Injuries are something we all experience when working out. Here is how to prevent and come back from injuries according to Dr Mike Israetel.
Dr Mike Israetel has a PhD in Sport Physiology and is the co-founder of Renaissance Periodization, a YouTube channel focused on hypertrophy. He is the person many bodybuilders turn to when it comes to anything related to building muscle.
As expected, Israetel’s information on how to prevent and come back from injuries is focused on hypertrophy training. Check it out.
How To Prevent and Come Back From Injuries
How to prevent and come back from injuries? These are two different sides of a conversation revolving around injury. To make things easier, let’s divide it into before you injure yourself (how to prevent it), and after injury (how to come back).
Injury Prevention
The first of Israetel’s advice on how to prevent and come back from injuries is simple: don’t be an idiot.
- Warm up, keep your technique clean
Don’t try to challenge yourself with double the weight or double the reps you usually do. “That’s how you get hurt. So if you think it’s dumb, don’t do it.”
Similarly with the previous argument, you should ramp up your volumes and loads slowly. This means:
- Add 2-3 sets per session at most, but aim 1-2 to be safe
- Add no more load than reduces 1 rep in reserve in each week
- Avoid training overlapping soreness – if you must, don’t add extra sets
Israetel also advises you to be vigilant. Pay attention to the signs your body is trying to tell you. If a specific exercise or technique is hurting your joints the more you do them, pause, rack, reevaluate and change if it continues.
Lastly in the injury prevention area, you should deload when you are supposed to.
- Do skip the deload or cut it short
- Don’t add work during this cycle even if you feel the need to train more
Returning from Injuries
What is next on Israetel how to prevent and come back from injuries? If you got injured, this is what you should be doing to come back healthy again according to the hypertrophy doctor.
This is, by no means, what you should do while injured. But rather, if you are doing some other form of training. For example, if you hurt your quads and, after a while, start training calves, hamstrings or glutes.
The golden rule is that your training should not bother the injury at all.
Regarding the injured muscle or area you have:
- Find medical professional and do the surgery/rehab/time away as instructed by the health specialist
- After being cleared for activity, begin with sets of 20-30 reps at 5-10 RIR (reps-in-reserve). Work on your range of motion as well
- After a while you will feel no pain at all using a full range of motion exercises. Begin working up to 3 RIR in 20-30 rep sets
- Slowly add sets and being cycling from MEV (minimum effective volume) to MRV (maximum recoverable volume) in 20-30 rep sets
- Add load in some of those sets to get to 10-20 rep range
- Keep adding load until you hit the 5-10 rep range
If you do this, you should be coming out of an injury without taxing your muscle or area injured and back into your normal training program.
And that is Mike Israetel’s how to prevent and come back from injuries. If you want to see a deeper explanation or see the arguments above with Mike’s acid humour, click on the video below.
VIDEO – How To Prevent and Come Back From Injuries
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Image Sources
- Barbell fail: Roman Odintsov on Pexels
- Dumbbel bicep curl: Andrea Piacquadio / Pexels