How to Modify the Barbell Lifts for Pain or Injury

Many barbell athletes experience aches, pains, and injuries. Whether a specific incident happens during or outside of lifting, these injuries can impact training and leave you confused about how to best manage continuing to train in pursuit of your strength goals.

The last thing you want to do or tell someone is to “stop lifting.”

Here at PRS, we want to ensure athletes stay lifting and working toward their goals no matter what. To do this, we have created four core goals that we aim to accomplish when working with any client:

1️⃣Maximize Strength and Muscular Development

2️⃣Reduce Injury Risk

3️⃣Maximize Performance and Goal Outcomes

4️⃣Maintain Longevity

So to satisfy these four core goals at Progressive Rehab and Strength, we approach pain and injury with one thing in mind:

Stay as close as possible to the main movement, volume, and, ideally, relative intensity to support the program’s intention.

This will help you continue to make progress, stay on track toward your goals, get stronger, and overcome your injuries without any major detours.

In this episode of the PRS Podcast, Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC, and Dr. Alyssa Haveson, PT, PRSCC, CSCS, shed insight on navigating pain and injuries to keep you training.

Here’s what you’ll find in this episode:

First order, actionable steps to modifying the lifts and keeping them as close to the main lifts as possible
Manipulative variables that can be applied to each main barbell lift to help keep you on track with your goals
Insight on equipment alternatives: the when, why, and how to best utilize each
Gear recommendations to ensure you aren’t stalling your progress
How to keep you and your clients in the gym and training hard

If you are a barbell strength or powerlifting coach, athlete, or a clinician, this episode will help you navigate pain and injury without major detours.

This episode goes great with our Pain & Injuries in Training series (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3).

If you have implemented some of the strategies discussed in this episode but are still struggling with a nagging injury and would like us to have a more in-depth look at your unique case or are interested in rehab or barbell coaching with PRS, please book a free consultation with one of our clinical coaches.

Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC: [00:00:10] In today's Ten-Minute Tip Tuesday, we'll be talking about how to modify the main barbell lifts for pain and injury in 10 minutes. So in these ten-minute tips, we take a topic that we get questions about that you guys always ask us about or approach us about, and we set a timer for 10 minutes and give you a quick down, dirty, actionable algorithm for addressing these topics that you're interested in, in 10 minutes. So grab a pen and a piece of paper, and get ready to take notes because we're going to talk about modifying the main barbell lifts for pain and injury in barbell training and powerlifting. So where's my timer? Let me get my timer, and I will set it for 10 minutes. And here we go. Alyssa, When it comes to pain and injuries in barbell training, what's the number one rule?

Dr. Alyssa Haveson, PT, PRSCC, CSCS: [00:01:20] So we want to stay as close to the main movement volume and, ideally, the relative intensity as possible to support the intention of the program. That's the big thing. We're going to change things as much as we need to continue training, but not more than that.

Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC: [00:01:36] Right. So, to satisfy this number one rule, stay as close to the main movement, volume, and ideally relative intensity as possible. What is the first thing we will do when we have pain or injury in a barbell movement?

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Web: https://www.progressiverehabandstrength.com

Email: podcast@progressiverehabandstrength.com

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Alyssa IG: @alyssahope_prs