Strength Won’t Protect You

You injure your calf or Achilles, so you do A LOT of heel raises. 

You strengthen your glutes because you were told it is good for knee injuries. 

You do all sorts of things you found for your shoulder when that starts bothering you. 

And yet, the pain and injuries continue. It seems like a frustrating, endless cycle that you cannot seem to break out of. It makes you question whether your body was made for this sport. You are starting to consider whether you should give it all up and do something else, even though it totally crushes you to even think about that. 

Luckily, there is a very good explanation for why you continue to have your pain even though you have done all the strengthening for it. You can build up your strength all you want, but until you learn how to move better, your problems will continue to persist!  

Let’s dive into why just doing strength work isn’t successful: 

You continue to strengthen bad patterns 

The way your body moves is engrained into you from the movement patterns your brain has spent years creating. So when you go to do strength exercises, while you are strengthening the body, you are also strengthening the body in the poor patterns. 

Let’s take the Bulgarian split squat as an example. It is a great exercise to do; one of my favorites. But if done with poor movement, it will not be as beneficial. Many times, what I see is someone using their quadriceps more than their glutes, knees falling inward, and poor control of the foot. If you perform a Bulgarian split squat while continuing with these poor patterns, nothing you do will matter. Yes, you will get stronger, but everything that caused you to become injured in the first place will persist. 

Looking at the upper body, big compensations exist in the shoulder. Our bodies tend to learn to use our upper traps for everything, causing the rest of our shoulder blade muscles to forget how to work properly. When you go to do your band or kettlebell exercises, you are continuing to use the same compensations because that is the way the body has learned to move. To your body, that is the correct way to move. As long as you continue strengthening that, it will continue to think it is correct and your shoulder issues will continue as well. 

Strength doesn’t carry over to technique improvement 

If you improve strength, the technique automatically improves, right? WRONG!!! The body is smart, but not that smart. The body is not able to connect the dots from the exercise you are doing to the skill you want to improve. 

Meaning, doing glute exercises for a hip drop when running will not stop the hip drop and getting the shoulders and core stronger will not directly improve your ability to perform any hanging task in the gym or hanging obstacle. 

I am not saying you are wasting your time working on the strength aspect, as that is important, but if that is all you are doing and you are expecting to get better than you have been misled. You must also retrain technique and proper movement patterns in the process of doing the strengthening. 

Retraining technique takes time…and work 

If you truly want to resolve your injuries and stop your injury cycle, it is essential that you take the time to work on retraining the body how to move better. Learn how to run in a way that puts fewer forces on the body. Learn how to lift with better mechanics in the legs…and yes, this does start with the foot. Learn how to do things with the arms by activating the shoulders properly. 

As long as you continue moving in the same patterns that got you injured, you will continue to become injured. Only by learning how to move your body in better movement patterns can you break out of your injury cycle. 

I am not saying this will be easy, but I am saying it is totally worth the time to do it and the money to invest in someone to teach you how to do it properly. That is, at least, if you want to continue participating in your sport for years and decades to come and save the future surgery costs and recovery time that will be required if you don’t put in the time and money now. 

By the way, by learning to move better, you not only break out of your injury cycle, but you also develop more power and speed because your body is moving more efficiently. Meaning, you get stronger and faster and hit new PRs without even trying! 

Are you fed up with being injured and ready to put a stop to it once and for all. Let’s chat! Schedule a FREE DISCOVERY CALL to discover how you can train and live pain free!