“Young at heart. Slightly older in other places.” – Bumper sticker
At Empower, the greater percentage of our membership is over 45 years old. Personally I am 48 years old and have been doing CrossFit since 2005 and competing in CrossFit since 2016. I train 6-7 times per week and haven’t missed a programmed workout since 2013. Before CrossFit I competed in Judo for 29+ years. My body has accumulated some heavy mileage. Same is true for most of our members. And that means from day-to-day we may experience occasional movement challenges.
For example, a few weeks ago, for no apparent reason, my left knee became a bit irritable. I have no history of knee problems, no history of injury and I’m not aware of any trauma to the joint that would explain the pain. More likely there is tissue tightness in the knee, the foot, the ankle or the hip referring discomfort to the joint. There are three general reactions to such situations, two are destructive, one is adaptive. We’ve all been guilty of the first two at some point in time.
Response 1: Tough it out. Grind through the pain. In my experience this only leads to compounding problems down the road. You ignore your own body at your peril.
Response 2: Avoid all exercise. I won’t do anything until I feel 100%. Well, at my age 100% rarely happens. And fitness will not wait for you. The older you are, the more quickly it slips away, the harder it is to get it back. At 20 I could miss judo training for a couple months and get back in shape with just a few weeks of practice. These days it might take me months to recover my fitness.
Option 3, the adaptive response: is to adjust your training to the needs of your body on a given day.
HeroWOD DG provided an example of this for me. The dumbbell thrusters were light enough and few enough that with a neoprene knee brace on my knee was not at all irritated so no modification was required. But if it had been uncomfortable, I could have substituted a dumbbell push press instead. The weighted lunges on the other hand, did irritate the knee so I instead did reverse lunges which unloaded the knee and proved a perfect substitute.
In upcoming workouts I’ll highlight strategies I have used to allow my knee adequate recovery time. As of this writing it is feeling completely recovered thanks to some timely intervention but not a single workout was missed. Think about how you can become more adaptive in your approach to training. If you’re not sure, ask your coach. Don’t ignore the problem and don’t let it derail you!
HeroWOD DG
Notes:
We will spend a lot of time on the warm up and cool down as we have had a lot of big workouts
If you don’t have dumbbells: kettlebells, back pack, milk jugs etc can be used
Warm up
2 rnds
1 min hip swings
1 min hollow rocks
1 min TGU
1 min scales
1 min plank
1 min os full body rock
1 min squat hold
Tech
T2b/v sit up/ and leg raises
Thrusters
Weighted lunges
Then
3 rnds
3 T2b( or sub)
3 dB thrusters
4 alt weighted lunges
Hero WOD DG
10 min AMRAP
8 T2B
8 DB thrusters
12 DB Lunges
Cool down
Hip swings
Trunk rotations
Shoulder circles
Couch stretch
Pull overs
Happy baby