Injuries

I was just about to sign off and it occured to me there was a basic thing I could tell you that would help you in the future with injuries. It's nothing comprehensive and all-explaining but it's a very important part that I doubt most people are aware of.

If you look at the injury you got it would probably be what's known as a "nondisruptive" injury. Without explaining all that let me sum it up by saying it's different than an injury where you pull off a bunch of muslce fibers. There is tissue damage and inflammation but it is basically a kind of injury that is not as good about telling you what's up. The nondisruptive type would be the most common muscle strain we get in the weight room.

Here's the part of that you want to be aware of. You injured one side of your back. With an inury like that it is possible for the muscles to regain the ability to exert 90% or the opposite side or your back in as little as 24 hours! Certainly after a few days you'll have that 90% or more ability. Plus the pain being gone, etc...

BUT, and this is a big but, the acual tensile strength of the muscle may still be diminished quite a bit. Up to around 75 percent of previous depending....

So you can see the problem here, right? You've got a muscle that is basically capable of exerting more force than it can withstand. This is during early initial stages and not later if it becomes chronic.

So you can see how easy and why people re-injur themselves after an initial injury. You've basically got a muscle that is acting like it's OK! These second injuries often end up being much worse than the first one. I don't think that is the case with you now though but it is very likely to be the case most of the time.

The key lies in the "non-disruptive" label. This rapid return of force potential is part of the reason it's called non-disruptive. Unfortunately the body didn't evolve it's injry mechanisms to deal with lifting heavy barbells over and over again .

Just something to be aware of.

Deadlifts and Motor Pathways

The "messed up motor pathways" is a shorthand way of saying that you did some shit wrong and to failure for a length of time and you brain, not knowing any better said 'oh, this is how I'm supposed to do this. This muscle first and then this..etc. and so on. This is called motor learning and it is specific to the movement you are doing.

It is not as an important factor in low skill weight training as it would be say, in the olympic lifts, but sufficeth to say that there is a certain amount of plasticity in the motor system that allows the brain to learn and prioritize certain patterns of movement. It would be an overstatement indeed to say "I can't deadlift" but it would be fair to say "I can't deadlift correctly right now". Learning is NOT just intention. You can have now clue how to do something properly, be unaware that you are doing it wrong, and "learn" to do it this incorrect way, thus establishing movement patterns that will require you to back off to lighter weights and "re-learn". As I said it becomes more of an issue the more complex the movement but it is an issue.

Look at it this way. Once you learn to ride a bike you never forget, right? Why is this? You guessed it. HOWEVER, you may be able to ride a bike but unable to ride a bike really really fast even though another guy who's essentially the same as you and has been riding bikes the same amount of time with the same effort is much faster. Why is this? Well, because he learned better, all other things being equal.

If you try to re-learn bike riding in this certain way that allows the most effecient transfer of power to the pedals, it will be harder to do that than it was to learn to basically ride the bike in the first place depending on how long you've been riding of course.

When you don't have a lot of experience doing something like deads, which is one of the more compex of the slow lifts, especially if you want to do it well, and you spend a lot of time as an inexperienced deadlifter doing it to failure and beyond....that is a way to "learn it wrong". NO, it doesn't physically damage you and cause you not to be able to walk. That's just some silly defensive shit from people who are being defensive.

What it does is force you to spend this honeymoon time with deads too much in a state of fatigue and at intensities that are not really conducive to learing proper movement patterns. Think about it. How much of the feedback that you brain is getting is at a time when you have already recieved the "stop" message. This is not a way to develop proper movement patterns.

Even from a simple "this muscle too tired that bigger muscle not tired" you can see what will happen. The brain is like one of those choreagraphers. All it knows is that the show has to go on at all costs. So if one of the dancers is not up to snuff and can't get the job done what does the choreographer do? He puts all the work on his best/strongest dancers. What happens when just a few of the best dancers are doing all the work? The show sucks.

DC training forced you into a situation where not necessarily the correct movement patterns were learned, but the ones that were necessary to get the job done under a situation of too much stress. Problem is that it only gets the job done for so long before imbalances put you on the sidelines. Basically strong/overactive muscles and weak/inhibited one and all sort of complicated shit getting messed up as you go along doing things the same way.

One thing I forgot to say is that for less skill oriented movements all this stuff is very load dependent. I.E. there is a certain weight at which you can't perform a proper rep but this is not a maximal weight. There is a likewise a lighter weight that you can perform a proper rep through paying attention to good form.

This is what I meant when I said before that the weight you achieved during the DC "doesn't count" IF you want to relearn the deads, do them right, and live up to your potential.

Really what it comes down to is bad form being relearned and just like always heavy weights and learning do not mix.

Deadlift Injury

List out what you did on deads from your injury before up until now.

I'll do it for you going a little before the back strain and up til now:

2 sets x 5 reps x 200 lbs (90 kgs)

2 sets x 5 reps x 210 lbs (95 kgs)

2 sets x 5 reps x 225 lbs (100 kgs)

1 sets x 5 reps x 235 lbs (105 kgs)

1 sets x 5 reps x 275 lbs (125 kgs)

After the bad goodmornings

1 sets x 1 reps x 285 lbs (130 kgs)

2 sets x 8 reps x 185 lbs (85 kgs)

1 set x 8 reps x 205 lbs (90 kgs)

1 set x 5 reps x 245 lbs (110 kgs)

Back still hurting some

1 set x 6 reps x 225 lbs, 1 set x 10 reps x 135 lbs

set x 1 rep x 275 lbs

Never get in such a hurry with deads. It doesn't matter what you did with crappy form way back when on a crappy program. Notice that your goodmorning injury came after you made a 30 pound JUMP for reps on deads. Then some rest and some initial but shortlived submaximal stuff.

Then a forty pound jump ALL the WAY UP to the level you should have progressed steadily from at the beginning of the list INSTEAD of making that big jump.

Then back down 20 pounds for six reps and then a FIFTY pound jump. Practically right after an injury. This is of course not to mention all the other stuff affecting your back.

I think it's clear why you're back is fucked, don't you?

This is one of those examples of wanting to find the specific source of an injury so that one can justify the other screwed up things they feel a need to do since those things are not to blame and this other thing is.

So in this case it's the goodmornings. Well I totally agree that the goodmorings were a culprit. In fact, as I've said I'm not big on goomornings for everyone. But just because a problem springs up during an exercise doesn't mean you get to ignore all the other things that might have contributed to the problem. I don't think it's a coincidence that the goodmoring problem came after a big deadlift jump. Likewise I don't think it's a coincidence that you are hurting again after a similar jump. It's simply a weight you shouldn't be doing right now.

I told you way back when you wanted to get back into deadlifting that you should consider it a clean slate and not to be influenced by what you did before. But you haven't been able to stick to that. The problems you had before necessitated a "clean slate" to relearn things and to get to a point of muscular development that allowed you a buffer zone in terms of maximal effort. You are not there yet. In effect you simply have not been deadlifting long enough to attempt 30, 40, or 50 pound PR's of any kind let alone repping it. Add to that an injury that in no way could have completely resolved yet and you have a problem.

You see if I wanted to throw an extra 30 pounds on the bar and attempt a dead PR I can do that without much fear of injury. That is because my body is strong enough to protect me from injury even if certain aspects of good form are comprimised or even if I am not able to get up the weight. So I might fail but I'm not going to hurt myself. I'll simply put down the weight. But here you have a case where form was supposedly perfect and YET pain resulted. That should tell you to not be doing this kind of thing again until well in the future.

Once you can get deads going again then keep on slowly and systematically progressing them and stop trying to reach for this golden ring you thought you had in the past.

But you were progressing well and actually quite quickly. That's the thing. Everything was going fine so there was no need to take unecessay risks. If you had put on 235 or even 245 you probably would have been fine and even been able to make 10 pound jumps if you wanted. But I would rather see you take your time and add a rep or two and things like that. Because that is just the kind of thing that gets the back strong and ready.

I doubt very much it will take you 2 years to hit 315, provided you are not to severly sidetracked by your back.

But you're right, this is the kind of thing that teaches us lessons.

Hopefully you can do a supported row. One arm rows are probably not the answer since they still tend to put pressure on the core and uneven pressure on the back. So you need something to take the back out of it for a while. I have found plenty of times that cable rows are doable as long as you are very strict. It depends on the injury of course. But if not maybe you have a chest supported row thing you can do or you can do supported rows off a bench...dumbells work good for that. Rows themselves are not something you need to sweat. I always do all sorts of rows and they are all useful and effective in their own way. If you can't do barbell rows it's hardly a tragedy.

In the future, keep in mind that maxing out on deads or making big jumps in general is not something you do very often. You know, a lot, if not all, PLr's only max out deads on comp day. They don't know what's gonna happen until it happens. There's a reason for that. I very seldom try to max out. It's usually enough just to know, or at least being fairly certain of what I can do that is enough. I don't compete so I have no real reason to disrupt my training and progress so it's something I do to reward myself for all the hard and patient work. I have no other yardstick but myself. With that said, it's a good thing to do. But it is something that is planned for. Not something that you decide off the cuff because you "feel good that day" or whatever.

The only other thing I could say that may help is that you have to be able to sometimes look at your training in a very objective way. You talked about pinpointing the fault but many times it's not a pinpoint it's a huge mountain staring you in the face. But when it comes to our own training we tend to turn a blind eye to those mountains. If you had sat back and looked ONLY at your deadlifting with that dispassionate eye that I used, well, it would have jumped out at you.

For anyone else who might be reading this, since I know Anuj has learned it, just because the pain goes away from an injury doesn't mean it's "healed up". If you think that you are being STUPID. Just use some friggin common sense. If you cut your finger does it continue to throb during the entire healing process? NO. But what happens if you bang it on something or whatever while it's healing? You BLEED and it HURTS. And yes the two are similar enough to compare in this way. But probably most will have to learn that lesson the hard way.