Episode 9: Training With an Injury Over 40 - Why Working Around It Isn't Enough
You've got a shoulder, hip or back that's been off for months. It doesn't stop you training, so you've quietly built your sessions around it. Most people over 40 are doing exactly this, and most of them think it's the sensible option.
In Episode 9, Rich and Hiro are joined by Dr Melanie Wintle - a chiropractor, kinesiologist and corrective exercise specialist with over 30 years in fitness, strength and rehabilitation. Melanie moved her own practice away from hands-on treatment towards exercise rehab, after watching too many patients feel better for three days and come back the next week with the same problem.
Her argument isn't that you should stop training. It's that working around an injury and never addressing it is only half a plan - and the half that gets left out is the one that stops a niggle becoming permanent.
In this episode:
Soreness or injury? Normal DOMS is roughly equal on both sides, arrives 24 to 48 hours later and eases as you move. An injury is localised over a joint - and that difference is the whole call
What changes at three months: the tissue damage has gone but the nerves are still firing, so you guard, then you compensate, then the joint above or below starts taking load it was never meant to
Why that chain - not the training itself - is what leads to arthritis
Why painkillers before a session are a bad idea, and why after one is fine
Parallel tracks: a frozen shoulder can still row and curl, and a disc problem can still squat with a neutral spine. Rehab and strength training run at the same time, not one after the other
Broken wrist in a cast? Train the other side. The cross-over effect limits wasting on the injured limb
The golfer whose back pain wasn't a back problem - it was two years of an unchecked swing
Steroid injections: why there's a hard ceiling on how many you can have, and what they do to tendon tissue
Hiro on stress and sleep - why chronic stress lowers your pain threshold, and why sleep is when the healing actually happens
Medication as a tool rather than a solution - and knowing which one you're using it as
The line to remember: rehab isn't a waiting room you sit in before you're allowed to train again. In Melanie's words, you don't have to work around it - you work it into it.
And on the aches people write off as their age: it isn't normal ageing. You can't stop getting older, but frailty is a separate thing, and it's the one you can do something about.
Find Melanie at movewellhealth.ca or on Instagram @movewell_mw.
If you're training around something that's been there for months, get it looked at properly by a professional rather than guessing. We're coaches, not doctors.
Want help putting the training, nutrition, recovery and lifestyle side together? The Midlife Method is Rich and Hiro coaching you together, built around your life. DM the word METHOD on Instagram @richlevy_performance.
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