Working Wounded

It is inevitable that anyone who trains hard regularly will eventually experience an injury. It is easy for someone who is typically very active to get depressed or down when they are out for a long period of time with injury. It is important, however, to view the injury as an opportunity to develop a new skill or improve an old one.

For example, while you are healing your shoulder, you can take the time to develop a one-legged squat. This new skill will benefit you greatly after your injury has healed, and it may be something you would not have developed if it wasn’t for the injury!

The most common training injuries are chronic, nagging injuries that start small and get worse if they are not addressed. Here we will identify the three most common CrossFit related injuries, and what to do about them.

1. Torn callous from pull-ups (or concrete bear crawls).

This can be a frequent occurrence and can disrupt your pull-up training volume.

Most of the time this can be prevented by
a) using the correct grip on the bar for high rep pull-ups and/or
b) gradually increasing your pull-up volume.

Using a monkey grip (mostly fingers and less palm) is easier on the hands than full palm grip for high rep pull-ups.

Treatment options: I personally prefer to put super glue around the perimeter of the flap of skin that is torn. This usually allows me to do pull ups the next day, and it generally holds for 3-4 days. When the skin flap comes up, you can just trim it and sand it down. This is great because the new skin typically grows in during that time.

Another method that shows promise for skin tears (minus the flap, or if you trim it down) is to put neosporin on some gauze and stick that to the “wound” with a band-aid. Change it out twice a day, and I hear it speeds up the healing time. I have not tried it, but it makes sense!

2. Tendinitis or Inflammation in the Elbows

This is surprisingly common and is the injury that is most likely to take people out of training for extended periods. I had this develop in my elbow and it took nearly a whole year to get rid of. This is typically caused by inflammation of the flexor muscles that work the fingers. The most common cause is doing too many pull-ups or increasing your pull-up volume too fast. Z Health Joint mobility has been great at preventing and addressing this. Another great prevention tool is to warm-up and stretch the flexors by doing handstands before you do pull-ups.

Treatment options: First of all, stop doing pull-ups or whatever activity is causing the issue. Look at what movements you are doing in high volume for a clue.

Secondly, you can freeze some water in a dixie cup and then tear the cup away to expose the ice but leave enough cup surrounding the ice so you can hold it comfortably. Massage the affected area with the ice – really dig into it!

If all else fails – get it checked out before it develops into a greater problem. If you go to physical therapy oftentimes they will get you in a short-term cycle of NSAIDs (Anti-inflammatory medication) and ice. This can be an effective treatment for inflammation, but an “ounce of prevention is always better than a pound of cure”!

3. Shoulders

Most people are susceptible to shoulder injury primarily because their shoulders are under so much tension that they do not have very good range of motion. When you raise your arm over head with locked elbow your arm should be next to your ear with little to no tension and zero pain. This is normal shoulder range of motion. If you do not have that you are putting youself at greater risk of injuring your shoulder.

Common causes of shoulder injury are increasing dip volume too much, incorrect bench press form and not getting shoulders shrugged when going over head on thrusters, presses, and overhead squats which can cause impingement of the shoulder joint.

One of the best ways to rehab your shoulder is to do shoulder press with little to no weight and with good form, of course. By incrementally increasing the weight, your rotator cuff muscles will be getting stronger as well. I have also found Z Health to make an impact with shoulder injuries.

There are many other injuries a person can have, but these are the most common. All are due to incorrect form and mechanics. All are preventable. Remember pain is simply an action signal telling you that you need to do something different! Train smart and hard!