We recently had an athlete join that came in with an all too familiar story: Back pain from his team workouts
He had been told that the team workout for the day was “go heavy” and he had loaded up the bar with a weight he guessed to be “heavy”
Little to no warmup, the coach busy with other athletes, and a teammate unsure how to properly spot him
He squatted down with it, and then dumped the bar over his neck on the way up
The back pain was so intense he wasn’t able to practice or play for months
And he’s now had lingering pain for two years since the incident
It’s a sad story we’ve heard all too often over the years: athletes getting very serious injuries not on the field, but in team workouts
Unfortunately, there’s not a solution. There’s simply no way to account for the necessary progressions/regressions/individual differences/individual needs/individual injury histories in a packed room of 35-40 kids all following the exact same workout
I’ve been there as a coach, and it’s an impossible situation
The goal immediately becomes simply just to not get anyone hurt
But as we’ve sadly learned from many athletes back stories over the years, many DO end up getting hurt
-Fenske
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