My Strain Recovery Philosophy Context: @Marco Mar and I recently had a conversation about our approach to recovery after strain injury. We talked at length about the principles underlying the approach I used during my grade-2 hamstring tear this summer from sprinting. These are the same things I’m focusing on with my quad tear now. Main Pillars: 1. Blood flow early and often: - BFR is the best lever I’ve found for speeding return to training and reducing atrophy. - If BFR isn’t available, cyclical work can still be used to get a “flush” effect started. - BFR can be started as soon as DAY-1 post injury as long as there is not pressure directly on the injured tissue 2. Train around the injury, aggressively - Keep training the athlete as an athlete. This is important for both mental and physical recovery. - Maintain hypertrophy around the injury training any and every muscle group you have safe access to. - Maintain general capacity while the injured tissue catches up. (note: I like to use a “train the systems” approach during the early phase of rehab. Maintaining blood volume with Sauna, building respiratory muscle endurance with Breathe Way Better, keeping aerobic fitness on the non-involved ergs) 3. Contralateral training is a MUST - Train the healthy side hard in the same pattern you’re trying to restore (but don’t overtrain it!). - Training the healthy side keeps neural patterns active which makes the return-to-play process MUCH faster. - Keep “touching” the injured side with the safest version of that same pattern. (note that in many cases this will be handled by the PT, but is still a must) 4. Visualization integrated into training & rehab - Visualization is “free volume” for the brain. - No tissue cost + positive transfer to movement patterns. - Can be integrated during rest periods of rehab work. ------------------------------------------------------------ General takeaways 1. The fastest recoveries I’ve seen happen when we keep the athlete training, not when they take time completely off.