What Does It Take To Be Injury-Free?

Agreed, that any activity can cause an injury. But you’re far more likely to be injured playing soccer, basketball, or running than you are training in the gym. I have been weight training 30 years, with the last 17 being serious with no gaps in training (at least 3x a week). My injuries:

Sports-related:

  • Bad sprained ankle from soccer (2x)
  • Pulled oblique from boxing
  • Sprained hand twice from running into a person and a fence while chasing a fly ball.
  • Tweaky ankle for about a month after running a marathon.
  • Nagging shoulder injury from constant throwing in softball/baseball. (this was the most chronic of my injuries, because I had been playing year-round baseball - and later softball - since middle school. Happened in my early/mid-30s and didn’t completely go away until I took an extended break from overhand throwing)

Training-related:

  • Aggravated wrist when focusing too much on push ups (literally was doing 200 - 500 a session)
  • Aggravated elbow from doing weighted pull ups (was doing 5x10 with +35 lbs)
    Both healed within a couple of weeks when I stopped doing what was hurting them, so nothing chronic.

Non-training related:

  • Compressed nerve in lower leg (this year, due to ganglion cyst that was removed)

The point is that you shouldn’t hurt or injure yourself training once you learn what you are doing. Training should involve lifting, conditioning, mobility work, nutrition, and rest. While you can get hurt slicing onions for your salad, you shouldn’t get hurt if you avoid lifting plans that open yourself to overuse injuries, moves you cannot correctly perform, or weights you cannot properly control.

1 Like

amen

This is so spot on. I can’t think of a single person I know who has trained seriously for 20 or more years with weights that doesn’t have a list of exercises they can no longer do. (Okay, maybe one, but that guy’s a total freak.)

Some have a list that’s longer than others, but they’ve all got a list. As much as we might like to tell ourselves our hobby is “safe” the conditions required to create actual, meaningful progress set us up for injury as you’ve defined it. People that think otherwise either haven’t been training for long enough or haven’t pushed themselves as hard as they think they have.

1 Like

So ur a calisthenics fuckboi then

1 Like

That sounds like the direct antithesis of your thread’s purpose. I would definitely injure myself if I attempted that.

1 Like

I seen injuries on play equipment too :laughing:

image

6 Likes

I’d say being lucky plays a large factor in remaining injury free.

So you’re saying weekly maxing out Westside style is safer?

If I can lift something for 12 sets of one rep, it’s gonna be much lighter than a true one rep max. 5 sets of 5 reps shouldn’t be as dangerous as doing a 5 rep max.

We even have Chad Waterbury’s 10x3 here somewhere.

I’m saying, when we take into account that you’re apparently worried about getting injured, writing your own program where you do 12x1 “with the heaviest weight I can do” is weird, as are “casual days” where you’re squatting at 92%. There’s really no way to tell if a program that noone’s ever done before is ‘safer’ than a program that a ton of people have done before anyway, so I guess just report back here when you finish up and let us know how it went.

1 Like

Luck. A lot of luck.

1 Like

Will do.