¶ Understanding Muscle Strain Injuries
Hello and welcome to the High Performance Physiology Podcast. I'm Chris Beardsley. I'm here with my co host, Rob Mauseri, and we're going to talk about muscle strain injury prevention today. So um this is actually one of the most common questions that I get at the moment about the athletic stuff that I'm talking about is Basically, how do muscle strain injuries happen and what can we do um, you know, training wise to prevent them or, you know, reduce the incidence of them happening?
Um and I think this is a really interesting topic because I think that um the mainstream certainly the mainstream fitness industry doesn't have a clear model of how muscle strain injuries happen. and the literature is not enormously clear. Uh there are obviously risk factors, uh, but there isn't really a very clear model. I think we can actually uh derive a fairly straightforward physiological model.
And I've done that in the um FAQ, which is uh, you know, obviously the the the greatest secret on the internet.
Yeah.
But it is in there in the FAQ and uh if you do read it then you will find it. But I'm just gonna go through now. So basically um If we look at the really fundamental studies that have been done on muscle strain injuries, um you can basically cause a uh muscle to tear in animal models if you uh basically elongate it past a certain uh length, tearing length. And the interesting thing is it doesn't really matter whether the muscle is activated or not.
when you do that. So if you've got the animal muscle and you're you're testing it and you basically elongate it to a certain uh length, obviously you're not in a physiological scenario here. We're talking about muscles that you've actually physically removed. So y you stretch them basically and they tear at a certain length. And if you activate them it doesn't matter, they still tear at the same length. And the really cool thing that that tells us is that it's not force production that matters.
It's actually just literally the length of the muscle that you're uh tearing that matters. So what we're saying is that tearing happens at a certain length, it doesn't matter whether the muscle is activated or not. Now the second thing you can also do is extend that and look at different types of muscle. So you can look at muscles that are fusiform, you can look at muscles that are uh pennate.
And what you'll see is that pennic muscles require a lot longer, uh a lot larger extensions to tear than a fusiform muscle. And that's really cool'cause what that tells you tells you is that it's the muscle fiber length that matters and not the whole muscle length. So
Um, as in many of the situations that I talk about, w what everything comes back to is what the fibre is doing, not really what the whole muscle is doing. So that's really, really interesting. So basically saying that muscle fibers have a tearing length, uh not just the actual muscle.
¶ Strain Versus Eccentric Damage
And then you can go, okay, well um what does that uh where where do we go from here? Well where you go from here is to start looking at what a strain injury looks like and whether it's exactly the same as uh muscle damage. And it's not. And this is really cool because
Um, if you look at the literature, a lot of the eccentric literature, lots of the eccentric training literature will talk about muscle injury and muscle damage and they will use the terms interchangeably. And what's very clear from the actual strain injury literature, and I'll talk about what I mean by that in a moment.
If you look at the strain injury literature, it's not the same. It's actually very different. So if you take a um muscle fiber and you or a muscle and you expose it to eccentric contractions and you do a whole bunch of those like you would do in a in a kind of a a nineteen nineties, early two thousands eccentric training program, then basically you're gonna create a lot of uh muscle damage. But the features of that damage are not the same as what you would get.
if you just take a um sort of muscle fiber or a muscle and you just expose it to a really high amplitude uh single stretch. Uh again, we're talking about two t different types of literature, one which is eccentric training literature and one is literally uh muscle strain injury literature, which is what I think is basically single out high amplitude stretches with or without activation. Now in that scenario what you'll see is that the eccentric training uh or eccentric contractions
um kind of literature will give you a whole load of middle region. So if you've got a muscle, you've got proximal, middle and distal regions, the whole load of middle region damage, inflammation, and um or various signs of damage, but damage inflammation and also uh satellite cell activation. Now if you deplete that satellite cell activation, you won't get the appropriate uh repair processes happening.
And if you uh impair the um the kind of the inflammation again, you won't get the appropriate repair processes happening. If you look at single high amplitude stretches, none of that applies.
You've got damage happening not in the middle region, but in the proximal or distal regions. You don't need to worry about satellite cells because if you deplete them, nothing really changes. And you don't get the inflammation response. Not not on these single kind of high amplitude stretch uh injuries that I'm talking about. Um so very, very different characteristics. So what we're saying then is that damage is not really the same thing as a strain injury.
¶ Costameres And Injury Vulnerability
So ultimately, if we now go further down the line and say, Okay, well what does this kind of unique little body of studies that have s kind of done high amplitude stretches without kind of creating a lot of what we would call uh muscle damage, what does it tell us? What it tells us is actually Um in those scenarios you start to see uh the tearing of customers.
uh and that seems to be a really, really important feature. So uh specifically dystrophin, but basically uh costomares are the things that perform lateral force transmission And they probably provide a very important safety uh feature for the muscle fiber to stop it being excessively elongated because it's basically tethering it to neighbouring muscle fiber.
If you don't have that tethering effect, you can basically then stretch the muscle fiber to a much further length than you would otherwise be able to do. And that's very, very important because if we now go and look at what happens if you perform some of these high amplitude stretches
And then come back later on and see what you can see what you can then do when you mess around with the fiber. So if you perform a couple of high amplitude stretches and create this stripping off of dystrophic and the damaging of the customers, And then you come back a couple of hours later and you do the same thing again. The muscle now tears at a shorter length.
And that's absolutely critical'cause that suddenly changes how we understand how muscle strain injuries are happening. Because I've lost track of the number of times that I've seen uh an in a situation, a famous inst s a famous instance, for example, soccer players on the pitch suddenly get s hamstring strain injury, and suddenly you've got a hundred people all on their
kind of Instagram or YouTube or whatever, analysing it, telling you exactly what the guy was doing wrong when he actually got a strain injury. And I'm actually hang on a minute. Look at the look at these studies and just kind of uh see that single high amplitude stretches
are going to create this uh damage to the customers, which then makes the muscle fiber more vulnerable and therefore it now tears at a short length. So what you're saying then is that if you persistently do types of exercise that create this type of damage this kind of micro strain, if you want to kind of call it like that. Basically this kind of tearing across the mares, uh removing of the protection that those fibers have.
they will then start tearing at shorter lengths and eventually you'll end up inside the physiological range of motion. And then you basically will tear literally at any point when you go into a very high amplitude uh kind of range of motion activity, which obviously we're gonna do if we're trying to gain possession or, you know, I'm on the pitch trying to
uh kind of move into space or whatever it may be. So we we're basically pushing ourselves to the limit and in that scenario we end up with a tear. It's not because of anything we did in the moment, it's because of what we've been doing in the last kind of couple of weeks up to that moment.
So this exactly the same thing applies to situations where people tear muscles in um I I mean I mentioned hamstring train injury'cause it's the most famous example, but you can see it in strength training as well. So everybody like wants to kind of you know, produce our list of reasons of why somebody tears a bicep off in the gym or why so so why somebody tears a peck when they're doing bench presses. And everyone's got their reasons.
And it's like, well, hang on a minute. Maybe it's nothing to do with the thing that the person was doing in that moment in time. Maybe it's the stack of uh things that they've been doing in the last couple of weeks that have actually caused that muscle
¶ Eccentric Training: Risk And Reward
to become vulnerable to that particular thing. And this is really important because when I first started looking at uh the eccentric chain literature pff, you know, like fifteen odd years ago, And I was kind of uh the the Nordic studies were really getting going and everyone was out it's probably more like twenty, isn't it really?
The Nordic study was getting going, people were talking about Nordic hamstring uh curls and there was a lot of pushback from the uh S and C coaches and sports coaches at the time saying, Hang on a minute, we're worried about kind of pushing this uh kind of new intervention. into our programmes'cause we're worried about the amount of fatigue it's going to cause and we're worried it's actually going to create a bigger problem than it's solving. And I think at the time I was probably
sceptical of their criticism, but now I'm much more sympathetic'cause I look at especially as we joke, some of those early Nordic studies, which is absolutely crazy. I mean just insane. You know, five sets of twelve. I mean, like, seriously?
You know.
Just absurd. So but you can kind of like now I understand, having gone through the stretch uh kind of literature very carefully and the strains.
uh kind of uh section of that literature and you kind of understand exactly what it is that creates the damage and why it then makes a uh m actually can make someone a higher risk for a strain injury. So what we're saying then is that there has got to be a uh good dosage of eccentric training and then there's gonna be an insufficient dosage of eccentric training which is probably very small but okay and there's gonna be a a dosage of eccentric training which actually is going to elevate the risk
of a strain injury because it's literally going to be doing the thing that you don't want it to do, which is stripping all of the cost mares of the muscular and then you won't be able to build them back in time for the next workout when you're doing that insane volume of eocentric contractions. And I think that's the problem that we've got, which is that I probably got a uh very clear U shape.
¶ Dosage, Adaptations, And Recovery
uh dose response relationship when it comes to eccentric training. Now actually the same thing applies to uh static stretching, although I'd probably argue it's uh smaller because you don't have the uh kind of any any of the other damage aspects, the traditional damage aspects that we would
say in the terms of inflammation, shouldn't have those problems, uh which can also weaken the loss of fiber. But you do obviously have the potential if you're pushing into really high amplitude stretches, you can get to a scenario where it will create the same issue. I don't think it's quite as high a risk, but it does exist, I would imagine.
So we've got this dose uh kind of U shaped uh kind of uh dose response relationship where we want a perfect dose of eccentric training in order to create the adaptions that we're uh gonna protect us because eccentric training does have
a tendency to cause greater costomo addition. It is going to give us more sarcomosin series, which then because muscle fibre lengthening is the issue, not muscle lengthening, is going to extend the maximum length that the muscle can go to before it stretch before it actually strains.
So we do want the adaptions that eccentric training causes because it's going to add length to the fibre and allow the fibre to tear at a longer length, which means it's not going to tear inside the physiological range of motion. Adding costumers again protects us. So it's doing the things we want, but Uh if we don't recover from that in time for the next uh exposure to that type of activity, we're gonna be in trouble. So ultimately that's how I think a muscle strain injury is happening.
And obviously that is how eccentric training can help us, but it's not helping us, you know, in a way that is completely indiscriminate and indiscriminate.
independent of the volume. Like if you go excess excessive on the volume, uh it's gonna actually make things worse. And also if the athlete is doing a ton of high amplitude movements like in sprinting, max speed sprinting and uh kind of changes of direction uh at the same time as you're programming that eccentric stuff, that basically is going to be a uh recipe for disaster in all honesty. So, um that's the physiological bit. So Rob.
¶ Hamstring Training Strategies
Let's start with um the kind of classic, the hamstring strain stuff. So um just talk to us a little talk talk a little bit about the the exercises that you use,'cause I know that you probably use a couple, not just not just one. So a couple of the exercises that you're using. And uh give us specifics on the volumes and the workout volumes and the frequencies um in terms of sets and reps and that kind of thing, just so we understand kind of the dosages that you're you're delivering at the moment.
Yeah, definitely. Um actually I did get this question a few times recently about kind of the the minimum dose I use. And um usually so in terms of exercises for the hamstrings at least. Obviously everyone's gonna do Nordics and I do use Nordics occasionally. Um, I actually don't use them as often, but it's more of uh more of an equipment thing. So the thing that I would prefer over that is generally gonna be some uh eccentric uh seated leg curls.
So just like uh we said it a few times in other episodes. But um two legs down and then uh do the eccentric with one leg so you actually get like a supermax eccentric um terms of sets and reps. you know, always kind of going with just single reps. So I might be doing, you know, two two to three reps in a workout. And for a lot of people, especially if they're playing more games and things like that, just gonna be one rep um twice a week or so.
So really, really low volumes there. And people have asked how I how I know that an athlete is maintaining, you know, the the changes or like still making progress, I guess. I you know, obviously like in terms of loading, if you're using the the same loads or the loads increasing in those exercises after quite a long time, you know, once you're past the the coordination gains and recruitment and all those things initially.
you're probably doing about all you need to do. And then, you know, obviously if they're not getting injured, it is uh it is very likely doing its thing. So if someone has a history of strains and they're no longer getting strains, um, I then assume we're doing a pretty good job and giving them an appropriate dose. But it's usually not more, um, on either of those exercises than just uh a few reps a couple of times a week. Um, like I said less when they just have more going on.
Sure. Um so what's really interesting there, I mean there's a couple of interesting things there, but uh one of the first things I noticed as you were talking through that uh is obviously the use of the two different um hip positions. Because obviously the the Nordic is is basically a lying leg girl, more or less.
And so as a result, it does focus more on the short head of the biceps for Morris. Um whereas the seated leg curl gives you uh pretty much the exact opposite. It gives you the three two joint hamstrings.
So arguably there's actually kind of a role for doing kind of both really. Um but if ever I had to choose in the context of a sort of sprinting situation, I'm always gonna choose the seated leg girl. Um you know, that's kind of the one that's much more likely to have the issues with um uh excessive lengthening'cause you're literally talking about lengthening the two joint muscles at the end of the uh kind of terminal swing phase of the sprinting gate cycle.
So um I think yeah, I genuinely I think even though I'm a I have been in the past an Nordic curl fanboy, I think probably the the C to leg curl is definitely uh kind of better just from the information we've got in the last couple of years showing that, you know, from a Um, you know, neuromechanical matching point of view, you just end up with different muscles working because of the change in their position.
Um, really interesting then is like how low you've gone on those sets and reps. I mean like I mean obviously, you know, one set uh kind of uh twice a week is definitely something I'm a big fan of in athletic situations pretty much across the board. But you've kind of brought that all the way down to a single rep is is really kind of interesting. Now, obviously with eccentrics like we talked about before, the stimulating rep uh model works backwards. So the first rep is your most stimulated rep.
Um, you know, fundamentally highest recruitment and um, you know, highest uh kind of tension because you don't have any calcium on accumulation at that point. So, you know, definitely uh going to be getting all the value not all the value, but a big chunk of the value from that point. Yeah. And even if I were going to program like a set of two or three, which I honestly think I probably would, um, just kind of gut feel, um
The the issue is I'd still take a break, so I'd still probably take five, ten seconds between reps anyway. So it ended up looking like sort of two mini sets rather than
Yeah, it's more cluster ish.
Yeah. Um, so so ultimately it would kind of end up being in that sort of yeah. So it ended more like two sets of one rather than one set of two. But honestly it's not really that important.
But yeah, so no, fascinating to see just how low those volumes are going. So yeah, I mean, ultimately that is going to mean that you can run that pretty much all the time. There's not gonna be anybody who's kind of going to have so many things on in their in their schedule that they're not gonna be able to do two singles.
Yeah, yeah, I mean I generally don't take those out. Um once I've started them with someone, they're just kinda hanging in there all the time. And um yeah. Hopefully they don't miss it within the week.
Well that's it, yeah. I mean and that's the interesting thing is I mean um yeah, so just for for people who kind of uh haven't been following along with what we've uh been saying about e centrics and maintenance and stuff like that. Uh there's some really interesting data um whereby um on the one hand if you stop doing your eccentric training you lose all your fascicle length increases within about two weeks, more or less.
So super quick. It's about twice as fast as you're gonna get with a strength training program for hypertrophy. So you do a couple of months of strength training for hypertrophy, you kinda uh increase some size. You're gonna end up losing all of that within about a month of not training.
Um if you do the same with eccentric training, it's all gonna go in about two weeks. So really, really problematic on that front. So we just don't want times where the athletes are kind of just, you know, taking two weeks. on a beach somewhere and not doing anything and then come back and we've got to start from scratch again. Actually more seriously the problem is not so much the athlete, it's actually the uh S and C um kind of
um tendency which is almost baked into the mentality now, which is that they do things in blocks. So they're really kind of focusing this block idea which has got to go. I mean like a number and it's interesting like Even when I talk to sports teams, I've got a strong...
kind of a really strong sort of physiological scientific background, exercise science understanding and they've kind of talked to me and they've used some of my ideas. They still work in blocks. And I'm like, guys, stop it. It's it just stop it. It doesn't need to happen. It's it's absolutely non physiological. Periodization is not a thing. You know, we've talked about this. So it's it's really not a good idea. Um
But yeah, they they will do like a whole month or six weeks of eccentric training and then they'll kind of take it completely out of the programme like, no. No. It's just
To keep it it's a Leave it in, cleave it in the entire time.
Yeah.
But yeah, so there's this really, really uh kind of uh fast loss of vascular take out of the program. But on the other hand Um it doesn't look like we need a lot to keep maintenance. So you could actually drop down to maybe a couple of reps once a week if you absolutely had to. Like if your schedule was just crazy, really congested.
Yeah, yeah, you can do kind of like a slightly higher volume once a week and it's unlike normal strength training where you have to go a bit crazy and do like four sets once a week to really kinda spin your wheels. Um, you can kinda do that with uh eccentric training for fascistal lengths and you'll kinda more or less uh do that with about half the volume. So uh kind of really uh important uh kind of feature there that we can leverage if we need to.
¶ Pec And Bicep Strain Prevention
Um, yeah, so so that's kind of where we are with um with hamstring stuff. Um so obviously that is like the number one kind of um muscle strain injury that everybody talks about. The uh exercise science literature pretty much exclusively focuses on that as a strain injury. Um but, you know, we do see a smaller incidence, um, uh especially in the strength training community, of people tearing biceps and PECs. Now
Before we jump into this I just want to clarify two things. Firstly, I'm not really qualified to talk about exactly what the injury is. So I'm not like a uh kind of expert in muscle injury. I know how muscles work. I know how tendons work more or less. Um, but I don't really know enough about the kind of etiology of specific injuries.
So that's the first thing I want to clarify. Secondly, I want to clarify that I'm not convinced that it's always a muscle strain injury when I'm looking at those things. I have a horrible suspicion that sometimes it might be either muscular tendinous problem or actually even a tendon uh rupture. So I I'm not I don't want to kind of make the assumption that what I'm seeing is always the same.
For the purpose of today,'cause we're gonna probably extend this conversation to another podcast episode and talk about tendons another day, but just for the purpose of today, uh assume that we're talking about a strain injury in terms of uh a pec and a biceps situation. Um
Obviously it's gonna follow the same rules and the interesting thing about obviously the uh biceps is that it's a fusiform muscle, so we're gonna see a shorter te uh kind of uh tearing length than we would see with a sort of more pennate muscle.
Um
And obviously people tend to at least my And this is anecdotal but what I see and what I see may not be all there is'cause that isn't how it works, but uh I tend to see uh tears uh being talked about in the context of preacher curls and uh in t in the context of uh deadlifts with mixed grips. Ton of the two scenarios I tend to see people talking about and I actually know people who have torn their bicets, one in that instance in the preacher, and another one
Yeah, definitely.
With with a deadly so I don't actually know I do actually know two people who have actually experienced those two precise injuries, although I didn't kind of press them on exactly the nature of the injury specifically, so I couldn't even talk about those precisely. But anyway, so um So it strikes me that those are probably programming errors of volume.
Yeah, that's...
Specifically volume stretch position stuff.
Where I would jump to immediately. Um'cause yeah, like you said you're saying before, you'll see it. Um, you know, it's an it doesn't matter the the activation and the force so much and things like that. So you'll see people do, you know, like a very light load compared to their one RM and a bench.
And then something just goes. And same thing with like I had a a good buddy of mine who had a strain injury on preachers, on single arm preachers. And it was again doing like, you know, a a warm up set for, you know. So certainly was any kinda like max effort rep or anything like that. It was maybe the third rep he was doing like a set of four or five just warming up and had a a bit of a strain there and it was very clearly, you know, like visible and everything like that.
Um not some kind of full tendon rupture or anything like that. But you know, so I think again it's like like you said, more of a volume and recovery management thing when you're just slamming sets and reps. and going to failure and all these things and then training yourself again, you know, in um two days or sometimes if people were doing an odd program, doing things that might involve those muscles, you know, back to back days and things like that.
that at that point, you're just gonna get to a place where Just regardless of what you do. Like you said, it's just gonna kinda go. Um and people yeah. all the time. I mean I've had people ask me about it and they're like, yeah, it didn't seem like I was doing anything crazy, you know. Is that the other thing? Like, what do you think happened? Do you think my technique was off? Do you think maybe my arm path was off?
I say everybody's an amateur biomechanist.
Yeah, and I'm all the time I'm like, No, I y d I don't think anything was wrong with your technique. It looked the same as it always does probably and um it was just whatever you did in the last month was probably what did it. So you know, mm the next time around do a little less in the month leading up to it'cause with like you know, pecs and biceps. Obviously we're not programming or at least I'm not um super maximal eccentric stuff.
I don't think that's a good use of time and it's, you know, a little more dicey I would say than I would like. Um obviously w what are you gonna do? Like a super maxi centric kind of like a bench press or a chest press. It's not a realistic thing to do for the most part. Um, I don't know. So I wouldn't go about it that way. I would just go about the programming end of things by managing um the volumes and the frequencies just a few sets a few times a week.
Especially like you said in stretch position stuff. So if you wanna do it maybe a little more volume with more contracted position focused work, um if you wanna volumize. But otherwise, yeah, just keep it minimal, make sure you're recovering. Um and that's, you know, about the best you can do'cause I don't at least that I've seen and I've I mean I've had a couple, you know, minor strains over the years
They never come about when I really feel anything beforehand. I don't notice anything myself and then they just kinda go. So, you know, you're not gonna have an indicator that your program is shitty um until you have the big uh the big thing that nails you.
¶ Bench Press Volume Risk Management
Yeah, I think that's the important thing. It's about program uh volume management of stretch positions. I mean that that's different from just programming volume in general. So I think this is an important distinction. So um when we're talking about volume management for muscles and trying to stay under the uh kind of um level of volume that we can recover from. So I've talked about this in the context of bodybuilding. So
How you do three sets three times a week, that's totally doable. You can do four or five sets twice a week. Again, totally doable most of the time with most people doing, say, you know, kind of moderate loads to failure.
Uh, if you bring down the kind of rep range and start training with slightly heavier loads, start leaving rep in reserve, you can kind of do a little bit more. This is not what we're talking about. That's that is muscle damage for the purposes of avoiding um accumulating uh muscle damage over time and ending up suppressing your m recruitment because of CNS fatigue and suppressing your tension because of the damage in other calcium related T mechanisms.
What we're talking about here is a specifically different thing from that. It's the accumulated volume um and recovery time that you need. for training with stretched position stuff. So that's its own thing. And it comes into play with muscles that are at risk of this particular uh kind of strain injury, which in strength training is going to be the pecs and the biceps and then sport is mainly going to be the hamstrings and probably, you know, kind of um erect thumb.
But ultimately what we're saying here then is that Um we've if people are are doing high volumes of stretch position if people are doing high volumes straight away you've got to think about this. But if you're doing high volumes, you're off the end of a kind of volume recovery uh sort of curve, then look at the number of stretch position uh exercises you're doing for the for the peck
And the biceps. Now PECs you always can review stretch position stuff for the uh if you're doing pressing most of the time. Uh whereas the biceps you can kind of manipulate that a little bit.
um, you know, in ways that are probably helpful. But um, you know, fundamentally uh, you know, you can get work around things if you're doing bodybuilding exercises for the for the biceps. What's interesting on the um on the pec side I think is that a lot of bench press programs and I've talked to uh quite a few um sort of bench press um coaches so like PowerLifters who specialise in the bench press.
And even some coaches who coach Paralympic uh weightlifting, which is a you know, bench press specific. Um, and what's really interesting is they actually do a ton of reps. I mean, it just tends to be something that is associated with success in that particular lift. It's like they have to do a lot of repetitions to to make progress. And there's various different approaches and I've um I've talked to as I say quite a few of them and that they've they're many of them very brilliant coaches.
And some of them use v velocity based stuff to try and kind of manage the volume in that way and to try and get high quality reps, uh, in in in a way that is, you know, kind of minimizing the the fatigue and minimizing reps that aren't really doing anything.
others have gone down various different routes of using different variations. Um there's a whole c clusters, I mean there's a whole group of different approaches that I think are very, very cool to think about. And they're very creative people. Um
So ultimately, given that bench press does require that high kind of or doesn't seem to require I'm not saying it requires, but is the the successful coaches I've seen tend to have used high volume. I'm not saying that that's definitely physically I'm just saying I'm I'm observing this practically in the people that I talk to and I talk to some pretty, pretty cool people.
Yeah, in the natural powerlifting world, it's definitely much more common to see higher volumes. Um I mean, even coupled with higher frequencies, honestly. So most of them just all the successful ventures, you know, smaller weight classes especially, um, you'll notice definitely higher volumes and frequencies.
So I do think that this is worth thinking about in terms of a risk management strategy because if you're having to do that kind of volume just because that it it sort of fits your model of success in that sport and then obviously then that becomes a risk factor.
Yeah, you can do I mean, I've seen guys do they'll do, you know, maybe like one to two days on their main bench press and then like a midweek day where it's something like a tempo bench, um something with like much lighter loads, farther from failure, things like that.
Um, currently how my bench routine is set up actually, which is uh quite nice, quite comfortable. Um, you know, people have seen bench press four, five, six days a week. Generally a lot of it is a million miles from failure and maybe, you know
mixed in, they'll have a a a close grip day or I guess like a long pause day. Um, things like that. Sometimes block pressing and all that. You do definitely see quite a quite a bit more, I think variety thrown in and you know, like you said, maybe just for the the risk management aspect while still getting like practice on the list.
I think and I think that's it's uh a really complicated problem to solve because you you want that uh kind of cross over to the main lift, which obviously has a very clear stretch position, which you you know, precisely where your wrist is. You don't want to be doing a billion reps in that position.
But at the same time you don't want to be doing reps that are not doing anything to them. So so yeah, so you kind of you're kind of in that zone where you're looking for strategies. Like as I say, velocity based training where you're doing very fast repetitions with, you know, kind of a lighter load. Not saying it's a light load, but it's a lighter load. Lighter, yeah. Um
you know, you're doing um you're doing maybe uh sort of partial range of motion stuff, either, you know, pin presses or or or kind of off box or whatever. You know, you're doing maybe I mean, even seeing people playing around with with with blood flow restriction stuff. You know, basically uh you can do blood restriction on the triceps and it will actually slow the whole lift down. So
Yeah.
And I think those those kind of creative approaches are definitely worth exploring when you've got a problem that is this kind of um fundamental where you you're trying to make progress in the lift and actually you just that the lift requires a stretch position force production. You're like, well okay, so what am I doing here? So so I think that's it's it's a very interesting problem to try and solve. So yeah, so I guess um
Um, in addition to the people that I already talked to about this problem, if you're out there coaching people and you have thought about this problem as well, then please do drop me a line and tell me what you're doing. It'd be really interesting to hear what other people are doing.'Cause as I say, I think there's a lot of creative people in this
particular part of the strength and conditioning community doing some very cool stuff. Um so it'd be interesting to see what they're doing. But yeah, I think it's it's probably the hardest one out of the three to really kind of work
Biceps is easy. Alternate a stretch position day and a short position day. Yeah, exactly. Um you can do, you know, maybe one stretch position movement and then two shorter. It's really not. If you don't if you really don't want to tear your ship, you can just do it doesn't hit a very long muscle length.
¶ Overcomplicating Injury Solutions
Yeah, it's basically uh, you know, kinda just don't do silly volumes any bit, right. Um But that's that I think that's what it comes down to is that um, you know, m muscle strain injury has been I think misunderstood because and very quickly, I won't go on a huge rant here'cause I'm um I I'm aware that we're running up against time, but uh very, very quickly, one of my biggest frustrations, um, insofar as I have frustrations, but
One of my biggest uh kind of frustrations in in a strength and conditioning community or fitness industry in general is that people overcomplicate stuff that isn't complicated and they ignore where the actual complications really are. And I think per this is a perfect example. So muscle strain injury, if you actually want to understand it, it is a little bit complicated. It took me about kind of fifteen minutes to explain it at the beginning of this podcast. So it is actually complicated.
Um, but once you understood it, it's actually really easy how to work around it. It's just don't do silly volumes of stretch position exercises. That's it.
Yeah.
But getting to that but people want to make the the bit that it's not complicated. They want to make it complicated. They want to go, Oh no, but his arm was in this position right here and he was doing this and I'm like, guys, you are making stuff up. It's not real.
Yeah.
You know, um but that's because they haven't done the reading and they haven't figured out actually how the uh the strain injury injury works in the first place. So yeah, just an insight into um how I look at the world or of the world, but the fitness industry, um That's kind of the lens that I look through is I I see complexity where it other people don't see it. Um
where I think it genuinely lies and I see people making complex uh things, uh explanations up for uh actually very simple problems. And this is a perfect example of that. Anyway, um
¶ Ineffective Prevention Approaches
Speaking of which, I know you didn't have any notice uh this time, uh, to give us examples of things that people do which are not probably ideal solutions for strain injury prevention. But do you see anybody making claims for preventing I bet you do, don't you? Try to try to give us examples that aren't like obvious to the person so we don't kind of upset anybody.
I mean, well, if you're looking at like uh you know, we're kinda talking about people going the the whole like biomechanical route of it and looking at like the specific point of injury. There's there's a whole group of people, um, that are all about, you know, doing things with like
Oh yeah, this is what you said last time.
Yeah, um, you know, if you they're they're the opinion that if you're pressuring towards the inside edge of your foot, like things in your ankle and your knee and everything are just gonna tear to pieces. If you don't like your d you know, ankle bones in a certain position and this, that and the other thing, that everything in your lower body is just gonna blow up. Um, you know, all kinds of very, very odd things like that that I see.
Um kind of like the people who were you were talking about last time who who tried to um promote super high super unstable exercises because so like the the single leg squat variations and RDL variations.
Yeah, they'll have people squatting with their feet in a very you know I guess a subinated foot position, you know, gripping either end other side of like a wedge board and squatting like that and, you know, saying that that's gonna prevent injuries and in the calf, the quad, this, that and the other thing. Um that's a big one. It's I I see those guys all the time. I've gotten in arguments with a few and I just I can't even really engage'cause
you know, when I go do anything it obviously or an athlete does, it looks nothing like what they demonstrate is the appropriate technique to not get injured. So yeah, just
Right on the movie. I think this is just that persistent belief that somehow practicing a movement in a gym will kind of transfer to a completely different scenario in the sporting context. It just doesn't, you know. You can't transfer coordination like that. It doesn't work out.
I guess, you know, one of the other things I see a lot is uh people telling p athletes that they should train in the gym with with lighter loads. 'Cause heavier loads are gonna put them at risk not only of injury in the gym, but be worse for recovery for the field, for the mat, for things like that. And then because they're not recovered, et cetera. they'll be at a higher risk for injury and, you know, a match, a game, things like that.
Well if you take that to the extreme, like I mean if they're doing like dozens and dozens and dozens of sets, then okay, fine. And if and if you're genuinely comparing it with light loads in a power training context, if you say if you're comparing high high volume, heavy training with lower volume power training, then sure, yeah. I mean that's gonna
Properly.
But if you're programming the way we program Exactly.
The usual way they're going about it is still using like Lower um lower weights and higher reps.
I love them, that's the opposite. Yeah, exactly.
I see that a lot. And I even um worked with a uh she was a former track sprinter and she said in her track career, same thing, they were doing like, you know, four sets of twelve, like right about the failure on most exercises and things like that. I was like, that is absolutely not what you want to be doing. And then she said her whole team constantly was was beat up. Um things were injured, things were not feeling good.
That's exactly what I would expect with that kind of audience.
Like so easy to look at that and be like, Well, th that is why if you guys are getting injured, that's precisely the reason. So yeah, I you get a lot of that and I can it's still the the the whole idea that people have that light loads are more recoverable. And somehow gonna be great for tendons and all these things.
This actually popped up last year when I was kind of really making the point that there's a big difference in recovery time between training with a couple of sets of heavy loads versus a couple of sets of light loads to failure. And and a couple of people dug out two studies which I've since done infographics of.
Yeah.
Um, which showed that light loads cause less fatigue than heavy loads, but those two studies were power training studies. So
I read those.
Yeah. So it and they were they were literally kind of just throwing these abstracts around and it was clear that they'd never read either of the studies. I mean, this these are fitness influencers who are well known people.
You know, and they were kind of quite happy to throw these out and clearly they'd not read either of them. Uh but basically the two studies, yeah, very, very clear that yeah, if you kind of use a lighter load and you uh kind of training miles away from fader'cause they're basically power uh training context. So you do the same number of reps, just half the weight, then yeah, you're gonna end up with less fatigue. I mean that's just kind of self-explanatory.
Yeah, it's good.
But you're not you're not getting any of the adaptions. So you're not actually doing anything you want to do. So um yeah, I mean low volume of heavy uh kind of loads like we've been talking about programming through the entirety of this podcast. is not gonna be an issue. If somebody's doing crazy volumes, then sure. And generally speaking though, they're gonna be doing crazy volumes of moderate or light loads, which is even worse. Um okay, cool. So yeah, basically um
It that's interesting. I hadn't thought that people would go down the route of thinking that lighter loads were somehow gonna be um But uh it's Mad. So um okay. Um so yeah, and then again the coordination thing, which is always gonna be kind of there. I mean, I don't know why people think that, but they do.
Yeah.
Cool. Um we've gone on long enough. I think that's
Absolutely.
Um we will come back uh next week probably and talk about tendon damage and um tendinopathy. So we will see you then.