346: I Hurt My Back: How To Bounce Back From An Injury

Introduction 

You're listening to Biceps After Babies Radio Episode 346.

Hello and welcome to Biceps After Babies Radio. A podcast for ladies who know that fitness is about so much more than pounds lost or PR's. It's about feeling confident in your skin and empowered in your life. I'm your host Amber Brueseke, a registered nurse, personal trainer, wife and mom of four. Each week my guests and I will excite and motivate you to take action in your own personal fitness as we talk about nutrition, exercise, mindset, personal development and executing life with conscious intention. If your goal is to look, feel and be strong and experience transformation from the inside out, you my friend are in the right place. Thank you for tuning in. Now, let's jump into today's episode.

Hey, hey, hey, welcome back to another episode of Biceps After Babies Radio. I'm your host, Amber Brueseke, and today's topic is one that I surprisingly haven't done a ton of podcast episodes on. I did do a really great interview with Dr. Susie Spirlock back at episode 340. We'll link that in the show notes. But that was a really great episode about training through pain. But this topic of injuries is not one that I have addressed a ton on the podcast, and I think that the universe is maybe telling me that it's time to change that because I have been struggling with my own injuries recently. And so I thought, what a great time to come and I can kind of share a little bit of my personal side of my struggle with injuries and how I'm dealing with it both mentally and physically. And then we can talk about injuries in general, and maybe if you're going through an injury, some of the things to be considering as you go through that rehab process.  

And I do want to acknowledge as I dive into this topic of one of the reasons I haven't really talked about it a ton on the podcast, and it's because it really isn't my area of expertise. You know, there are physical therapists. This is what they live and breathe, and they're trained to deal with injuries. And injuries are such a unique, specific situation, right? Like your injury is not the same as my injury.  The reason I got my injury is not the same as the reason that you got your injury. And so I do think it's really important to leave education on topics to the people who are actually the experts in it, which is why I had Dr. Susie Spirlock on the podcast. So again, 340 is such a great episode because she actually comes from it from a doctor of physical therapy perspective. So, you know, that's one of the reasons I haven't talked a lot about injuries. But as I've been dealing with, you know, I'll kind of talk about my injury history and some more injuries in the last couple of years, and I just had this back injury that I will talk a lot about. It opened up this door of a way for me to approach injuries in a way that felt authentic to me and not like I'm trying to be a physical therapist, which I'm not. So I thought that this was a perfect example of I can speak from my own experience. I can speak from what I've learned and what I've figured out along my journey. And I'm not necessarily speaking from a place of expertise so much as just, hey, I'm in this with you. Those of you who have struggled with injuries, like it sucks. And I just want to come from that place of here's my experience. Here's what I've learned along the way. Not that you should take this as any kind of blueprint for how you should deal with your injuries. 

Weightlifting has low injury rates, improves overall strength  03:18 

And I do think that this is such an important topic. As I've shared about my back injury, which I'll get into in just a minute, it's been interesting to me the outpouring of people just really grateful that I'm even willing to talk about this. I had someone make the comment that so many times influencers who, you know, do so much in the gym, they don't share this side of the reality. If they get injured, they're not talking about it. They're not sharing about it. I don't know because it makes them feel weak. Or if, and this is maybe the reason because I actually hesitated before sharing about my back injury, is that as somebody who's trying to get more people to lift weights and more women to get into the gym and more women to lift heavy weights, the last thing I want to do is to stoke any of the fear that tends to be in society around lifting weights and how it's dangerous and how you're going to hurt yourself. And I think people have so much of that fear already, society builds that into you, that the last thing I want to do is to stoke any of that fear for people to look at my account and to see that I got injured and be like, see, I told you weight lifting is super dangerous and we shouldn't do it. So that was a little bit of my hesitation of is like, I don't want anybody to not lift weights because they think, oh, it's dangerous. And I do think going into the research and the data on this can be really helpful because the truth is, is if you do any activity, any sport, there is a rate of injury. Runners have a rate of injury, rock climbers, you playing soccer, playing football, playing basketball. And so there's been a lot of research done on the rate of injury per hours played. And that's kind of how they report this metric. And weightlifting actually is one of the lowest rates of injury per hour spent in that sport. You know it's really high on rates of injury, running, soccer, football, basketball, things that a lot of times we're willing to accept some risk. 

Running actually is a surprising one for a lot of people because they don't think of running as a very dangerous sport. But if you're a runner, you probably have dealt with shin splints. You probably have dealt with plantar fasciitis, hamstring injuries, things like that. Running is, you should do it. I'm not saying you shouldn't do it. But I think sometimes we're willing to accept a risk of injury with something like running or playing soccer, or my boys have all gotten way more hurt at basketball. We're willing to accept that for some reason and get what it comes to weightlifting. It's like, oh, that's a dangerous sport. When again, the data shows that for the number of hours done, it is one of the lowest rates of injury. And it improves your ability to be able to not get injured when you're doing things like playing sports, or when you're doing activities of daily living, like picking up your kids, or moving out of the house and moving a couch. The number of people who get injured or have back injuries because they reach down and tweak their back, like picking up the kids, when you're strong, those things don't happen.  

I also want to acknowledge for those of you listening, because this is me, I'm in this boat of where I really strongly identify with an active lifestyle. I really strongly identify with someone who goes to the gym, who works out, who is healthy, who lifts weights. And injuries can really shake that up a lot. And I'll talk about this when I get into the last section, which is where I'll kind of share some of my insights and my lessons that I've learned. But I just want to acknowledge straight up that it is really challenging for those of us who, this is something we love, this is something we identify with, it's something that is part of who we are. And having a big shake up or a shift in your capabilities, or what you're able to do, or what it looks like to go to the gym for you can be really challenging. And so I'll share personally what that's been like for me. But I know that I'm not alone in that.  

My Personal Injury Journey 07:08 

Okay, so I thought I would break this episode into three different sections. The first section, I want to talk about my own personal injury journey, what that's looked like. I kind of want to tell a story of how I recently got injured. Then I want to talk a little bit about the physical recovery process. Again, from my perspective, from what I've learned, from what I've seen. And then I would like to switch over for section number three, we're going to talk about the mental and the emotional side of injury, because I think this is one that it's something that we have to go work through. There is fear, there is some mindset shifts that have to happen during an injury, and I'm in the middle of them right now. So I'd love to share some of that, that inside of more of the mental side of an injury. And then the last thing I'm going to share is just some of my personal key lessons, the takeaways that I've learned from this experience thus far, and kind of share those with you.  

Okay, so let's dive into the first section, which is just sharing a little bit of my personal injury journey. So I've been lifting weights since I was 14. Many of you have listened to the podcast religiously know that my mom took me into the YMCA weight room at age 14, because that's how old you had to be. And she showed me the machine, she showed me the dumbbells. And I, you know, not religiously, but I started lifting weights around 14. I would go, I remember some Saturdays we would go, my mom and my sister, who's two years younger than I, and we would go to the weight room and lift weights. And then, you know, so that was in my high school years, that was definitely inconsistent. And then I got to college and I became much more consistent. 

I took a weightlifting class, I would go to the gym at my school and I would lift weights. And that was definitely a part of who I was. I was also a runner at that time. That's when I ran a marathon. If you've been around long enough, you've probably heard me talk about the one marathon I ran when I was 21. But anyway, so, but I've been weightlifting in some capacity since I was, I've been, I was 14. And it's been really interesting. So I just turned 40 this year. And I would say the two years leading up to this year, I've had more injuries than I've had in like the preceding, what is that? 20 years of lifting? Maybe it's probably more than that. 30 years of lifting. And it's been interesting to actually start to feel some of the effects of aging and see some of the effects of aging as I am. I'm getting older.  

And if you've been around long enough, you've heard me talk about, I think this started maybe two years ago when I had my first bout of golfer's elbow. And that took stupidly long time to rehab and get better. And every time I talk about golfer's elbow or tennis elbow, the difference is like what side of the elbow is on. So golfer's elbow is on the medial side or the side that's like closest to your body. And the tennis elbow is on the outer side. So the lateral side of the elbow. So I had golfer's elbow on the right, on the right arm. So that was medial on the inside of my elbow. Anyway, I had that for a really long time and it took stupid long time to heal. And when I shared about that, so I've heard so many people who have just really struggled with golfer's elbow or tennis elbow. It's just like such a pain in the butt to heal. So anyway, I started with golfer's elbow, was able to use some massage and stretching and was able to figure out like some of the tension that was probably causing that and able to fully rehab that. That is fully rehabbed.  

Find a PT specialized in athletes 10:35 

I then had a shoulder injury and that was the first time I ever saw a PT about an issue. And it was a fantastic experience. I got a really good recommendation. Here's my recommendation for if you're going to go see a PT, not all PTs are the same. And a lot of PTs deal with a certain patient population, which makes a lot of sense. You know, some PTs deal with like an inpatient population, more of acute population. Some PTs are dealing with outpatient and they lean more towards like elderly and mobility issues. You want to find a PT who is very well versed in healthy athletes. And that's a different, it's a different skill set. So that would be my one recommendation. Don't just go see any PT. Make sure you get a recommendation for somebody who is specifically works with athletes. In my case, I found someone who specifically worked with CrossFitters. And I just got this name from actually a lady that my husband works with, another one of the physicians that he works with, she is a CrossFitter. And so she had recommended this PT who had done some PT work for her. And so he was fantastic. I really enjoyed working with him. You know, I show up at the PT and I was, I was surrounded by people who were like 70 plus, but he was fantastic. He knew lifts, he knew CrossFit, he knew, you know, working with an athlete and we were able to rehab that shoulder issue, you know, pretty quickly. So that was a fantastic experience. 

So that was my, that was my shoulder issue. And then I started having this glute issue. So I went back to the same PT. He still fantastic. And, you know, we worked a lot on glute activation and core strengthening because a lot of times those are related, like glutes and core. And so we worked a lot on that. And that's mostly healed. I would say that's like 97% healed. And then unfortunately he moved. I was so sad. Like our very last time that I went to PT with him, he was, he told me, he's like, actually, this is my last week in the clinic. I'm moving to a different clinic, you know, further away. And I was so sad because even though I had, you know, mostly healed this glute injury, I was just sad that I didn't have a PT in my back pocket. So he did give me another name of somebody who also works with athletes. So if I, if I need her in the future, I can use it. But anyway, so I had this glute injury, shoulder injury. I went to this PT. He was really good, worked with me. 

Balance pushing limits and recovery; listen to your body  12:54 

And then brings us up to the most recent injury, which is this back strain that I had. I injured my back squatting. So I kind of want to just share a little bit of the story because, and the reason I'm doing this is because I think one of the lessons, we'll talk about this more when we get to the end where I kind of share some lessons. One of the lessons I'm learning is that as much as I think I'm really good at listening to my body, I think I'm actually really terrible at it. And as I, as I zoom out and I'm able to look at all of the injuries that I've had, this is like the last two years of training. Um, that's not a small number of injuries. And I think if I really was paying attention and I was really listening to my body, I would have heard it a little bit sooner than I did. And, um, that's a lesson that I'm learning and taking away. And I think maybe I wouldn't have had this back strain or I wouldn't have had it as bad had I started listening to my body a little bit earlier. 

So the reason I'm kind of sharing this whole lead up to the injury is because I think there were multiple times that my body was trying to communicate with me that I wasn't really listening. And that's something I need to do better about in the future. And I'm hoping to prevent you from maybe having the same mistake. 

Now, as I say that one of the concepts that I, I talk a lot about with my clients is continuums and how we often go to extremes either way. Like we go way too far to one side or way too far to the other side. And where we're trying to get usually is in the middle, right? The middle way. And, and, but we tend to go to extremes. And so it's, I hesitate with like telling anybody this, this is the way to solve this problem because it kind of depends on where you are in that extreme to how you solve the problem. So let me concrete this a little bit to like actually what I'm talking about with injuries. 

I think if we're talking about extremes on one side is somebody who doesn't really listen to their body, pushes harder than they probably should, um, just is go, go, go hard all the time. And then on the other extreme is people who are like so scared to injure themselves that they just are really timid and they don't do a whole lot and they never push themselves anywhere near to failure or anywhere near to their, their capabilities. Right? So those would be the two extremes. And obviously we want to be in the middle there. We want to be able to listen to our body and hear what it's saying to us, but at the same time, be able to push to the levels that we need to, to be able to make progress. Right? So it's that middle way. 

So for me, as someone who leans way too far to one side where I tend to probably push harder than I should don't listen to my body as well as I should. The solution for me is to pull back more rest, more recovery, lighter weights, more modification. That's, that's my solution. But I hesitate to say that that is a solution for everybody because people on the other end of the spectrum who you already have a hard time pushing yourself, you already have a challenge of like getting uncomfortable or feeling that fear of injury. You may think, Oh, so the solution is just to pull back even further. And that's not the solution for you. The solution for you is to realize more of what you're capable of, be able to learn how to push a little bit harder, be able to learn how to get a little more uncomfortable and get closer to that middle way. So I would, I would venture to guess that most, most of you listening maybe are more like me, but I, there's probably some of you listening who are like, no, Amber, I really identify with being really scared or not at all knowing my capabilities. And so it's really hard for me to know how much to push because I don't know where those, those limits are. So I would just say, you know, knowing where you are in that continuum, the next steps to be able to get you more towards that middle way, your steps may be different than mine. Mine are, I probably need to listen more. I probably need to recover more. I probably need to pull back the intensity a little bit, but that may not be the solution for you.  

CrossFit Open sparked focus on strength, leading to injury  16:24 

Okay. So the story about my back injury kind of starts back in March, where if you're part of the CrossFit community, you know, back in March, we do the CrossFit Open and the CrossFit Open starts the CrossFit season. And there's a series of steps that if you want to make it to the CrossFit Games, which is like the Super Bowl of CrossFit, you have to pass through these different, you know, steps of the process. And it all starts with the Open. And the Open is called the Open because it's open to everybody in the whole community. And then the top people from the Open make it to the quarterfinals, from the quarterfinals to the semifinals, and then from the semifinals, you qualify for the games. So the Open's really fun because everybody in the CrossFit community does these three workouts, three week, weekends in a row. And so you do things like Friday night lights, where you have your whole gym get together and you do these workouts together and everybody scores each other. And then you can put your score into the computer and you can rank yourself against, you know, everybody who's the same age as you, same gender, location, and then you get these like rankings. And it's just kind of a way to like benchmark how it is that you're doing with your fitness level.  

So it's super fun. And I did the CrossFit Open in March, did really well with it, but I, it was very obvious to me as I was doing the exercises that my cardiovascular fitness is really good. My technique and like gymnastics and all of those things is really good. Like my one lagging thing is my strength. That is something that I'm pretty strong, but not, not really strong. And so coming away from that, it was, I was kind of had a fire lit under me of saying, you know what, I have lost muscle mass as I've gone and done CrossFit. I would say the most muscle mass that I ever had on my body was when I was doing power lifting. I probably had the most like fat on my body as well, but I was, when I was the strongest, I had a lot of muscle mass on my body. And as I've gone and done more CrossFit over the last, what, six years, I've lost some of that muscle mass. And, you know, that's just kind of a reality of doing more cardio, not lifting quite as heavy on a, such a predictable schedule, doing less hypertrophy work. And it's not a bad thing. It just is a reality of, of what's happened as I, as I've included more cardio into my routine with CrossFit. So I have less muscle mass. 

And so after the open, I, I kind of was like, you know, what would be really fun to do is to take a period of time and focus more on hypertrophy training, go get back to like bodybuilding style workouts, get back to some strength workouts, do some of my own programming. You know, I've been doing CrossFit programming for six years. It would be kind of fun to do my own thing for a while and really focus on building some muscle and building some strength. And so that's what I did. And I, you know, would do my own programming like three to four days a week, and then I would hop in and do class like one to two days a week. And that's kind of what I did all throughout the summer. And then as we were entering into the winter, I kind of was reevaluating what I wanted to do. And it was kind of my plan to see, you know, let's, let's actually go into a bulk over the winter. Let's push this. I built muscle, but like, and I built strength over the last, you know, six months, but let's continue to progress that with adding in more food, going into a bulk and really starting to push the weights. And I was, I was really feeling excited because it's been a really long time since I've done a, uh, over 200 pound back squat, but with all of my training and work that I've done, I actually hit a 200 pound back squat, and then I hit a 205 pound back squat. And I was actually like getting, rubbing up to be able to hopefully hit a 210 back squat. 

Ignoring early warning signs led to a sudden back injury  20:00 

So that kind of brings us up to the point where I had the injury. Um, but before I get to that day, I do want to kind of preface it with some other times when my, a little before that, where my body was still trying to communicate with me and I wasn't quite listening. So I think it was either Wednesday or Thursday. It must've been Wednesday the day before I, I, so I injured my back on a Monday. So the Wednesday before I, we were doing deficit RDLs and I just noticed like, I, I was kind of conservative on the weight. I didn't want to push it too much. Cause I could just like, I was not feeling super strong. If that makes sense. It wasn't nothing hurt. Nothing was speaking to me. It just, I didn't want to push it too hard. And I was just being conservative on my weights. Um, it was a little, you know, it's a, it's a longer range of motion when you do deficit. And I just haven't done a ton of that. And so I was conservative on my weights, felt pretty good about it. Nothing, nothing hurt, nothing injured, whatever.  

Friday I was doing my own training and I had RDLs programmed as well, not deficit, just regular RDLs. And I went and I put on the weight that I I've been progressing with this week over week. And so I went on the, put on the weight that I was supposed to do. No, I actually didn't ever do that. I started warming up. And as I was warming up and getting closer to that weight that I was supposed to do, I was like, my, my back doesn't feel great. Like it doesn't hurt, but it just feels tired. It doesn't feel as strong. Like it just doesn't feel great. And so I scaled back the weight pretty significantly. So I will say I did listen to my body, kind of give myself a little kudos. I did listen to my body. I think I ended up doing, I think I was supposed to do like 135 or something for the weight and I ended up doing like 85. So I, I pretty significantly scaled that weight. But my back just didn't feel great. And so that was Friday.  

And so then we come into Monday and I've been doing this squat progression the last four weeks and was really excited to try and hit a top weight of 210 for a single. And so I did everything right. And, you know, looking back, I don't know, maybe, I don't know. I don't feel like there is a place where I'm like, gosh, I really should have listened. I really should have turned around at that point. Because up to this point, I was kind of listening to my body. I heard it like I had modified. I wasn't trying to push anything crazy and I did everything right. I warmed up that day. I did some glute activators, which is really important for me as I go into my squat is making sure I'm activating my glutes and did all the good warmup stuff. And then it's time to the next part of the warmup is to get under the bar and start warming up the weight. And so I did my set with the empty bar. Felt totally fine. Did a set at 85. Felt totally fine. Put 105 to the bar, right? I'm just, I'm just warming up. Put 105 on the bar. Very first rep. Back, like seizes up, throw my back on the very first rep. It was just as I like, I descended, hit the bottom and it was just like something tweaked. And I ended up dropping the weight behind me. And the coach was like, what the heck? And we're like warming up, right? Like, why are you bailing on a squat? We're like warming up. And I was just like, at that point, it was just like, you know, my back, I knew something was wrong and my back was injured. And so like that, that was the moment. And it was, it's frustrating. 

You know, the first thing that goes through is like, oh, I'm not going to be able to hit my 210 back squat. I'm not probably going to be able to squat for a really long time. And you know, all this progress that I've made, I'm going into a bulk. I think I was like two weeks into a bulk, um, at that point, you know, it was just like all of these things that had kind of culminated for like all this progress. And you just immediately feel like you're being set back. Um, so I spent the rest of the day, obviously I didn't do anything else. I just really tried to stretch and like, see if I could just kind of work out the pain that was happening to my back and, you know, just spent a bunch of time stretching.  

So that was the injury itself. And the next couple of days were pretty awful because not only did I have this like back injury, but I had this like chest congestion. We had this illness go through my house. My daughter had pneumonia and it kind of went through the entire house. No one else thankfully got that sick, but I was definitely coughing a bunch. And so coughing like a deep chest coughing, uh, every single time would like spasm my back and I would cough and then my back would spasm. And it was just, it was awful trying to sleep at night was terrible because between my back and my cough was just, just not happening. And so those first couple of days were really, really awful. And then every time I would get up out of bed, uh, my back would seize up and it would hurt. And it just, you know, injuries just, just, they just suck. Can we just stop for a moment and just recognize they suck. 

The Physical Recovery Process 24:54 

So that's the story. That's what happened. And the next section I want to talk about is what the physical recovery process has been like for me. So the first thing that I immediately started doing is just resting, um, but also punctuated with like stretching and mobility. So it's this balance you don't ever want to, well, I shouldn't say ever again, this is, this is my experience. And this is what I have heard from the PTs that I've gone through is that you want to rest, but you don't want to immobilize, you know, quick story. My son, I mentioned I have three boys, they all play basketball. We do basketball all day, every day. But one of my sons rolled his ankle and it was a really, really long recovery process. And it was, it was kind of a pain in the butt. Like he just had this ankle pain that was like not going away. We ended up going to the pediatrician a couple times, got x-rays, like the whole nine yards. And the pediatrician ended up putting him on crutches because it was, it was so painful. And then we got a referral over to PT and it was so interesting. We go into the PT's office. I have my son who's on his crutches. And the very first thing that PT does is he looks at us and he goes, why on earth is that boy on crutches? And I was like, I don't know. Like the pediatrician gave it to us. Uh, he's like, get him off of those crutches right now. One of the worst things that you can do is immobilize a joint that's been injured. He's like, it just prolongs healing. It prolongs the whole process. Like he needs to be moving that joint and he movement needs to happen from like day one of injury.  

And so I think sometimes we're so afraid about like re-injury, which is a valid fear that we just try to immobilize and not move it at all. And that's one of the worst things that we can do. So I had that on my mind, you know, I want to rest. I'm, I'm recovering this muscle, but I don't want to immobilize it. So that was the very first thing I was doing is I was continuing to move it. I was continuing to stretch mobility work and, you know, just keep, keep the blood flowing, keep the joints moving, uh, keep, keep the back from being completely immobilized.  

Now, the hard thing about any injury, and this is my experience of like one of the hardest things is knowing that balance of how hard to push yourself, knowing that we, we want to get back to movement. We want to get back to, you know, a full range of, of everything we were able to do before. We want to have introduced movement. We want to introduce load. We want to introduce all these things, but we don't want to do it so fast that we're not getting that recovery that needs to happen before we can get back to those things. And so that balance to me is one of the hardest parts of recovering an injury is like knowing where that balance is between pushing enough, but not pushing too hard to be able to have that progression of getting better. And I think for people who are even, you know, less experienced, that's one of the reasons that having a PT can be so valuable is because a PT can kind of walk, help you walk that line of, of finding the middle ground between those two extremes. 

Identifying and addressing root causes of injury  27:54 

The other thing that's really important when we come to the physical recovery process is trying to figure out why the injury happened in the first place. And this again is where a professional can be really helpful because oftentimes what caused the injury is not at all what you thought caused the injury or what's causing the pain isn't really what is causing the pain. And so a great example of this is when I had my glute pain and I went and I was talking with the physical therapist, a lot of what we came on to was the glute pain was caused by a glute, a weakness in the glutes, a relative weakness of the glutes in relative relation to the other muscles and then also relatively weak abs in relation to the other muscles. And being able to actually address the root cause of what was causing the pain was what allowed me to like rehab it and go through therapy that actually fixed the actual root problem. And so it's the same thing with my back. That's been something I've been really aware of, of, you know, I don't think my form was, had anything to do with it. This wasn't really a heavy weight. You know, I don't think I was that out of form to where, you know, 105 pound back squat. I did the form so improperly that that was what caused my pain, I think. 

And, you know, that's what I've been trying to figure out is like, well, what did, what did cause this injury? And from the research that I've been able to do, what, you know, reading from other people's experiences and my own experience with PT so far is I think that this glute insufficiency or this glute weakness that I have is still something that I got to improve on my abs and the bracing of my abs and the strength of my abs is also something I need to improve on. I think anytime, you know, a lot of the research I was doing is like back is supported by your glutes and your abs. Like those are the two muscle groups that support the lower back. And so if you're having back issues, oftentimes it is a glute issue and or an ab issue. And I think both of those are probably key for me. And I was doing really good with my rehab and my exercises for a long time. And then I got away from them because I was like, oh, it's my glute is basically healed. So I don't need to do those anymore. And I think that that was wholly inaccurate. 

And I think that I need to get back to, and I have been getting back to it. So anyway, the physical recovery process, it's really important to figure out why you injured yourself to the best of your ability. And if you need to invite a professional to be able to help you with that, that can be a really valuable part of having a PT is like, they can actually look at your movement patterns. They can look at your muscle, relative muscle weaknesses. For me, my left glute is weaker than my right glute. And which was so interesting to figure out when I went to the PT, he had me do like a single leg glute hold. And I like, I can even see it to where when I tried to do on the left, my hip dropped lower, I couldn't maintain my hip height, but just on that left side, right side was totally fine. Left side was, was much weaker. And so those imbalances in strength can over time, you know, the whole body is a whole kinetic chain. It all plays one after the other. If there's a problem in that kinetic chain in injuries or pain can show up down the line. And that's kind of what I think has happened. 

Recovery demands a slow and intentional progression 31:06 

So for me, you know, returning to movement has looked like, well, let me kind of talk about the timeframe. So we are at the time that I'm recording this, we are, I just finished through, I've been out, my back was injured three weeks ago. So I'm entering week four of, of rehab and recovery. 

So let me kind of talk about what the timeline has looked like. Again, this is just my experience, my timeline. That first week, I, I took several days off of the gym. I think I didn't go to the gym for like three days, just in that like really acute phase when my back is just like hurting a ton, just tried to keep movement up on my own, doing a lot of stretching at home and then by the end of that week, I went to the gym for the first time. But again, all I was doing was just stretching, light movement. I'm not even like, I couldn't even really get down into a squat. I think by the end of that first week, I was able to get down back into a full squat, but it took time for me to warm it up and be able to like slowly convince my body that I could get into a squat without injuring it. There definitely is that mental side of it. That'll get to in just a minute, but the, the brain kind of holding you back from, from doing that. So it's, I kind of had to coax my body into this is okay. You can loosen up, we can get into this.  

So by the end of that week, I still light movement moving into the next week until week two. Um, again, lots of just light movement, stretching, uh, starting to do a little bit of like rehab work in terms of like some glute exercises, just light things with body weight only. I don't even think I was squatting body weight at that point in week two. And, you know, I, I was on a good trajectory. I could feel like it was getting better that second week. I didn't have quite so much pain, like getting out of bed in the morning. So I could tell, you know, what we were doing was working and then moving into week three. So last week was the first week that I went back to class for the very first time. And boy, was that a humbling experience. Everything that I did was modified, lower weights, lower reps. Like everything is so slow and even that's where I should be. But as, as someone who was always like push my body, always try to win the workout, right? That's, that's the energy that I tend to bring to my workouts. It is very humbling to modify everything and do everything slower and not care at all about my time that I'm getting. And you know, it's, it's good, but it is humbling.  

So I did class a couple times last week when I felt like I could modify the movements. There wasn't a whole lot of hinging, things like that. And then I've gotten back into doing some of my own lifting. Very, very, very, very, very lightweight. So for example, here I am in week four of recovery. And like today I did five pound goblet squats. Like we moved from like body weight goblet squats to five pound goblet squats with heels elevated to like help with my back. So I'm, you know, in some ways it feels like, oh my gosh, I'm starting over again. I'm starting with body weight squats, just getting a full range of motion. And then this week, woohoo! we added a five pound weight, but that's, that's the key to recovery is like slow progression. And you know, what else did I do today? So I did some banded glute bridges. I did banded clamshells. Um, I did some bird dogs. So a lot of like rehab exercise type things. And then a couple of like working sets of, oh, I did a PVC good mornings, not even a weight yet. We're just doing like good mornings with zero weight. Those were my two, like “working exercises” was five pound goblet squats and a PVC pipe good morning.  

Mental and Emotional Side of Injury 34:48 

But I am really grateful that I'm getting back to actually being able to move without pain. And last week I would say I was about 90% healed. So like during that week three of, you know, post injury, I would say that I was about 90%. And this week I feel like I'm like 95, which is actually, I feel better than I even thought I was going to feel last week. I really was kind of saying, okay, last week, it's probably going to be three to four months before I'm able to like fully recover. And this week has been a lot better. I'm really optimistic that maybe it won't be four months and maybe it will be just a, you know, I don't know, a couple months, but there is part of it. And we'll move now to the next section, which is the mental and emotional side of injury. There is sort of that aspect of expectation that is really valuable. And just me expecting that this is going to take a long time to heal has allowed me to kind of step back, surrender, allow this process to be what it needs to be without feeling like I have to micromanage it or it has to be as fast as possible. Or I'm going to be so disappointed if I'm not back to squatting, you know, 200 pounds in three weeks time. 

So that's definitely a part of the mental aspect. I talked a little bit about fear of re-injury, but I don't, I want to dive into that because I think that is such a huge aspect of getting back into the gym after an injury is the fear of re-injuring whatever it is that you've been dealing with and has taken such a long time to repair that it's just, it looms large of that fear of getting back under the bar. And do I want to squat again? Am I ever going to, am I ever going to heavy squat again? And, you know, that's kind of, I'm trying to work with that fear and allow it to guide me. Like, I think our fears can be helpful, especially for someone who tends to push a little too hard that maybe a little bit of fear is good for me to not kill myself. But at the same time, I want to get back under the bar. Like I want to squat again. I don't know that I want to, I don't know what it looks like for me in terms of how heavy I'll squat in the future. I think that's something I'm still open to looking different moving forward than it has in the past. And, you know, maybe my plus 200 squatting days are not going to be as large of amount as it was in the previous years. And that's a little bit of just accepting where it is that I'm at and working within the reality that I'm working within.  

But I don't want to be afraid. I don't want to be afraid that I'm going to hurt myself. And so that's, it's really important to me to continue doing the movement, right? Like I said, body weight squats, moving to five pound, moving to 10 pound, and really slowly progressing that until I can get a bar back on my back. Because that's really important to me. I want to get back to that. I love the gym. I love squatting. I'm not really, I mean, squatting is not my favorite, but I want to be able to squat. Like I want that movement pattern. I want to be able to do that. It's an important part of strength for me. And so I am addressing that fear head on. I'm not letting that fear stop me, but I think it's important to talk about because it is a very real thing that people have to work back through. Is this that fear of, gosh, I don't want to hurt myself again. And I think setting realistic goals and a realistic timeframe for recovery can help prevent some of that frustration, right? I've just kind of accepted that if I'm not back to like squatting above a hundred until like the open next year, like that, that'll be good progress for me. And if I do faster than that, great, but I'm really setting myself up for like no expectations of what the recovery process is going to look like, because you just don't know. You just don't know how your body's going to recover. You don't know how long it's going to take. And so there's just a little bit of surrender and allowance of it is what it is. This is what's happening. 

I can really, it can get mad about it, which is not going to fix or solve anything. Or I can just allow it to take the time that it's going to take, which if you've done MACROS 101, you know, that that's a refrain that I use a lot. I think making peace with like, this is going to take the time that it takes and me getting mad about it or upset about it or frustrated with it, isn't going to make it go any faster. It's just going to make the process more miserable. And that's kind of what I tried to lean into. I've just seen like, what are the good things, the good aspects of this process? It's forced me to slow down. It's forced me to listen to my body. It's forced me to do a lot more mobility and stretching than I have done in the past. It's forced me to, you know, shore up some of the weaknesses that I have been ignoring that will be really important for me moving forward. It has allowed me to have empathy for people who are older and continuing to try and train and how frustrating it is when you used to be able to do things in your younger years that you can't do as you get older. Like, I get that a lot more and I'm only 40, right? And imagine, I can only imagine those of you who are 50 or in your 60s or in your 70s, like this is only going to continue to progress in terms of like my age. I'm only going to get older at this point. And being able to empathize and understand what that's like, like I get it more now.  

Identity isn’t defined by achievements; it's who you are inside  39:49 

And then I think the other mental side of the injury that I've had that I kind of spoke to at the beginning of the episode is just this identity crisis of who am I without this thing that I do? And this has been a lesson that I feel like I've been presented multiple times, which is probably saying something that is like, this is something that I need to really address and learn. And every time I think I've learned it, I'm showed in another area of my life of maybe I haven't made as much progress as I thought. But this idea of I am not what I do. And I think it's really, it's been easy for me in the past to really define myself by the achievements I do, the actions I take, the goals I hit, and really learning to separate out myself from like, I am not the things that I do. I am not the weight that I lift. I am not my body. I am not any of those external things. I am who I am regardless of any of those. If I didn't lift another weight ever in my life, I would still be Amber. I would still be the same person. And it's really hard sometimes when we take our identity and we mix it up with the things that we do. And then those things are taken away from us or we can't do those things anymore.  

And I know some of you have probably had that experience in maybe this context and maybe in other contexts as well, is where you have this identity of this is the person I am. And then that's stripped from you or taken from you, or you can't do that thing anymore. And it can be really hard to separate out who I am from what I do. And so this has been an opportunity for me to be able to do some of that work of, no, even if I don't lift weights, like I can still coach people to lift weights. I can still teach people to lift weights. I'm still the same person. I still have the same knowledge. I still have still the same me. It's just what I do is a little bit different.  

My Person Key Lessons and Takeaways 41:43 

And so that leads me into the last section, which is some of the key lessons and takeaways that I've had from this experience. I think I've used the word a couple of times of surrender. And I think that has definitely been a lesson that I have learned is just this ability to be able to surrender, accept, and not try to fight what is. Being able to make peace with what is, even though it sucks, even though if I had the choice, I would never have chosen to get injured, but it happened. And I can either be mad about it, or I can accept that it is what it is. And I can work within it to make the best of the situation. And so there's been a lot of the lessons of just surrendering and allowing it to look different than what I thought it should look like. That's a really good lesson for me as well. 

I think so often we think we know what it should look like, what the past look like, how fast it should be, and all the steps. And it's just been a really good lesson of releasing all of that, of saying, I don't know what the recovery process looks like. I'm going to take it one step at a time. I have no idea how long this is going to take. I have no idea how long it will be until I'm able to squat again, but I'm just going to take it a day at a time and just keep taking one step forward. And I think that's such an important lesson for me personally to be able to learn. 

Adapting training intensity ensures longevity and recovery as we age  42:47 

I also think I am taking a step back and learning more about my body as I age and as I need more recovery and making adjustments to how hard I push. In the past, I can push hard five days in a row. I can do five hard training days in a row, take two days off over the weekend, and I'm good to go. And that's been fine for a lot of years. And I think that that pace is probably… We're getting to the point where it's a little bit too much for my body and I need some days off and I need some days that I'm doing more active recovery and I need some more days that I'm doing cardio and maybe not stressing my body in the same way with heavy lifting. And so this has been an opportunity for me to reevaluate what my programming is going to look like moving forward and recognizing that as you get older, our ability to be able to recover is just decreased. And if we don't change the intensity, you get to the point where you start having these nagging injuries, which is kind of what I feel like I've seen. So as sad as it is to say 40 is different than the 30s, it is. And I'm having to reckon with that and make changes moving forward with what my programming is going to look like so that I can continue to train in my 50s and 60s and 70s. 

Redefining success and separating self-worth from performance  44:01 

And then I think that last piece of just redefining what success is and being able to separate out my self-worth from my physical performance… You know, this is going to sound really stupid to some of you and it is such a small moment, but it was actually a really important learning moment for me. So I think I've done class twice. Maybe I've done class like twice. And like I said, I completely modified. Everything is scaled. Reps are scaled. Weight is scaled. Time is… Everything's scaled, right? I'm just trying to move right now. And so I did one of the workouts, you know, completely scaled, substituted exercises for some of the exercises. I just did the workout, but it was very much not the workout. And, you know, part of me at that point was like, well, I'm just not going to put my score in. Like, why would I put my score in? Like, first of all, I didn't even really do the workout. Like, it was like a completely different workout. It's not a good time. It's, you know, why would I even like put that in? And it was an important moment for me to again practice separating out my self-worth from what I do.  

And so I did. I took my score and I put it in and it wasn't a good score and I had to scale to everything and I wrote that in the thing. But it was, it seems like such a small thing for me to log my score on Wattify on the whiteboard so that like everybody can see it. But for someone who like really prides themselves in going balls to the walls and working hard and being at the top of the leaderboard, that was a really important moment for me to say, you know what? Like, that's what I did. That was my best. Today that I did my best and I can be proud of my best even if in comparison to other people, it's not comparable to their best. It's not as high as their best or as, you know, fast as their best or whatever, right? This idea that like in order for it to be good enough, for what I do to be good enough, it has to be in some comparison to other people. And so that was actually, it seems like such a small moment, but for me to go and put my score on the whiteboard and to put that into Wattify, even when it wasn't awesome, was a really important defining moment for me of just saying, hey, this is my best. This is where I'm at and I can be proud of my best even though it's not what my best used to be. 

Avoid comparing today’s self to past versions of yourself  46:12 

And I think, I say this to my clients a lot, that sometimes the most insidious comparison that we do is not to other people, although that is very insidious and not helpful, but some of the most insidious comparison we do is to a former version of ourself. And it's insidious because we think we can compare. It's like, it's me versus me. Me today versus me 10 years ago. Like, that's the same me. Like, why can't I compare those? So it's really insidious because it seems logical to compare those things, but you still can't compare. Like, you today is not the same version of you. You're older. You're in a different situation. Your training experience is different. Like, it's just different. We can't compare it. And so that's an important lesson that I had to remind myself of, of like, I can't compare what I'm able to lift today to what I was able to lift four weeks ago. It's different. Like, it's not comparable. And the goal is for me to always just be giving my best. And today, that is what my best looked like. And it looked very different than it looked four weeks ago, but I can still be proud that that is my best. 

So again, this is like such a small micro moment that you may think is really dumb that I put my score on the whiteboard. But for me, it was like a very conscious decision of I am not the things that I do. This doesn't have any bearing. The fact that I'm at the bottom of the leaderboard has no bearing on my value as a person, on my effort that I was able to give in that experience. And so that was a really important moment for me to not just skip out and not just like not write my score on the whiteboard, which would have been really easy to do, but to own it and to say, this is my best right now.  

The injury has led to growth, learning, and acceptance 47:47 

Okay. So to wrap this up, I hope that maybe if you have an injury that you're feeling validated and I want to offer that solidarity, if you're listening to this with a current injury, that it is, it's, it's, I wish you didn't have to go through it. I wish I didn't have to go through it. But at the same time, there are amazing things that I'm being able to pull away from this experience. And if it has to happen, then I might as well learn some things from it. I might as well come out the other side of this injury with more knowledge, a better relationship with myself, a better relationship with my body, shoring up some of those, maybe those holes that I have in my training. I guess you could say I'm choosing to look on the bright side and recognize that this is just a small blip. It's an annoying blip. I wish I could get back to things really, really quickly, but it is just a blip. And just like my other injuries have healed, this injury will heal as well. It might take time. It might take longer than I think it needs to take or I want it to take, but it will get better. I can trust my body to be able to do that. And I'm just kind of along for the ride doing my best along the way.  

So again, this is just my experience and my story that I'm sharing. If you want more from an expert, go back to listen to 340 with Dr. Susie Spirlock, because that's a fantastic episode. And then next week, we're going to have a special episode with my friends, Natalie and Heidi from Butter Your Macros, because they are a little bit older than me. They're 46 and 45. I just turned 40, but we are all starting to notice this, that our bodies don't respond the way that they used to in the past. And we've had to pull back volume and we've had to pull back intensity. And we thought it'd be really good to get on and have a conversation about that so that we can kind of share the things that we've learned, what we're experiencing. Know that you're not alone if you're in the older age bracket and how we are dealing with it, how we are making changes to our training, how we are making changes to the intensity and volume and recovery and what that looks like for us, because it is a reality for us and for many of you as we get older and want to continue to train and want to continue to stay healthy and want to continue to stay strong, but it has to look different as you get older. 

So anyway, you can look forward to that episode next week. And I think that that wraps everything up. Hopefully, this was helpful. Hopefully, it was insightful. You got to learn a little bit about me and about what I'm going through. And hopefully, it makes you feel a little less alone if you are struggling with an injury as well. That wraps up this episode of Biceps After Babies Radio. I'm Amber. Now go out and be strong, because remember, my friend, you can do anything. 

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