Addressing Injury

In the short term, to reduce the issue, we want to apply heat. The body will heat up the area naturally to encourage healing. Resist the urge to fight against the healing process.

We want to support with circulation, bringing circulation to the area through things like blood flow restriction training. This is very light, short range of motion or concentric dominant and short range. Short Range movement will bring life into the area. "Stop doing what hurts" is obviously part of the solution, but don't stop doing everything in that area. Generally, moving as much as you can safely tends to get a better result.

In some cases, the area is much too senstitive to do short range movements right at the pain point. If this happens to you, rather than avoid movement at all, find any kind of short range exercise that will encourage bloodflow to the general area. If you're experiencing extreme pain with your inner elbow tendons, maybe wrist curls will be too painful at first. You can still get blood to the elbow by challenging your biceps in a light weight, short range spider curl. If your knees hurt too much to squat, walking backwards can offer extremely low force short range for the quads.

Tend towards creating solutions instead of searching for excuses. Most are able to find some kind of movement that doesn't aggravate the pain.

Long term, we want to look at the muscle-tendon length. If we can improve the muscle-tendon length, then you will be much closer to alleviating a lot of issues. When people are able to do their human knee extension and to be able to get into those positions and nothing tears, it proves that the strength is there and the tissue tolerance is there.

Once you can handle extreme range, tissue tolerance tends to be higher for other activities as well.

By getting to the strong in lengthened positions, we often create a surplus of tendon ability. We can get out and do other things.

Lengthen the antagonist, the opposite muscle.

If there is an issue with the knee, then we should also look at what's going on with the hamstring, what's going on with the glutes, what's going on with the calves, and what's going on on the other side of the body. The knee tendons will have to work harder if the hamstrings are tighter. If you do take this to the forearms: forearm issues, golfer's elbow, very common people get into handstands or muscle ups, and oftentimes the issue is that the extensors because the back is getting so tight there's always this resting tension.

There's constantly too much tension in the forearm flexors and that's part of the issue of why we get golfer's elbow. If we can take some tension out of the extensors or rebalance the joint, then we can alleviate some of those issues. This is the foundation of the structural balance system that Charles Poliquin popularized and that is used very well within the ATG system. If you can lengthen the antagonist, then you get better muscle activation of the agonist, and you're also going to have healthier tendons on the other side.

Going lighter and going slower on the more irritating movements is also a way to be able to avoid re-injury. Then, gradually progress with load, and gradually progress with speed to get back to what you really want to be able to do.

Changing the mechanics or selecting different movements can also be part of the solution depending on what can be changed. If you're an arm wrestler, then maybe you can change your techniques, especially while you're dealing with the injury. Devon Larratt, the guy that I showed earlier, the arm wrestler and spoke about it. “I had this injury, then I had to learn to wrestle in a completely different way so that I could still wrestle.” but that didn't damage the area that he had damaged before. He learned a completely different set of mechanics to be able to overcome the injury and then he gradually overcame that and he became a better wrestler. He didn't stop arm wrestling and just found things that he could do that didn't cause aggravation and then got back and was better than ever before.

Heat can come from external sources. Pumping the muscles below as well For knees: pumping the tibs and pumping the calves can really help with knee pain. Shoulder issues: pumping the biceps and triceps. Elbow issues, pumping the forearms can help.

Most people will notice that that makes a really positive difference. We're always looking for what we can do that's going to get us back online.

If we're getting a lot more work done and things aren't getting worse, then we're winning because we're going to get adaptation from the work that is done. If it is getting worse, then we need to scale it back. Using a lot of higher repetition, pain-free movements, as I spoke about with the banner triceps extension and the seated hamstring curls. The short-range triceps and hamstring exercises, those short-range exercises bring a lot of circulation to bring a lot of heat into the area.

Stretching the antagonist improves movement efficiency and allows you to start accumulating load. If we want to be able to get the glutes on, then we want to be able to stretch out.

By stretching out the rear hip flexor in the split squat on the left, we're going to get better muscle activation in the seated good morning on the right and that's part of overcoming the tendon issues, getting really good muscle activation.

The high volume of Concentrics.

The banded hamstring curls.

I’m going for short pauses on those ones.

You see this show of high volume of light concentric work is really the key for tendons.

In the ATG system, this is reversing knee pain.

For gymnasts, this can be tendon circles. They call them for their shoulders to help the shoulders stay healthy.

I was listening to Rutgers, one of the members of ATG/Real Movement talking about the Dutch swim team. If they do extra banded work, then they get a lot less shoulder issues.

Even though they're swimming so much and their shoulders doing so much work, by doing extra banded work twice a day, bringing circulation into the area, and keeping the muscle balance, they avoid a lot of shoulder issues.

In the Westside system, as I’ve said a number of times, the sleds and the belt work, its high volume concentric dominant light, maybe the abrasion shaking and some of these manual therapy techniques kind of have a similar effect of like flushing the area and creating some stimulus in the tissues.