To recap from last week, as therapists sometimes I feel as if we lack in our exercise selection for certain athletes trying to return to sport.  We do a good job of finding evidence based EMG exercises for specific conditions but sometimes drop the ball when it comes to finding great exercises that are specific to getting back to sport.  Those basic exercises are of extreme importance but what do we do once our athletes have reached their maximum benefit from these exercises and aren’t yet back to their activities.  I work with a decent number of weightlifters and crossfit athletes.  Besides a lack of knowledge of their sport, the second biggest reason for failed previous treatment is a lack of specific exercise progression to get them back to their activities.  Getting someone back to their ADLs pain free and getting them back to high level performance are two different things.

I wanted to put together a series of exercises I use with my athletes to get them back to their sport.  In part 1, the exercises are specific to strengthening and conditioning an athlete along their rehab/physical therapy process to get back to open chain activities like handstands, pushups and handstand pushups. The second example will be a series of open chain exercises.  Populations that would benefit from these exercises would be an olympic lifter, power lifter or crossfit athlete that wants to return to bench press, overhead press, push press, jerks and any other open chain pressing activity.  The exercises are split into phases, so you know how to progress an athlete throughout the course of their rehabilitation.

This exercise progression is by no means a replacement to a thorough evaluation with specific emphasis on correcting deficits and potential causes of injury.  However, I think it provides several ideas on how …read more