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Injuries and Powerlifting Competitions: Managing Setbacks and Navigating Meets
In the powerlifting world, injuries are an unfortunate reality. Whether it's a tweak in training leading into a competition or something more significant happening during the powerlifting meet itself, injuries will happen. However, it's how we reduce our risk for them and manage them so they don't get worse leading into or during the competition.
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In this episode of the Progressive Rehab & Strength Podcast, we dive into the complex dynamics of injuries in powerlifting competitions, from preventing them to managing them when they inevitably occur.
We'll break down why injuries seem to crop up as lifters approach competition time, addressing key factors like:
Overtraining
Mental stress
Physical demands of peaking for performance
How to decide whether to push through an injury or pull back
When is it wise to adjust your attempt selection to avoid making things worse
We'll also discuss the financial and future opportunity costs of competing through injury—how much should you weigh your investment in the competition against your long-term lifting goals? When is it best to step back and preserve your health for the future?
Injuries during a competition present a whole new set of challenges. What's the best course of action if you get hurt mid-meet? Can you adjust your attempt selection in real time to avoid further damage? Should you skip an attempt, put in a number versus a 0, or pull out completely? These are the tough decisions that many lifters face.
Plus, we'll talk about the sometimes frustrating process of adjusting your first attempt—how to make changes when you're warming up and things don't feel right, and why your opener matters more than you might think. Do you change the number at weigh-ins? And what happens when you tweak something warming up right before your first lift?
If you've ever dealt with the stress of managing an injury before or during a powerlifting competition, or you're wondering how to avoid major setbacks in your competition journey, this episode of the Progressive Rehab & Strength Podcast is for you. We'll share strategies, practical tips, and personal insights to help you navigate those challenging moments and come out stronger on the other side.
Tune in for this essential conversation on staying healthy, making smart decisions under pressure, and keeping your long-term goals intact leading into a powerlifting competition!
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Episode #5 - Part 1 - Pain & Injuries in Barbell Training - What Are Injuries & How Do They Happen?
Episode #6 - Part 2 - Pain & Injuries in Barbell Training - Do You Need an MRI?
Episode #7 - Part 3 - Pain & Injuries in Barbell Training - The Athlete Recovery Process
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Free Resources!
Be sure to check out our FREE, brand-spankin’-new Powerlifting Meet Day Guide and Meet Day Checklist!
Our PRS Powerlifting Meet Guide is a comprehensive guide that walks you through every aspect of your meet day from start to finish so you feel confident, knowledgeable, and supported throughout your meet.
This guide covers federation rules, packing the perfect meet bag, and navigating weigh-ins, equipment checks, and the warm-up area.
Detailed tips on timing warm-ups, managing flights and lifting order, and commands will ensure you are prepared for every phase of the competition. Additional insights include nutrition timing, strategies for staying focused, and how handlers can best support you if you’re using one.
Our practical, step-by-step checklist is the ultimate powerlifting meet preparation tool. From packing your meet bag to tracking warm-up and attempt timing, this printable checklist ensures you don’t forget any of the details. Simply check off each task to reduce stress so you can focus on lifting your best. Our Meet Day Checklist is the perfect way to ensure you stay organized and confident without forgetting anything.
Whether you're a beginner or an experienced competitor, these resources provide everything you need for a smooth and successful meet day. Download them here to take the guess work out of meet-day logistics!
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[00:00:00] Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC : Alright guys, welcome back to the Progressive Rehab & Strength podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Rori Alter, head clinical coach here at Progressive Rehab & Strength, with the lovely Dr. Alyssa Haveson, who is also a clinical coach here at Progressive Rehab & Strength. And if you've been tuning in to the last couple episodes on the podcast, you now know that Alyssa is our competitive handling specialist or our competitive powerlifting specialist coach. I always like to come up with a new title every time we do something. If you go back and listen to our first like 100 episodes on the podcast, you'll know that when I talk about Alyssa, there's 8 million different ways to describe Alyssa because she's just that awesome. So, anyway, Alyssa works with majority competitive powerlifters, a lot of them at a high level and as as do I. But in my mom season, I've been working with more of like the the general lifting athlete. I do have a lot of my competitive athletes who have just been with me for a long time, but Alyssa takes on the majority of the competitive lifters at present here at Progressive Rehab & Strength for very good reason. She has a very strong background in competition herself. She's an international ref. So what we're going to talk about today is the inevitable but very often avoidable process of being injured leading into a competition or getting injured within a competition. There's always going to be this decision that you have to make. Do I go forward with the competition or do I sit the competition out? Do I go forward with literally finishing the competition, or do I go forward with training into this competition and going to the competition despite the injury that I'm dealing with? As a reminder, we can have pain, we can be injured, and we can still lift, but there's always going to be a risk/reward and we have to look at everything surrounding that competition and that injury and weigh everything and make a decision based on all the pieces of the puzzle. So what we're going to talk about today is, again, training into a competition with an injury or should you not and continuing with the competition, and if you get injured within a competition or should you not? So before we kind of dive into that, I want to bring up two examples of this where we made the decision for one of my athletes, and this is recently. She competed at the Pan Am competition in Costa Rica. So my client, Steph, has been dealing with a shoulder injury, and we have been dealing working around it for a year almost because she went to bench nationals to try and qualify for worlds. Didn't qualify for worlds, but got called for Pan Am, and that was a goal of hers to go to an international competition. So she said, you know, I'm dealing with this shoulder injury, but I've kind of been dealing with it. It's not like super bad. It's just nagging and annoying. We were working around it, not making it worse, and then we went through with the competition. She actually won the competition without hitting a PR. If you go back to our last episode on strategy, that was a very strategic competition for her in how she won without hitting a PR, but she wanted to win. The goal was to win, not to hit a PR. You know, go to an international competition and win, because that's what you want to do when you go to those things. Then she came back from the competition and she's actually dealing with a new injury that resulted from peaking with an injury. These are things we were well aware of together as athlete coach/physical therapist. These are things we were all well aware of and very open about through the whole process and made strategic decisions to get to where we are today, having won an international competition. But now we're kind of dealing with the aftermath, and she had a lot riding on that. She invested in one, she really wanted to go to an international competition. Two, she invested money in going, purchasing her plane ticket, her hotel, the team tracksuit, all these things you have to pay for the competition.