Backside: Emerging from the Dark Side
This was probably clear enough last week - if not a little dry and technical: the key to addressing injuries is effective troubleshooting. It has to be procedural detective work, something reliable and thoughtful especially as things get emotional. Pain and frustration can mount. Last week, I did lose Thursday’s deadlift workout, settling for light and fast reps, as 475 did not want to come off the floor.
Today, however, I hope I can present things in a more emotionally compelling way: there’s hope - the first crescent of sunlight on the horizon. We have some solutions.
Last week, I described the three broad approaches to treating injuries: (Notice that rest is not among them.)
- Mobility work: deep tissue massage by way of rolling on lacrosse or softballs
- Starr Protocol: lightly putting a muscle to work through its full range of motion, to restore neurological and circulatory function
- identifying the source of the problem: a movement fault
I’m hitching with my hips to the left in my squats, about half the time and more noticeably some in some cases than others. Trying to unhitch or lean more on the other leg doesn’t fix this; the only thing that does - and I’m summarizing after some trial and error - is pushing the hips back an inch or two right as I come out of the hole. This puts the load that much more on the hamstrings.
It also suggests that I’m not bellying down with a level back to the extent that the Rippetoe method might prescribe. I’m dropping to some extent like a baseball catcher, and at the bottom of the motion the job is left to my glutes and quads a bit disproportionately, exploiting a weakness or bad habit.
I have to make a habit of that tiny maneuver with the hips to compensate, and I should be in business.
The second part of the solution has been a version of the Starr Protocol. The focus in my last squat workout was so much on mechanics that it only dawned on me hours afterward that the whole workout hurt a great deal less than the previous time around. I had been doing some band work, but the occasional twinge made me worry it wasn’t working. Lo and behold, it is, but the process might take a few weeks.
Here’s a clearer example: a few years ago, I had some brutal knee pain in my squats, which felt like the big patella tendon below my right kneecap was in shreds. Something above, one of the quad muscles, was tight and unhappy and pulling at it.
Those sets of 25 reps with the lightest weights in the Starr Protocol are usually meant for the worst cases of torn muscle bellies, ones complete with swelling and skin discoloration from blood sloshing around within. My solution to the angry quad was slightly less dramatic but rehabilitative nonetheless: with a miniband wrapped around my ankle and pulling my foot up against my rear end as I stood, I did rounds of 10 standing leg extensions against that resistance, raising a knee and then extending my leg as if I were punting a football. That worked that quad from A to Z in his range of motion and reminded him how to behave.
The way to stretch a left piriformis muscle is to lift your left calf up and turn it in front of your right thigh, making a figure-4. If that’s one end of its range of motion, and its purpose is to rotate your femur outward, I figured I’d set up a resistance band arrangement to work that motion, much as I did with that quad. I hang one end of the band fairly high on my rack; the lower end is wrapped around my ankle and foot. At rest, at the beginning of the motion, my left calf is up and crossing in front of my right thigh. The motion against resistance, then, is to sweep that foot down toward where it should be standing, and then out and behind, along the ground in a sort of ice skating motion, to let the piriformis finish its job.
I do 4 sets of 10 with both legs, like I did with the kicking motion for that quad, even though the other side in each case has been fine, mainly because I’m trying to remedy imbalances, not create new ones.
The squats are the first indication that my hip is improving. Deadlifts last week only went as far as 425 pounds. My first honest workout weight, 475, did not want to go, and the pain was a sensation of everything being strapped just too tight around my left hip.
With any luck, the band work has loosened the straps. However, if a big weight does not want to come off the floor, then I’m going to raise it, by propping the bar four inches higher in the rack, and still lift heavy weights. The band work has me covered for the light Starr stuff. Light deadlifts, on the other hand, are pointless. Deadlifts are for hardening a stem to stern integrity through an athlete’s entire body - and soul. They train the ability to solidify into a single unit and withstand force in every linkage. If the hip still doesn’t want to play along at the very bottom, then a partial lift with real weight will still convey more benefit than messing around with 135.
The cell phone will continue to be my coach’s eye.
If this piece didn’t turn out as emotionally fulfilling as promised, then at least the results will be. The best way to view the situation is along the lines of, ‘You don’t know what you have until it’s gone.’ Lifting heavy weights is awesome. Once in a while, however, you have to bring the engine into the shop and fix the parts that are wearing down.
(STRONG Gym Advanced template - PPST3)
Week of: 5/10/21 Week 7
MONDAY
1. Squat: 97% - 1 REP; 92% - 2 REPS; 90% - 2 SETS OF 2 REPS; 88% 2 REPS Tom 432.5, 410, 400, 392.5
2. back extensions 4x10
3. 4 sets of shrugs 400
4. reverse hypers (3x10)
5. abs; banded pulldowns
TUESDAY
1. Bench press: 97% - 1 REP; 92% - 2 REPS; 90% - 2 SETS OF 2 REPS; 88% 2 REPS Tom 267.5, 252.5, 247.5, 242.5
2. Incline bench: 2x2 215
3. 5 sets of 10 Hanging rows
4. Barbell curls: 4 sets of 8
Conditioning (second session)
sled pull 2 miles; 20, 0 (and six 50-yard runs)
THURSDAY
1. Deadlift: 97% - 1 rep; 92% - 2 reps; 88%- 2 SETS OF 2 REPS Tom 512.5, 485, 465
2. Front squats: 2x2 220
3. Reverse Hypers (3x10)
4. abs: hollow rockers
FRIDAY
1. Press: 97% - 1 rep; 92% 4 SETS OF 2 REPS TOM 195, 185
2. Floor press 250 2x2
3. Pull ups (5x10)
4. Barbell curls: 4 sets of 5-8
5. 3 sets kettlebell sit ups
SATURDAY - Conditioning
swim 1 mile or row 6000 meters
