If you are anything like me, then you know what it's like to roll out of bed feeling like you just got hit by a Mac truck. Knees creaking, elbows and shoulders aching, lower back cramping up...some people just have bad luck when it comes to accumulating injuries, and I am most definitely one of those people. Simple things like walking down the stairs can be a difficult task if my knees decide to act up on me, so how would that correlate to being able to train my legs with the intensity needed to make progress? Well it is at this point that your ego needs to take a backseat, and you either need to 1) completely stop overloading that joint or muscle until the injury has healed or 2) find exercises that don't aggravate it.
For the majority of people, using the excuse of "oh my knees hurt" to throw leg training out of their weekly split is like a blessing because 99% of gym goers hate the pain of heavy squats, lunges and deadlifts. Same with elbows..."you mean I don't have to bench heavy now?" No that's not what I mean. There are a few ways to ease the joint pain we all experience without completely voiding all exercises utilizing those joints:
1. Don't do exercises that hurt
This should seem like it's self explanatory, but for stubborn individuals like myself, this is much harder than it sounds. I've been dealing with nagging knee pain off-and-on for almost two years now, and through utter stupidity and the desire to train hard, I kept doing heavy squats and leg presses despite my knees hurting more than my muscles full of lactic acid. It wasn't until my knees started swelling from all the inflammation that I finally realized that doing it my way wasn't going to cut it. Now when I perform exercises that stress my knee joints, I know when to stop and when it is safe to continue based on if there is ANY pain during the sets. The key is to not let your joint pain advance to the point that mine has. Catch it early and adjust your program around your weaknesses: in this case, your weak joints.
2. Get your diet right
This is a very underestimated factor when people discuss inflammation of joints and overuse injuries. The typical Western diet consists of breakfast at McDonald's, lunch at Taco Bell, and dinner at Pizza Hut, or in other words, high levels of unhealthy fats. Poor diets like this can greatly increase inflammation inside your body due to poor ratios of Omega-6 fats to Omega-3 fats leading to painful joints. On the other side, healthy fats such as fish oils and other polyunsaturated fats can reduce the body's inflammation response and decrease swelling and pain in joints. So in short, less crappy food and more oils, nuts, and fish (fish oil supplementation works well too.)
3. Get your warm-up down
Warming-up is an often overlooked aspect of training for 100% healthy individuals who deal with no chronic pain, but for the majority of us who have experienced injuries that hinder our performance, we know that a proper warm-up cannot be overlooked for the health of joints. Whether it is foam rolling tight muscles, stretching, doing more light sets to get blood into the joints, riding the bike, or any of the million things people like to do to prepare for training, find what works best for you and your affliction. For example, my warm-up before a lower body workout would be foam rolling my IT band, quads, adductors, and hip flexors to loosen the muscles pulling on my knees. I would then move to stretches, possible the bike for a few minutes, then a ton of sets of light leg extensions and leg curls to allow my knees to get used to a load on them. I've found that this warm-up really helps to allow me to train mostly pain free. I'm still not going to be able to put a ton of weight on my back and rep out heavy squats without a good amount of pain just because I thoroughly warmed up, but it at least allows my to do SOMETHING to stimulate the muscles so they don't wither away. And while you're battling joint pain, sometimes that's what your goal has to be.
So for the people who know what it is like to be held back by nagging and weak joints, try the things I've found to help me and who knows? It could help you too. Be creative with your exercises that you do, so if your knees are bothering you that day, don't do heavy squats. Clean up your diet and remember that not all fats are bad. And nothing can take the place of a proper warm-up to not only recover from injuries but to prevent future ones.
Bryce Calvin - Strength and Conditioning Intern
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