Keep exercising, injuries will thank you
It’s all about unilateral training
The most interesting part of my job is the fact that every day is different from the day before and that there are new challenges virtually every hour. As long as I’ve been doing this work (... since 1993) there have always been new puzzles to solve and situations to work around.
I’ve got one of those “interesting” situations this week with a longterm client who recently suffered a wrist injury that required surgery. He loves working out and is extremely goal driven and consistent in his training. The recovery time from his operation, however, is going to be eight weeks which presents us with the challenge of how to keep him exercising without just “going for walks” for the next two months.
This scenario reminds me of a time during my college football career when I had broken a bone in my wrist. At the time, our team strength and conditioning coach explained to me that continuing to work out with my unaffected side would help me to maintain strength in my wrist even while I was wearing a cast to immobilize it.
At that time in the late 1980s he told me of a theory that, in an effort to maintain symmetry, the body would hold on to muscle in an injured limb if strength training continued with the opposite side, healthy, limb. This would mean that the recovery would be quicker once the cast was removed and the joint could move again. In my case, it seemed to work and I was back playing in short order.
In doing research for my current client situation, I discovered that there have actually been a number of scientific studies to validate the idea that my Purdue University strength coach told me about in 1987. A small study conducted at the University of Saskatchewan in 2018 had findings that implied that exercising muscles on one side of the body would lead to less muscle wasting in the injured, immobilized, limb on the other side of the body. The experiments results suggest that it makes sense to continue strength training exercises with your “good” side while your “injured” side recovers.
This phenomenon is further described in the journal for the American Council on Exercise (ACE) in the June 18, 2018 edition and is called “cross-education” of muscles.
According to the journal “The brain pathways that are used for the primary unilateral exercise stimulate the same muscles on the opposite side of the body.”
For someone who is injured with an immobilized body part and loves training, the idea that you can do something to mitigate the losses that normally occur while recovering from an injury is thrilling and welcome news.
The plan I’ve come up with for my client involves combining lower body exercises with single arm movements to create pairs of exercises that can be performed using dumbbells and resistance bands. There should be no rest between pairs and only a brief recovery before moving on to the next two moves.
Here is a sample of his routine that would be repeated three to four times:
1 Single arm resistance band chest presses x 15 repetitions and bodyweight squats x 15 reps
2 Single arm resistance band rowing x 15 and bodyweight lunges x 10 with each leg
3 Single arm overhead dumbbell presses x 15 and stability ball hip bridges x 15
4 Single arm dumbbell curls x 15 and standing side leg lifts x 15 with each leg
I will also have my client perform wrist curl exercises to directly stimulate the muscles around his healthy wrist in an effort to create a “carry-over” to the injured side.
It’s important to note that while this routine is designed to help maintain muscle and fitness for someone with a physical injury, it will also greatly enhance his mental health and outlook at a time that could be quite depressing.