Olympic Weightlifting Program Modification for Injury



The first rule is to avoid aggravating the injury—we want to recover and get back to normal training as quickly as possible, and this means ensuring we’re not protracting the recovery period by continually re-injuring ourselves. That’s not being tough, it’s being stupid. Keep a long term perspective and remind yourself that a short setback is a lot better than a long one.

Figure out what movements you can’t perform, and then figure out your list of priorities to work on. If you’re lucky, these won’t coincide. If they do, you’ll have to move down the priority list until you get to the first elements that don’t affect the injury.

Once you have in mind what you’re going to emphasize during this period, you can start rewriting the program. Essentially we’re simply going to replace what we had to remove with the new work for our chosen priorities—if we’re removing work from our training program, that’s opening up space for something else. Take advantage of this rather than just pulling out what you can’t do and spending the extra time you now have moping around.

I’m going to use myself as an example, as I conveniently just injured myself last week. I sustained a minor tear in my right iliacus during a split jerk. The bad news is that I can’t do anything in a split position (extra bad for me since the jerk is my worst lift); the good news is that I can do anything else. I can feel it a little bit sometimes when squatting, but not in a way that suggests it’s aggravating the injury.

Here is a look at a week of my original program:

Monday

W/U: High-knee walking lunge / back extension hold

Snatch Long Pull + Tall Snatch – 3+3

Block Snatch Pull + Snatch (knee) – 1+1

Snatch Pull on Riser

Jump to Split

Jerk Recovery

Weighted back extensions / abs

Tuesday

W/U: High-knee walking lunge / back extension hold

Back Squat

Jerk Bnk + Jerk – 1+1

Push Press

SLDL

Back Squat Jump

Abs/Beach

Thursday

W/U: High-knee walking lunge / back extension hold

Clean Long Pull + Tall Clean – 3+3

Power Jerk + Jerk

Block Clean Pull + Clean (knee) – 1+1

Clean Pull on Riser

Pause Front Squat + Front squat – 1+2

Weighted back extensions / abs

Saturday

W/U: High-knee walking lunge / back extension hold

Back Squat

Snatch + Overhead Squat – 1+1

Clean + Power Jerk + Jerk – 1+1+1

Lunge

Back Squat Jump

Weighed back extensions/Abs/beach

So I have several exercises on a few days that I can’t do:

Jump to Split

Jerk Recovery

Jerk Bnk + Jerk

Power Jerk + Jerk

Clean + Power Jerk + Jerk

Lunge

In addition, I can’t do ab work with hip flexion, so I’m pretty much doing crunches and planks. If you thought ab work was boring before, limit yourself to those two exercises and see how you feel.

I’ll tackle the easy changes first. All jerks have to be power jerks now. This is basically my worst nightmare. (I did consider splitting with my right leg forward—but a few minutes of that reminded me why I split with my left leg forward.) But the good thing is that my biggest problem with the jerk is not driving it high enough. Being forced to do more and heavier power jerks is probably going to turn out to be as helpful as it is unenjoyable. The question is can I just make a straight trade with jerks for power jerks—in this case, yes, because the weights I had planned are within my ability to power jerk (by that I mean they’re under my best single—doesn’t mean it will be easy). The exception will be the third week of this block when I will take these exercises up to true maxes. This will likely limit what I can do somewhat, but again, the effort to try to do this all with powers will probably have a very beneficial effect on my jerk. So we now have:

Jerk Bnk + Jerk = Power Jerk Bnk + Power Jerk

Power Jerk + Jerk = 2 Power Jerk

Clean + Power Jerk + Jerk = Clean + 2 Power Jerk

The jump to split is used to help me work on more aggressive foot transition into the split, balance in the split, and the strength to lock that position up quickly. Since I’m a power jerker now (at least for a few weeks—hopefully not longer), I just need to work on something similar for the power jerk. I chose to do power jerk recoveries—taking the bar from power rack pins from a fairly low power jerk receiving position height for triples. This will strengthen that lower receiving position for me, which is not great currently, and have the added benefit of additional upper body strength and stability work for the jerk in general, which certainly won’t hurt. If I can get stronger and more confident in a lower receiving position, I can power jerk more. And in the worst-case scenario where I have to power jerk at nationals, I’d like to be able to embarrass myself as little as possible.

Since I can’t do a jerk recovery, I switched these to jerk supports. It’s a pain after power jerk recoveries to strip the bar, pull the bar out of the rack, move the pins two holes higher, replace the bar, and reload it, but I’ll be OK. Switching to jerk supports from the higher pins allows me to then take the weights up considerably heavier for 5-second singles (for example, I did 3 triples at 170 for the power jerk recoveries, and then worked up to 220 on the jerk support—no way I could have done 220 from that lower pin position).

For the lunges, I’d really like to preserve some single-leg work because it’s a weakness of mine, but I can’t get into a lunge position with my right leg back. So instead, I’m doing single leg squats on a ply box with my non-squatting leg hanging straight down along the side of the box. It’s not quite the same, and won’t give me the hip flexor strengthening for the rear leg that’s part of the benefit of the lunge, but it’s better than sitting in the corner and crying about it.

This will cover me for this first mesocycle (3 4-week mesos leading into nationals). Hopefully after this, I’ll be back to splitting. If not, I’ll modify the next mesocycle as needed. If I can’t split for that meso, I’m going to have to make a decision on whether or not to commit to power jerking at nationals so I can train accordingly and be prepared. I sincerely hope that’s not the case—I don’t need any help making my jerk worse.

This is an example of a pretty minor injury with relatively easy modification. Years ago I sprained my back badly enough that I couldn’t even lean over the sink to wash dishes without falling over. I couldn’t squat, pull or anything that required any inclination of my trunk. After a week, I was able to do lunges as long as I kept my torso vertical, and add some weight eventually. I could do upper body work that didn’t involve leaning over. In other words, while I did have to stay out of the gym for a few days initially, I was able to get back and train in some fashion pretty quickly.

Remember that in the case of injuries, not training isn’t just a problem for your physical capacity—it’s a psychological problem. Training in some way keeps you focused and motivated and in the right mindset. Just quitting and staying out the gym completely destroys your momentum and puts you in a position to have to get yourself back up to speed from zero in ALL respects, not just the one or few you had to change to work around the injury. Be as pissed off as you want about getting hurt, but find a way to react productively instead of self-destructing.

One of the most common questions we get at Catalyst Athletics is how to modify a program to work around an injury. It can be frustrating, and I’ve seen a lot of people give up on training altogether in response to an injury, but there is nearly always a way to continue training in a way that will allow you to improve something you need to work on while allowing the injury to heal. Depending on the injury, this can require some serious imagination, but it’s not usually that difficult if you’re interested in finding a solution.