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Editors Note: My friend Nick Nilsson wrote this article and gave me permission to share it with you. I think it’s great because so many times when we injure ourselves, we think we are unable to continue our workouts.

This article blows that right out of the water!  Enjoy!

How I’ve Trained Around Injuries

By Nick Nilsson

Being injured doesn’t have to mean total rest and a loss of muscle, strength and results.

There ARE good ways to train around injuries, as long as it’s done SMART.

So here’s the deal…an injury isn’t the end of the world! They happen to the best of us, sometimes no matter how careful you are. And THAT is what this article is all about…I’m going to give you examples of how I’VE trained around a few injuries I’ve had over the 18+ years I’ve been training.

Getting these injuries didn’t mean I had to completely stop every aspect of my training until I was fully recovered. In fact, continuing to train actually helped with recovery!

** Before we go any further, let me be VERY clear right up front** The examples I’m using here are from MY own experience and used only on myself. I’m not recommending you do ANY of these techniques.

I’m not a doctor (and especially I’m not YOUR doctor). I’m not a physiotherapist. This should NOT be considered medical advice. When you read this article, PLEASE use your own common sense and PLEASE consult with your doctor and get the all-clear to train if you decide to train around any injury.

Injury #1 – Twisted Ankle

The first injury I want to talk about is a twisted ankle. I was playing soccer and got my foot stuck in a hole in the field and at the same moment got spun around by another player. So basically, I tore up most of the ligaments in my left ankle.

I did all the rest, ice, elevation, etc and I went to the doctor the next day. He told me I had two choices…because the sprain was so severe I could either put it in a cast and it would get weaker, or I could just keep icing and elevating it.

I asked him if I could do other things in the gym while it was healing and he not only said “absolutely,” he actually encouraged me to start using it as soon as I felt I could put weight on it.

I was back in the gym that same evening, hobbling around and doing upper body training without any problems. The next day, I was doing one-legged squats on my RIGHT leg (the uninjured side).

By working the non-injured side, you can prevent a lot of the strength loss and atrophy that you often see when a limb is immobilized. This happens because of nervous system activation.

When the right leg is used and activated, the nervous system also activates the corresponding motor units of the OTHER side. This can help prevent a lot of the muscle-wasting you see with people who are in casts – if only they would have trained their uninjured side!

The key thing to note is that even though I was working my right leg, I wasn’t putting pressure on my injured side while I still had pain on it. As it healed and I was able to put pressure on it without pain, then I gradually worked it back into my training, with no loss of performance.

Injury #2 – Wrist Pain

This happened to me my very first year of training and I very quickly figured out exactly what the cause was: too much barbell curling.

Every time I picked up the straight bar to do curls, I would get sharp pains in my wrists. I even got to the point where I got a couple of wrist wraps to help ease the pain (which worked briefly).

How did I train around that injury? Easy. Dumbell Curls.

Once I figured it out, I immediately stopped all barbell training…curls, benching, rows, machines, everything that locked my wrists into position while training.

I still had some pain in my wrists while I was doing dumbbell work for several weeks after I got off barbells, but the wrist pain gradually went completely away on its own.

The key thing to note here – I had an injury as a result of getting “locked in” on barbells (especially straight barbell curls, which put a lot of pressure on the wrists, which in itself is the reason the EZ Curl bar was invented), and I immediately trained around that by switching to dumbells.

Problem solved, and I actually saw increased growth and strength because I changed things up.

Injury #3 – Pulled Tricep Muscle

This one will seem like a strange injury…I pulled the long head of my left tricep doing heavy SHRUGS. Yep, you read that right. Shrugs.

The reason I pulled the long head is because it’s the only head of the three-headed tricep muscle that crosses the shoulder joint. I had been doing high training volume (shrugs every session) and heavy weight (about 600 lbs) for a number of weeks and it caught up to me.

Because of the nature of the injury, it meant some changes to my program. It meant no more deadlifts, shrugs or stiff-legged deadlifts. Also, I was off all rowing, chinning and pull-down movements. Ironically enough, I could actually do close-grip bench pressing and dips without any problem at all, which is strange for a tricep injury.

My tricep was injured but I could hardly do any BACK training because of it!

Training around it was relatively simple. I just avoided those exercises I mentioned. But that left me without many options for back training. For back, I used a bench press machine backwards, sitting with my chest towards the back pad. I then put my elbows against the bench handles and pushed back against them to get the back activated. This took the injured tricep completely out of the movement but allowed me to get in some decent back training.

Injury #4 – Strained Pectoral Muscle

This one happened to me doing VERY heavy weighted dips. I had 170 lbs hanging off my waist, had just done several sets with that weight and decided to finish with some high-rep, top-range partials to really overload the muscle.

It’s a technique I’ll never use again, because looking back on it, I was totally setting myself up for this injury. Very heavy weight on a stretch-focused exercise (which in and of itself wasn’t so bad) but then when I did the high-rep partials, it was like tearing the muscle repeatedly until it ripped even more.

The good thing is, the moment I felt the start of the strain, I dropped to ground immediately, so I didn’t get an actual muscle tear, thought I thought was pretty much done with chest training for at least a month.

Not even close…after swearing about it for awhile, I began doing one-arm dumbbell bench press (on the Swiss ball) on my right side to help keep the strength up on both sides. I avoided all exercises that caused any pain or stretch on the left pec (to give you an idea, I couldn’t bench press even a 10 lb dumbbell without pain on that side).

I kept up with the one-side pressing and within a month, I was back pressing 100 lb dumbells with both sides with no pain and no real loss of strength in the injured side.

The key here is that I focused on what I COULD do and not what I couldn’t. This allowed me to keep up with regular training and not see any drop in strength or mass, even on the injured side.

Injury #5 – Pulled Muscle in my Lower Back

This one I wanted to use as an example of an injury that I COULDN’T train around. I did this one to myself trying to stretch out my lower back with a twisting stretch. BAD idea. I was about do some incline barbell bench and I was sitting on the bench, rotating my torso and pushing with my right elbow against the outside of my left knee.

And then I felt and heard a “POP.”

And that was that. I was doubled over on the floor and could hardly breathe. No workout that day!

It took me about 4 times as long to walk home because I could hardly hold myself upright. Sleeping was no fun at all. Luckily at that point, I still owned a weight belt. I had to wrap it tight around myself and sleep with it on in order to not be in excruciating pain.

There was simply NO way for me to train around that one. Breathing, let alone training, was painful. I couldn’t support any weight. To this day, when I get lean enough, I can still see where the muscle popped through the fascia in my lower back.

A few days later, I was able to get back in the gym and do some light training but that was definitely something not to be trained around.

Conclusion:

The key to remember here is to pick your battles. I’ve had injuries I could easily train around and which were more inconvenience than injury. I’ve also had injuries where discretion is the better part of valor and have had to take time off.

In all things, if YOU decide you want to try and train around an injury, PLEASE check with your doctor first. The last thing you want to happen is to self-diagnose and find out later there was more going on with the injured area than you thought.

Yeah, it stinks to have to take time off training, but the alternative could be a MUCH longer recovery time or even chronic re-injury and weakness.

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Nick Nilsson has a degree in Physical Education and Psychology and has been innovating new training techniques for more than 18 years. Nick is the author of a number of bodybuilding books including “Muscle Explosion! 28 Days To Maximum Mass”, “Metabolic Surge – Rapid Fat Loss,” “The Best Exercises You’ve Never Heard Of,” “Gluteus to the Maximus – Build a Bigger Butt NOW!” and “The Best Abdominal Exercises You’ve Never Heard Of”, all designed to maximize the results you get for the hard work you put into your training.

Be sure to grab your FREE copy of Nick’s 30-day

“Dirty Little Secret Program for Building Muscle and Burning Fat FAST”

There are certain things about fat loss that people have been taught to believe as fact which are, in reality, dead wrong. Even myself, until very recently, believed many of these to be facts that were set in stone.

Not anymore.

As a word of caution, some of these 7 things that I’m going to tell you about may go against everything you’ve been taught to believe about fat loss. However, sometimes going against convention is exactly what you need to do to get spectacular results!

Let’s begin… 

MYTH #1: Successfully losing fat always means losing some muscle mass as well.

FACT: It is possible to actually GAIN muscle while losing fat, not just in beginners but even in advanced trainers. All it takes is the right program of training and nutrition. 

MYTH #2: Gaining muscle requires additional calories from food, therefore it’s impossible to gain muscle under reduced-calorie conditions.

FACT: Under the right dietary and training conditions, your body can actually use your own bodyfat to provide energy for building muscle, practically doubling the speed of fat loss.  

MYTH #3: You must choose a consistently-strict diet of either low-carb or low-fat foods to lose fat rapidly.

FACT: Low-carb diets work. Low-fat diets work. But neither works forever. You can take the best features of both and combine them to actually FEED off each other with NO plateaus EVER.

MYTH #4: To lose fat with weight training, you must use high-reps with light weights.

FACT: Training with high reps and isolation exercises for fat loss is a waste of time and energy. It will practically guarantee that you lose muscle.

MYTH #5: You need to take fat-burning pills or supplements to maximize fat loss.

FACT: Your own natural metabolism is FAR more powerful for burning fat than any fat-loss pills or potions you could ever take IF you know how to stimulate it properly.

MYTH #6: Gradually reducing your caloric intake over time is the best way to ensure steady fat loss.

FACT: Consistently reducing your caloric intake is a great way to lose muscle mass. However, precise manipulation of the nutrients in your diet (protein, fat and carbs) can have extraordinary anabolic (muscle-building) and lipolytic (fat-burning) hormonal effects on your body. It’s all a matter of what you eat and when you eat it.

MYTH #7: When you come off a fat-loss diet, there will always be some rebound weight gain.

FACT: When the metabolism is properly stimulated and the right combination of nutrients is eaten, rebound weight gain can not only be eliminated, it can be reversed. With the proper training and nutrition plan, you can actually CONTINUE to lose fat even when you go back to normal training and eating.

Sound interesting? I thought so. When I read about a fat-loss program that shattered many of what I previously thought were “facts” and turned them into myths, it was a real eye-opener for me, too!

You see, over my many years of training, I had never once found a fat-loss program that allowed me to even keep, much less GAIN muscle while dieting. I ALWAYS ended up smaller, weaker and depressed from having lost so much of my hard-earned muscle (sound familiar to you?).

Sure, I lost some fat, but I had to go right back to higher-calorie eating in order to regain the muscle that I lost. This left me right back at square one – I had more muscle again but I still had more fat as well.

That problem is a thing of the past!

The name of the new program that I’ve discovered is “Metabolic Surge – Rapid Fat Loss.” It’s named for its ability to push your metabolism far beyond where it’s been before and take FULL advantage of the true power of your body’s own natural processes.

Read more about this groundbreaking program from the words of the author of the program, Nick Nilsson:

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“For years, I’ve experimented with various training and nutritional theories, techniques and practices all with one very desirable goal in mind: burning maximum fat while keeping maximum muscle.”

“The results of my research were far beyond my expectations! I have created a training and nutritional program that not only harnesses and applies the awesome power of your natural metabolism and natural fat-burning and muscle-building hormones, it actually takes these processes and makes them FEED on each other to amplify their effects on your body!”

“The bottom line is, I have created a program that will allow you to actually BUILD muscle while burning large amounts of fat. I’ve never, on any other program, experienced results anywhere close to what I got from just one, short 36-day cycle of this groundbreaking program.”

“Let me put it this way…I started the program weighing 207 pounds. I finished the program 36 days later weighing 207 pounds. Why is this a good thing? Because I LOST 3 INCHES from my waist while doing it!”

“Not only did I burn almost 10 pounds of fat in 36 days, I gained almost 10 pounds of muscle AND even increased my strength significantly. Ever done that on a fat-loss program before? Me neither. It’s downright extraordinary for an advanced trainer to accomplish results like these.”

“If you’re primarily interested in weight loss, however, don’t let my results throw you off. I’m certainly not saying you’re not going to lose weight when you do this program. Far from it!”

“You will lose a tremendous amount of fat while KEEPING your muscle mass. It won’t be water or muscle that you lose but FAT, which is exactly what you want to lose when you’re losing weight.”

“The numbers on your scale could very well drop like a stone, depending on how much fat you’ve got to lose and how much muscle mass you carry. For myself, I ended up at the exact same weight and I was ecstatic! This is a system that is guaranteed to reshape your body extremely rapidly.”

“This program is also very special in that, when finished, I did NOT experience any rebound weight gain at all as with many other programs, even after losing so much fat so rapidly. To be honest, I actually continued to lose even after I finished the program! My metabolism was just cranking so fast at that point, even when I went back to regular eating, my body still continued to burn fat.”

“Please note, however, this program is not for the person who is looking to coast through and get results. The training is demanding. But if you’re already training hard and not getting the results you want, this program is EXACTLY what you need. Every ounce of effort that you put in will be rewarded with results.”

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This is truly one of the most effective training programs you can do if you’re looking to burn lots of fat while keeping and even building muscle mass. I’m not one to mess around with ineffective information. I strongly urge you to have a closer look at what this program can do for you.