Last February, I was attempting to complete the Smolov squat program and ended up injuring my hip (my best guess at what I did was a partially torn Iliofemoral ligament). Upon attempting to return to training, I incurred first a low back injury, then re-injured my hip, and then injured the back of my knee around the gastroc medial head origin. All of these injuries were connective tissue related, and my best guess as to why they happened was that my body’s connective tissue structures were not adapted to the level of demand I was placing on them.
Now that the above injuries have healed to a reasonable extent, I want to start training again. This time I don’t intend to make the same mistake of putting more stress on my connective tissue than my body can handle. Instead, I intend to start with an anatomical adaptation phase. However, I have no idea how to train for the goal of connective tissue adaptation.
Has anyone ever done any sort of connective tissue adaptation work? What sort of methods are effective for connective tissue adaptation AND have a low risk of re-injury?
How’s your technique? Bad technique will put extra strain on certain connective tissues. Connective tissues get stronger with time. You just have to keep training without getting injured. Were you using Smolov the second time too?
[quote]Wild_Iron_Gym wrote:
How’s your technique? Bad technique will put extra strain on certain connective tissues. Connective tissues get stronger with time. You just have to keep training without getting injured. Were you using Smolov the second time too? [/quote]
My form used to be pretty bad around the time I injured my hip - I had really bad core stabilization, poor glute recruitment, and weak hamstrings. I’ve worked on all of those a lot, and my form has improved a lot. The last three injuries have been incurred while using very good form on my lifts.
In fact, the second time I injured my hip, I was just tinkering around with my squat form with a mere 95 lbs. During that period of time, I was re-adding squats to my training after my back injury was sufficiently better, and was doing sets of 15-20 reps with around 200 pounds with no hip issues. The only way I can POSSIBLY even imagine how I could have re-injured my hip on a 95 pound squat is taking a holistic perspective - the week during which I re-injured my hip was literally the most stressful week of my entire life. My back injury may have contributed to my hip re-injury as well. Either way, the fact that I was able to re-injure myself with such a small amount of weight was incredibly disconcerting and makes me want to be very conservative with my training approach.
I realize that strengthening connective tissue is a gradual process, but I feel like there might be certain techniques that I could use to strengthen my CT without incurring too much stress, for example doing training with little or no eccentric or isometric contractions - such as sled pulls. I also had some thoughts of doing heavy isometric holds for CT adaptation, but that might be risking injury.
How well do you warmup? A big part of what warmup does is get blood flow to your joints. Also, high reps might be your issue. Most people fatigue with that many reps and form gets worse and worse as you get closer to the end of the set. Most injuries happen with sub maximal weights.
[quote]Wild_Iron_Gym wrote:
How well do you warmup? A big part of what warmup does is get blood flow to your joints. Also, high reps might be your issue. Most people fatigue with that many reps and form gets worse and worse as you get closer to the end of the set. Most injuries happen with sub maximal weights.[/quote]
My warm-up is totally meticulous. It consists of foam rolling, mobility work and active stretching, static stretching my hip flexors and piriformis, and activation drills and remedial movements. I always do a specific warm-up for my first lift, and will usually start very light. If I don’t feel particularly well, I might do five warm up sets with just the bar before putting any weight on.
I agree with your statement about most injuries occuring with sub-maximal weight. The initial injury was definitely an accumulated one that happened as a result of pushing myself through a lot of pain, tightness, and other signals telling myself to stop. When I was doing the high-rep sets of squats, I was trying to re-inforce the motor patterns, but I realize a more effective way to do that would have been to do relatively light singles focusing completely on form.
In the past couple hours, I actually just realized that I have a habit that is incredibly detrimental to my recovery, especially my hip (which has been the most persistent and nagging injury). I am going rock climbing at my college’s rec center about six days a week to compensate for my inability to train. I take a lot of falls and drops from ten or more feet. This is probably putting WAY more stress on my hips than heavy squatting. I need to change that immediately.
I would like to know what a typical workout looks like for you. Odds are you are doing way too much and not going heavy enough to elicite connective tissue adaptations. Higher volume w/ lower weight does not stimulate anywhere near the same amount of intra/intermuscular co-ordination needed for tendons and ligaments to get a training effect as max effort work. There is not enough tension developed with sub-maximal weights.
Sounds like its a little to late now but healing up should be your number 1 priority. Then you shoulde probably re-evaluate how you have been training and see if the above reasons are the problem.
In Supertraining, it’s noted that ‘eastern bloc’ weightlifters would often do sets of 50-100 reps with the aim of building up connective tissue.
However, I doubt that your connective tissue strength was the limiting factor, but rather your mastery of the movement itself that caused the injuries.
[quote]challer1 wrote:
In Supertraining, it’s noted that ‘eastern bloc’ weightlifters would often do sets of 50-100 reps with the aim of building up connective tissue.
However, I doubt that your connective tissue strength was the limiting factor, but rather your mastery of the movement itself that caused the injuries. [/quote]
I should have mentioned that the injury to the back of my knee near the gastroc medial head origin was incurred by doing leg press calf raises (God only knows why I would waste my time doing those…) That’s a movement that is fairly difficult to perform improperly. However, I was in a deconditioned state when I performed them, and I definitely put a lot more strain on my connective tissue than I was accustomed to. Now, my initial injures are very likely to have been a result of improper form resulting in excessive demands on my connective tissues.
I think an essential component of this recovery and transition back into training will be avoiding doing stupid shit like loading up on leg press calf raises.
The connective tissue can not be trained outside of moving heavy weight or high impact. The best option is to keep up soft tissue work and bang through some technically solid movements and the connective tissue will get stronger in time.
[quote]challer1 wrote:
In Supertraining, it’s noted that ‘eastern bloc’ weightlifters would often do sets of 50-100 reps with the aim of building up connective tissue.
However, I doubt that your connective tissue strength was the limiting factor, but rather your mastery of the movement itself that caused the injuries. [/quote]
I should have mentioned that the injury to the back of my knee near the gastroc medial head origin was incurred by doing leg press calf raises (God only knows why I would waste my time doing those…) That’s a movement that is fairly difficult to perform improperly. However, I was in a deconditioned state when I performed them, and I definitely put a lot more strain on my connective tissue than I was accustomed to. Now, my initial injures are very likely to have been a result of improper form resulting in excessive demands on my connective tissues.
I think an essential component of this recovery and transition back into training will be avoiding doing stupid shit like loading up on leg press calf raises.[/quote]
Oh no, I don’t mean gross biomechanical form, I mean proprioceptive control. It would make sense that you would get hurt doing something you aren’t used to doing, regardless of how simple the movement is.