When an athlete suffers an injury, the early decisions made around their training can have a profound impact on their reconditioning timeline.
Research has shown that training the opposite limb can result in up to 77% of the gained strength transferring to the untrained (injured) limb. This is a result of adaptations in the nervous system that allow for a strong neural drive and coordinated contraction to be maintained in the injured side, despite it not actively moving.
Focusing on multi-joint exercises with slow eccentric and rapid concentric phases will maximize the transfer effect.
These positive neural adaptations accompany desirable hormonal responses to heavy resistance training, which may positively impact tissue healing.
If the goal is to optimize injury healing, and expedite a return to full performance, complete rest is rarely the answer.
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3 Keys for a Successful Return from Injury (NHL Reconditioning Model)
Mike Potenza (San Jose Sharks) recently shared an article on 3 powerful strategies he’s used to successfully return his players from injury.
Unfortunately, it’s still extremely common for athletes to be told to rest for several weeks until the injury “heals”, and then receive a green light to fully return to sport.
While time may allow for the injury to heal, the inactivity associated with rest will cause the athlete to significantly detrain.
Just as we wouldn’t recommend that an athlete sits on the couch all
off-season and then transitions into competition, the recommendation of
simply resting sets the athlete up for failure.
Simply, the athlete returns slower, weaker, and with less endurance.
The methods and progressions Mike outlines have been key to his success in helping his athletes, not just return to sport, but return to the same level of elite performance they achieved prior to the injury.
The goal is never to just have the athlete in the line-up; the goal is to have the athlete prepared to make an impact.
And while Mike has spent the last 14 years working in the NHL, the
methods he discusses apply to athletes in all sports, including
“tactical” athletes.
Optimizing Adaptation & Performance, the new health and sport performance video series I did with Mike Potenza and Jim LaValle features over 7.5 hours of content tying together the most effective strategies in assessments, program design, sports science, and nutrition/supplementation.
Until this Friday (11/8) at midnight EST, you can save $50 off your access to the entire Optimizing Adaptation & Performance package!
Optimizing Adaptation & Performance features over 7.5 hours of video and PDFs from all of the presentations from a a seminar I did last Summer with James LaValle and Mike Potenza at Mike Boyle Strength and Conditioning.
There’s more health and performance information available now than ever before, and it’s become increasingly difficult to sift through all of the marketing hype to find the most effective solutions.
When Mike, James and I originally talked about putting this seminar together, our goal was simple – share our most effective research- and experience-supported solutions to help optimize an athletes health, training adaptation, and game-day performance.
With that in mind, the presentations cover a wide array of topics, including:
In-season program
design
Multi-stage
reconditioning of injured athletes
Workload
monitoring and developing effective reports for coaches
The most
effective recovery strategies for different types of training/sport stress
Using
testing as a diagnostic process to design more effective programs
Hormonal
implications of overtraining/under recovery
Training, nutrition,
and supplementation strategies to optimize mitochondrial development, and
muscular hypertrophy/strength
How health
of the gut, brain, and immune system influence each other, and nutrition and
supplementation strategies to optimize all three
Proven Strategies for Better Results
On a personal note, I’m really excited to share this information for a couple reasons.
First, this information is powerful– it can have a profound impact on the health, performance, consistency, and durability of athletes in every sport.
Mike, James and
I have worked in every setting – professional and collegiate sports, private
sports training facilities, general fitness clients, etc. – and there are
strategies shared in the OAP videos that can be applied in all of these environments.
Increase your “Range”
Second, I strongly believe in the importance of having a range of solutions for different problems.
Athletes and
training clients don’t always respond to the same strategies in the same way,
and between individual preferences and logistical constraints, if you only have
one tool – it’s likely you’ll run into situations where you can’t use it.
By spanning assessment,
sports science, recovery interventions, program design, and nutrition/supplementation,
OAP provides complimentary solutions to help facilitate the optimal response,
despite different situational constraints.
For example, athletes
at all levels suffer from depleted energy at some point throughout the season. This
can result from:
Insufficient
or inappropriate preparation
Detraining
throughout the season
Excessive
workload
Misguided
dietary strategy
Suboptimal
sleep
Inadequate
or poor use of recovery strategies
Depending on
the situation, some of these areas may be more realistic to improve than others,
so having a process to identify what is contributing to the athlete’s lack of
energy and solutions to address each limiting factor will allow you to always
make an impact.
Optimizing Adaptation & Performance discusses each of the above points in detail, and provides different strategies to address the same problem.
Save $50
The videos of each presentation, along with PDFs of the slides, are now available through a protected “member” section of the OAP website.
Until this Friday (11/1) at midnight EST, you can save $50 off your access to the entire Optimizing Adaptation & Performance package!