some of these variables. And, you know, we want to monitor performance and again said we're doing that through Estimated one rep max (e1rm) because when we start to see that decline consistently or plateau consistently, something is going on and we need to make changes to optimize performance and also reduce the risk of injury. You know, if somebody. Always there. One is going down all of the time. You know, that there's something going on, you know, and we're not going to see, especially with someone who's not a novice, we're not going to see that increase every session. It's really hard to see this like, you know, linear, perfect line every time. But. Right. You know, really, I mean, the big factors are the relative intensity, their recovery, their life, what's going on outside of training, and then that performance variable.