Do you talk a lot about pain?

Last week, I was in the company of a few other therapists who were intrigued by my emphasis on movement and personal responsibility.

Personal responsibility means that you take charge of your own life, health, and wellbeing. And by giving you movement, by teaching you how to move yourself out of pain, my goal is to help you gain this ability to rely on yourself rather than needing the constant care of some therapist who gets to dine out on your pain.

As we were chatting, someone said that it sounds like I use a lot of psychology, which is probably true.

Another asked on the back of that if I spoke about pain with clients.

And that was a good question.

Here's my answer…

Not really, because pain doesn't particularly interest me.

Pain science has shown us that pain is mostly an output from the brain. It's a signal to stop doing something or to move away from something.

It's the brain receiving and interpreting input from the body as a threat and sending a pain signal out to try to prevent harm from happening.

So, to that extent, married with my personal experience of martial arts, mountain sports, and the injuries associated with those activities, pain is very much a perception.

If you want an example of how pain can be a perception, think of people who seem perfectly happy until you point out they are bleeding

Only when aware of the injury do they start to suffer.

Or a young child who falls and looks at their parent. Their reaction is often dependent on the parents' reaction.

So if pain is essentially an output from the brain to either cease an action or move away from a threat, if we deal with the actually problem, the brain no longer needs to send out a warning.

Now, this is not permission to ignore pain. To say pain is not important.

While pain doesn't necessarily mean injury or damage. It also may indicate damage or even a more insidious problem.

I deal with injury

Many people are sent to me because they have some physical issues and pain.

In these cases, pain is my indicator.

If it changes, I want to track that change as we work.

Does it get sharper/duller

Does it move

Does it become more or less localised

Does it change in quality, hotter, for example

Does it change in intensity (a self reported 1-10 scale)

And really, that's as far as my interest goes.

As we work and the pain changes in a good way, the work is good. If the pain changes in a bad way, we need to change tactics.

And one final story…

A mountain biking competitor I was working with a few years ago had many injuries. We got him down to an acceptable level of pain (athletes, especially contact/collision/extreme sports live in a base level of pain) and his old ankle injury seemed to be the thing causing him discomfort.

So we did some work for it, and he felt amazing. He was the most comfortable in his body that he'd been for years.

Until he went out on his bike.

And kept crashing.

A week passed before he was back in, and when he came in, he was frustrated.

He'd basically taken up mountain biking after he'd damaged his ankle and had to quit basketball.

So he'd learned to ride with a damaged ankle.

When we'd “fixed“ it, his style of riding no longer worked, and he kept crashing out. He couldn't make turns like he usually should.

We had two choices.

See if we could get the ankle back to how it was so he'd remain competitive.

Or he would have to rebuild his riding style around a better ankle.

He chose the former and accepted the discomfort in order to finish out the season (which he won)

Thankfully, we had the skills and ability to work this through.

Tiger Woods back surgery, well that couldn't be undone, and he never regained his competitive standard. His golf revolved around a particular issue, an anomaly, a “dysfunction”

But if a “dysfunction” is what makes you champion, is it really a dysfunction?

Is the pain outside of your performance worth it for the glory while in it?

These are decisions only you can make.

But taking responsibility, getting good help, and accepting that you know yourself better than anyone else possibly could.

That's the key to good rehab and training.

It's not about pain.

Or my methods or anyone else's methods.

It's about you and your attitude.

Regards

Dave Hedges

www.davehedges.net

What the Olympics can teach us about shoulder health

I love working with martial artists and combat sports folk

I trained martial arts for years so I really get what it takes to succeed as a martial artist.

The rise of BJJ has been very good for my business over the years.

It's a fantastic art with many great folk practising.

And one of the key points that makes it so great is its accessibility.

As a ground based grappling art, it can be trained hard relatively safely.

There's not the repeated impact from Judo throws or Boxing strikes.

No wonder it's taken off as it has.

With its popularity, those on my side of the equation have started noticing trends and gaps in BJJ preparation.

In every sport there are elements that strengthen and others that suffer.

In my youth as a karate/cycling/running man, I wound up with the weakest and tightest hamstrings going.

Discovering kettlebells and kettlebell swings rectified that for me.

My hamstring issues were a form of training scar.

A hole in the training that needs to be addressed with supplemental training.

Supplemental training is what we call Strength and Conditioning or S&C to the cool kids.

S&C differs in context from fitness training in that many doing fitness just do fitness. S&C is supplemental to sports.

Whooo, glad I got that off my chest!

Back when I wrote “Fighting Back” my eBook aimed at helping BJJ players overcome the common training scar of low back pain.

Fighting Back - How to Stop Back Pain & Improve Your BJJ Game

Buy Now

But there's another glaring scar we need to address, vital to BJJ, the other martial arts and if I'm honest, general fitness.

And that is Scapula Control

The Scapula is the shoulder blade.

With 19 muscles attached to the Scapula, some running from the Pelvis, some the skull, some the spine and obviously the arm as well.

Let's just say, the Scapula is a big deal for upper body strength and mobility as more specifically keeping the shoulders as injury free as possible.

Much of the best info on Scapula training comes out of the gymnastics world, which if you watched any of the gymnastics in the Olympics last week and marvelled at both their physique as well as power and strength, this may not come as a surprise.

A big part of a gymnastic prepping their shoulders is what they term “straight arm strength “

These are lifts and loading patterns done without bending the elbow.

So Scapula push ups, Scapula pull ups, corkscrew rows (all in my online exercise library)

I also include Turkish Get Ups and Windmills in this category.

As the elbow remains straight, the loading is better passed into the scap and those 19 muscles that connect to it.

The other key point is movement.

Feeling the scap move.

The simplest way to help a person feel their scaps move is simply to place a hand on it or tap it as they do a movement. This helps bring awareness to a region of the body so many folk have completely lost touch with.

The next thing is to reach and screw.

Get your mind out of the gutter, I mean reaching the arm out in various directions. Stand in the middle of your room and try to touch objects all around you, ideally these objects are just out of reach so you have to really stretch.

There's no rule here, reach in literally every direction and let your body follow in whatever way it sees fit.

Sorry, there's one rule, no stepping, at least not yet.

Screwing is the same, but as you reach rotate the hand either clockwise or anticlockwise (thumb goes up first or down first)

This takes the reach and ramps it up a lot.

Don't be surprised if you feel things clicking and popping or some odd stretches in unexpected places.

Add in inhales or exhales to match the movement of the rib cage as you reach (inhale if the ribs open, exhale if it closes)

And you now have a very simple solution to healthy shoulders that will tolerate a huge amount of abuse.

Once you discover your Scapula and begin to enjoy it's movement, you'll look for it in your other lifts (presses and rows in particular)

Have fun with this, reaching is simple and relatively easy.

So play with it.

And let me know what you discover

Feel free to hit reply and send in your questions for future newsletters

And share this with anyone who has shoulders tighter than a Scotsman's wallet

Regards

Dave Hedges

www.davehedges.net

www.wg-fit.com

How to Get "Fighting Fit"

Last week I was chatting about self defence training and Brian sent back this great comment:

“Can't disagree with anything there Dave.

I'd add that building up 'fight stamina' in its various guises is necessary and this requires very regular practice.

Fighting is exhausting, and while hopefully if you're good enough, you'll finish it quickly, it's likely that even a quick physical altercation will prove to be far more strenuous than any training drill.

Cheers, Brian. “

Brian is dead right, there is fit and then there's fighting fit.

They are not the same.

Training combat sports folks can be tricky.

Some organisations have a nice schedule that gives time for peaking athletes for an event, resting them afterwards.

But many have a variety of events with no real rhythm or rhyme.

So for them we want to maintain a state of always ready.

Which brings another question up, this one from Aaron:

“Not combat athletes per se but security personnel involved in control and restraint do you have any thoughts on exercises for this demographic? (Fitness Training for security personnel) - Aaron”

Security personnel may be called upon to fight several times in a shift. Or not at all.

Long periods of boredom then immediately called into action.

That means being always ready.

What is “always ready”

It is maintaining a high level of strength, mobility and endurance, gradually increasing these attributes over time. But not being so sore or fatigued that you can't perform at a moment's notice.

For an athlete, it means being just below peak fitness, 2-3 weeks away from true performance level and weight.

For security and self defence, it's simply being capable at all times.

It's this that all the majority of the training I delivered in WG-FIT was always meant to achieve.

In fancy speak, we call in “GPP” or “General Physical Preparation”

GPP is General fitness.

It's the base of the pyramid. And the wider the base, the higher we can build that pyramid.

Specialist training (SPP) sits at the top of the pyramid, but is only ever useful when we have a good base.

So the difference between an Athlete with a long lead up to an event or an Athlete who may need to go at a moment's notice is simply whether they go up and down that pyramid at all.

Do we stay in the GPP segment, building a wide base covering all options, or do we go up into SPP territory where we train harder in a more focused manner.

Most folk do better staying in the general stage.

There are many ways to put a program like this together.

My two best examples are the Bootcamp and the Workout of the Day.

Both available from my TrainHeroic page. (CLICK HERE FOR TrainHeroic)

Workout of the Day type programs get some stick as people say “random training = random results “

But what if rather than random, the training was semi structured.

Each session being full body in nature, ticking the push-pull-hinge-squat patterns.

Some sessions though emphasising single limb lifting, other bilateral

Some sessions asking for sideways movement, other staying in the more typical sagittal plane

Some sessions emphasising one energy system, other different energy systems.

It's varied but not random.

Tracking progress can be tricky as the structure is changing.

But progress does come.

People following this type of training increase across all progress markers and find themselves ready for anything.

Not specialised in any way, and rarely too tired and sore they cannot perform.

The Bootcamp program differs in that it is structured with a 3 or a 4 day version periodised over 12 weeks.

The first cycle of this may be fatiguing, and some sessions may leave you a little sore.

However, that's not the intention.

Training is progressive over the 12 weeks before it restarts.

Each of the 4 week blocks should start easy with really only the 4th week being genuinely hard.

This program has had some very experienced trainees say that they have never been as capable after a few cycles of the Bootcamp program.

Final thought

Sports science researcher and former champion natural bodybuilder has literally written the book on hypertrophy, or muscle building.

Brad has done the research and published the evidence that we don’t need to train to failure in order to build muscle.

Which is good news for the “always ready” folk, as pushing into failure really eats into your recovery.

If you want size and strength you can’t go wrong with the good old fashioned 5x5

5 sets of 5 reps, done with a weight you could lift for say 6-8 reps.

Do 3-5 lifts per session, three full body sessions per week and you will grow.

Yeah, you'll feel fatigue, but you'll be able to function, never crippled with fatigue or DOMs

And you’ll get biggerer and strongerer

Simple

Not easy

Regards

Dave Hedges

www.davehedges.net