How to Build Muscle Despite Injuries and Limited Mobility | Ep 318
Submit a question for the podcast (and get a personal reply plus a shoutout) at witsandweights.com/question
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Ever feel like your strength training goals are slipping away because of nagging injuries or mobility limitations?
That persistent shoulder pain during pressing, the foot injury that flares up when walking, or those mobility restrictions that make certain movements feel impossible can be incredibly frustrating. But what if these challenges aren't roadblocks but redirections?
Today we're answering listener Tom's question about training with shoulder pain, foot issues, and mobility limitations.
The truth is, everyone who lifts weights long enough will encounter physical limitations. The difference between those who continue making progress and those who stagnate isn't about genetic luck or perfect health—it's about mastering the art of training around limitations.
Learn the powerful mindset principles that allow you to continue building muscle and strength despite injuries or limitations, and why the most successful lifters aren't those with perfect bodies, but those who master the art of training around their constraints.
Main Takeaways:
Why "adaptation, not abandonment" should be your fundamental training principle
How constraints can actually accelerate your progress by forcing smarter training
The expanded definition of progression beyond just adding weight
Why compensatory patterns matter and how to become aware of them
The importance of redefining what "progress" means when working around limitations
Timestamps:
0:01 - The challenge of training with limitations
2:16 - Why this affects lifters of all ages and experience levels
4:34 - The adaptation mindset vs abandonment
6:30 - Constraint as a catalyst for better training
10:13 - The primacy of progression principle
12:52 - Holistic adaptation management
15:39 - Compensatory awareness
17:06 - Deliberate variability in exercise selection
22:49 - Redefining progress beyond PRs
27:26 - Why limitations are redirections, not roadblocks
Submit a question for the podcast (and get a personal reply plus a shoutout) at witsandweights.com/question
Strength Training with Limitations Isn’t a Setback, It’s a Shortcut
When you’ve been lifting consistently but injuries, pain, or limited mobility keep getting in your way, it’s easy to feel stuck. You might start questioning whether it’s even worth it anymore. But I want you to know something most lifters overlook: your limitations are not a dead end—they're actually the fast track to becoming a smarter, stronger, and more resilient lifter.
This episode was inspired by a listener named Tom, who at age 60 is navigating a desk job, shoulder pain, and a healing foot injury—all while trying to keep strength training a core part of his life. But this isn’t just about older lifters. If you’ve been training for a while, you will run into obstacles. And how you respond determines whether you keep making progress… or not.
Let’s break down the 6 principles I covered in this episode to help you adapt and thrive—even when your body isn’t cooperating.
1. Adaptation Over Abandonment
The most important shift is mental: stop seeing injuries as reasons to quit. Instead, ask: How can I modify this movement to challenge myself safely? Whether it's pressing with a neutral grip, switching to incline work, or ditching the barbell altogether, your options are endless—if you're willing to explore them.
Think of it this way: there’s always a version of a movement that you can do pain-free. That’s your new baseline. From there, you build.
2. Constraint Is a Catalyst for Progress
Injuries force you to train smarter. They push you to improve technique, tighten up your programming, and explore movement patterns you’ve ignored. That limitation? It might actually be the thing that forces your breakthrough.
When I had rotator cuff surgery, I couldn’t press for months. But it forced me to refine my squat form, dial in unilateral work, and rebuild from the ground up. The end result? Better balance, better proprioception, and yes—more muscle.
3. Prioritize Progression, Not Perfection
Progressive overload is still the game—but it’s not always about slapping more plates on the bar.
Here are ways to progress without increasing load:
More reps with the same weight
Better range of motion
Improved tempo or control
Rotating through variations that reduce pain but still challenge the same muscles
Progress is personal. If you're recovering from injury and can move pain-free through a deeper ROM than last week, that's a win.
4. Manage Recovery Holistically
If you’re dealing with pain or injury, your recovery capacity is already compromised. That means sleep, stress, and nutrition matter even more.
Don’t diet aggressively during recovery. Don’t overdo cardio (especially high-impact). And don’t ignore sleep quality.
Training while healing means understanding the full stress-recovery-adaptation equation and being more strategic than ever.
5. Watch for Compensation Patterns
When you favor one limb or shift your mechanics to avoid pain, you risk creating new problems. This is where compensatory awareness comes in.
Film yourself. Use mirrors. Ask for feedback. Look for asymmetries that creep in when you’re working around an injury, and address them early before they turn into chronic issues.
For example, shoulder pain can lead to overloading the opposite side or tweaking your wrist angle, which then becomes its own issue.
6. Use Variability to Stay Stimulated and Safe
A limited movement repertoire can lead to stagnation—or worse, repetitive strain. When you're dealing with pain or mobility issues, deliberate variation becomes a strength-building tool.
Rotate exercises week to week. Use different bars, grips, and angles. If a movement irritates you, swap it out for something similar. For pressing, think landmine, floor press, or neutral dumbbell work. For legs, maybe belt squats instead of back squats.
Just make sure your variations are repeatable enough to track progress. Random doesn’t work. Structured variety does.
Redefine What Progress Means
When we’re injured, we tend to define progress too narrowly. But here’s what real progress can look like:
Less pain during movement
Greater range of motion
Maintaining strength during recovery
Better form, tempo, or control
Improved mind-muscle connection
I’ve had clients who couldn’t squat due to knee pain—but we found a variation that worked, and months later, not only were they pain-free, they’d added muscle they were never able to build before.
Training around limitations isn’t a concession—it’s a skillset. One that, frankly, makes you a better lifter than someone who’s never had to think about it.
So if you’re in a season where your body isn’t cooperating, I challenge you to stop asking if you can train—and start asking how.
Because there is always a way. You just have to be curious enough to find it.
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Transcript
Philip Pape: 0:01
If you're committed to strength training but you feel like you've hit a wall because of nagging injuries or mobility limitations, you're definitely not alone. When shoulder pain makes pressing nearly impossible, when that foot injury flares up after a few thousand steps, or when your body simply doesn't move the way it used to, it can feel like your options are disappearing. Today we are addressing the real challenges of strength training with physical limitations. Today, we are addressing the real challenges of strength training with physical limitations. You'll discover why injuries are not roadblocks but they are redirections, how constraint breeds creativity in your training and the mindset shift that transforms limitations from frustrations into opportunities. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering and efficiency. I'm your host, philip Pape, and today I'm tackling another question from a listener, tom, who's been training for decades but still feels like he has not achieved his goals. Tom is 60, he works a desk job. He has some specific challenges, such as shoulder pain during pressing movements I can relate to that a recently healed foot fracture and mobility limitations. But the principles we're going to get into today apply to really anyone that is dealing with injuries or mobility issues, regardless of age. It's just some of these things start to pile on the older we get, so it makes total sense that oftentimes we focus on older populations here. Before we get into this, if you have a question that you want me to answer just like I'm doing today for Tom and you want a personal reply as well and, by the way, I give very detailed, very helpful, specific replies when I do this and then I give you a shout out on the show, like I am today for Tom, if you want that on a future episode, or just to have a question answered, go to witsandweightscom slash question or click the link in the show notes Again, witsandweightscom slash question. I personally read and respond to every single one. All right, let's start by addressing the core of Tom's question and probably what's on the minds of many of you listening, and the situation is this you have been consistently training, so again, this is geared toward.
Philip Pape: 2:16
Folks who have gotten into lifting are trying to do the right things. If you don't even lift weights yet, that's a different situation. You might actually like my recent episode about back pain and how lifting can help with that, because for a lot of folks they're avoiding lifting for certain reasons. Right now we're talking about people who have been lifting. And then you want to build muscle, you want to improve your physique, you want to get stronger, but your body is giving you feedback in the form of pain or limitations right, a very normal response for your body. Sometimes, in fact, most of the time, we have to listen to that and do something, or else it's not gonna change.
Philip Pape: 2:51
And this is a universal challenge that affects lifters of all ages and experience levels. Let me repeat that it affects everyone. Okay, if you think you're unique, you're not. I'm 44, it affects me, I know. You know 25 year olds, 30 year olds, once they get into lifting and it's not the lifting itself, it's more of the accumulation of the fatigue and sometimes things that need to be corrected, like form.
Philip Pape: 3:16
Um, it could be injuries outside the gym that then affect your lifting. There's a lot of reasons for it, so we never want to oversimplify, especially given that weightlifting lifting weights is listed often as the safest form of activity in the world compared to any activity. When you look at injury rates, now you could be 25 and recovering from a sports injury, you could be 45, with some accumulated wear and tear just from life or maybe a lack of lifting for many years that has made you weaker and has made you prone to injury, or 60 and over, like Tom. The principles of working around injuries and still making progress are the same. So that's the key for today's episode is how do we keep going, how do we keep making progress without quote unquote pushing through or injuring ourself and making it worse? So I want to first share what I believe is the most fundamental principle when it comes to training with limitations, and that is adaptation and not of finding that positive not delusional but realistically positive shift in how you view this to open up new possibilities, and that alone can transform your approach.
Philip Pape: 4:34
If you're making excuses, if you're the type of person that goes into a Facebook group and says, well, I want to do the things you guys are suggesting, but I can't because I have this issue, it's like you know what we all. I can't because I have this issue. It's like you know what. We all have issues, we all have physical limitations. I talked to a guy who was paralyzed from the waist down and he still lifts weights. All right, I had rotator cuff surgery. My arm was in a sling, totally immobile, immobile. I still lift weights. I know somebody in our group who had hernia surgery and as soon as she could, she still lifted weights.
Philip Pape: 5:05
So most people make mistakes one of two mistakes, I'll say. I'm going to narrow it down to two mistakes, one of two when they encounter these limitations, either they try to push through the pain, they potentially cause more damage Now those are the go-getters, right. I can appreciate that. I can appreciate that type of person who wants to keep going or they completely abandon certain movement patterns or even training altogether, which is really really sad for me. And they're both extremes of a spectrum Okay, both extremes. I almost feel like training through it and potentially causing more damage is somehow better than just not training at all, because you're going to get weak and frail and probably die younger. But neither of them are great, okay.
Philip Pape: 5:49
So what does the adaptation mindset say? It says how can I modify this movement to work within my current limitations while still challenging myself? That's really it, because we're trying to. Not only are we trying to adapt our mind, we're trying to adapt our bodies through strength and training for muscle. That's really it, because we're trying to. Not only are we trying to adapt our mind, we're trying to adapt our bodies through strength and training for muscle. That's why we do it, and so we need to find a way to continue doing that find that sweet spot between avoiding movement and aggravating the problem. So for Tom specifically and I did give him a very detailed reply, but you know for his shoulder pain right During pressing, I can relate to that a hundred percent personally this does not mean never doing pressing movements again.
Philip Pape: 6:30
It means finding variations that don't cause pain. This could be neutral grip presses, close grip presses, using a slingshot, using an incline instead of flat, traditional benching, using a landmine press instead of overhead, using floor presses. I could go on. I mean I can't actually give you all the list of things you could do because it's practically unlimited the way you can vary things through grips and bars and equipment and machines and body angles, so many ways. And so if you say just no, I can't do it, that is not an adaptation or a growth mindset.
Philip Pape: 7:09
The second principle is what I call constraint as a catalyst. I know there's a lot of alliteration in here, but hey, the show is called Wits and Weights. So constraint as a catalyst, and this is. I love counterintuitive ideas. This is one of them. Okay, this is the. I love counterintuitive ideas. This is one of them. Okay, this is the idea that limitations can accelerate your progress by forcing you to train more intelligently. And I fully embrace this, wholeheartedly, because it's happened to me time and again. Every time something happens, whether it's an injury or a something in my life that interrupts my training and I have to figure out a way around it. You've heard of the phrase and the book. In fact, obstacle is the way. The obstacle is the way. That's exactly. The philosophy here is that the more obstacles and roadblocks and bumps you face along the way, the more you're going to learn better strategies. It's going to make you smarter and more adaptable.
Philip Pape: 8:00
All right, when everything feels great, when you have no limitations, when it's just ho-hum, here we go, it's easy to fall into complacency. You know patterns of convenience and that may not even be effective. That's the interesting thing is, you may not be effectively training when you do that. You might gravitate toward exercises that you're good at or you enjoy, but you're neglecting areas that need attention. But when constraints into the picture and this is where my engineering mind just goes gaga over this right. When constraints into the picture, you're forced to experiment, you're forced to try new movement patterns, to pay closer attention to form and mind-muscle connection and where you have pain, versus, oh, if I do it this slightly different way, I'm not going to have any pain at all. Wow, that's, that's an incredible revelation for me. Now I can make progress and now I can use this variation of the squat instead of this variation and I could just progress the hell out of that squat and I'm still going to build muscle and strength Right.
Philip Pape: 8:59
And then this leads to more balanced development, better, um, being in better tune with your body, your proprio reception, as they call it, your muscles, how they respond, et cetera. You just become really, really dialed in on the feel, part of it, but from an objective way and because you had to alter the path, and I've seen this with just so many clients. Look, most, if not all, clients come to me because they haven't been able to Be successful 100 on their own and in fact, I would say that's everybody like I. I hire coaches because there's aspects that I need to learn more of or figure out a different perspective on. And when I look at someone who has a knee issue and they say, well, I can't back squat because I have a knee issue. And they say, well, I can't back squat because I have a knee issue. Or like, well, let's look at belt squats and let's look at split squats and hack squats and all of that, and just find the thing that doesn't hurt your knee, because there is something right, like presses, whatever. And then three, six months later, not only is their knee feeling tons better, but now their leg development has improved, because now they're hitting the muscles from angles that they neglected before and they're, you know, getting well-rounded, uh, in terms of what they they push for for the exercise selection. So that's the second principle.
Philip Pape: 10:13
The third principle is what I call the primacy of progression. So this is just going all out on the alliteration here. Primacy of progression, all right, despite injuries and limitations, progressive overload, still guess what? It's still the driver of adaptation, your physiological adaptation. It's the thing that challenges you to grow and get stronger, build muscle. The difference is just the method, just the how. How do you implement it right? And guess what, even without injuries, you're going to implement it slightly different than somebody else anyway, but the principles are the same.
Philip Pape: 10:51
Now most people think of progressing in the gym as a very limited thing, like just adding weight to the bar right, especially if you come from the starting strength world, like I do. Sometimes we get fixated on that, and that is great for a beginner, but when you're more advanced or you're working around injuries progression, you have to open up your definition of how progression occurs, because at the end of the day, you're just trying to apply neuromuscular adaptation and mechanical tension to your body so that you challenge itself, right, so this could be removing the pause at the bottom of a movement, like a bench press. So it doesn't, so the stretch reflex doesn't exacerbate your shoulder right, just or not removing the pause, what did I just say? Adding a pause, removing the bounce, adding the pause at the bottom of a bench right, okay, and then you can start to progress, or adding reps instead of load until you can add so many reps that you need to increase the load. It could be improving your range of motion within the pain free boundaries that you're starting to explore Right, and that could be, for example, doing a pin press and gradually dropping the pins lower and lower until they're gone. That's what I did when I was recovering from rotator cuff surgery. It could be playing around with rest periods. It could be adding sets Like there's so many ways.
Philip Pape: 12:14
I did a whole episode on progressive overload a while ago. You can search for it If you go to podcastwitsandweightscom. You can search all my episodes but we have to expand our idea of how to accomplish progressive overload that respects the limitations you have. This is the principle, the first principles approach, the primacy of progression that allows you to continue making gains when what you think of as traditional or the only way is not available to you Because in reality there is not the only way, is not available to you because in reality there is not an only way. I've tried so many different approaches and they all work, as long as they respect the principles.
Philip Pape: 12:52
Speaking of principles, the fourth principle today that I want to talk about is I'll call it holistic adaptation management. So this is not alliteration, couldn't do it for this one. Holistic adaptation man. I'm not talking about alternative medicine and holistic wellness. I'm talking about that when you're training with limitations, your body's recovery capacity could be compromised right, you may not be able to recover as quickly or in the same way you did when you were healthy or when you were not injured not with these limitations and you have to more intentionally manage the stress recovery adaptation cycle and really be conscious of it.
Philip Pape: 13:28
And that means you have to pay closer attention to sleep quality, right? Not just sleep duration, but quality. Are you going to bed and waking up at the same times every night, for example? Are you avoiding screens before bed, those kinds of things? You know? How are you sleeping? Your mattress, your pillow, that stuff, right? Sleep apnea? Whatever your nutrition, right? You probably shouldn't be dieting all the time, or very often at all.
Philip Pape: 13:50
I usually say that once you have developed your goal body composition, you should only diet for maybe two months out of the year, right. And if you're dealing with a recovery from an injury, right. Or you're sick or you had surgery, you definitely shouldn't be dieting after that at all. That's just going to add too much stress and sap you of energy. And the same thing goes for stress, perceived stress, chronic stress, all of that. And so you may have to have more deliberate deloads or vary your intensity or change the volume, right, and just be strategic about it. And I can't tell you which one it is for you. That's where advanced or not even advanced, but like smart programming, comes in and working with a coach, or really understanding how programming works, but also listening to your body through biofeedback, not just subjective, feel, day to day, but also objectively, over time tracking it.
Philip Pape: 14:40
So, for example, tom, who wrote in the question, he said that his foot gets sore after about 10,000 steps. Well, that is valuable, precise feedback from his body about his current recovery capacity and rather than pushing through saying, well, I need to get more steps, I'm trying to lose fat or whatever, and then you cause a setback because your foot is sore and now you can't do other stuff, he can use the information to modulate his training and activity levels, and what I suggested for in his case was, if you still want to get the metabolic equivalent of those steps, do something that doesn't involve walking right. Use an elliptical or a bike. Something like that is a very simple solution to avoid what could be causing your foot to get sore. Now, we didn't get into, like footwear. Is he wearing barefoot versus healed shoes? Does he have? Is he flat footed, like I'm flat footed, so I have to wear slightly wider box shoes, things like that as well. You know, is he doing a lot of uh up and down versus flat, et cetera? So that's the the.
Philip Pape: 15:39
The fourth principle is really this holistic adaptation management, managing your recovery, managing the whole thing. The fifth principle is what I call compensatory awareness. Compensatory awareness okay, this is, I talk about awareness all the time here. Like you track your food, you get aware. Right, we have an injury or limitation. Well, we're aware of the injury, but then we often unconsciously develop compensations or patterns that can lead to issues everywhere. And so then now we have to be deliberately aware of these compensations. So when I say compensatory awareness, that's what I'm talking about here, is awareness of the compensations that you're making because of your injury that could be causing other issues. For example, here's a good example Shoulder pain often leads you to alter your mechanics during the pressing movements, and then these will place some stress on your elbow, your wrist or maybe the opposite shoulder, your foot injury.
Philip Pape: 16:37
That could affect a lot. It could change your gait, your squat mechanics, it can cause knee, hip issues, right, and you may have to approach these movements with extra awareness of your body. Maybe take video of yourself, right. Work with a coach, say, hey, does something look off here? Symmetry-wise, you may need different footwear, you may need different equipment, right? There's just a lot of possibilities here. So, compensatory awareness how are you compensating? All right.
Philip Pape: 17:06
The next, the sixth and final principle is deliberate variability. Now, this is just the variation on the theme, no pun intended variation, but the variation on the theme of variation, of of deliberately making things change. So, when you have limitations, this is often the best time to have different exercise variation in there, not just to work around the pain but also to have, I'll say, more robust adaptations that you need because you're not able to push with a lot of the main exercises that you wish you could. If you take a traditional strength programming, we want to be very consistent with our exercise selection because we want to be able to progress on those movements right, and this is always important, like I don't want you doing YouTube workouts where you're just jumping around all over the place with random exercises. No, but when you have limitations, it helps to have a broader repertoire of exercises available so you can rotate the stress around and then avoid overloading a single joint or tissue, and I think it's. I think this is important in general for lifters.
Philip Pape: 18:12
We talk about the West side conjugate method, or we talk about um, building a base versus building a peak, and how you rotate around to different movements and not. You know, you don't want to be back squatting every single session forever, or else you both have too much stress for the movement, plus you're missing your weak spots. But when you have a limitations it just opens up that uh, capacity, ability or necessity. I should say even more, and that goes back to my earlier principle about how this is going to make you a more intelligent lifter and actually help you grow faster, as in both creative and application areas of lifting, in that you need to figure out other movements and there's so many creative things out there.
Philip Pape: 18:55
Um, my friend Tony he's probably listening introduced me to the Omni bar. Introduce me to the Omnibar. It has these grips that can rotate 360 degrees from any level of neutral, not like the width of the grips, but they actually rotate in a circle. They have ball bearings and so you could push or pull with a neutral grip that's comfortable for your shoulder, for example. Or you might use other aids, like I use a slingshot when I do bench pressing to take some of the load at the bottom.
Philip Pape: 19:28
For Tom, who wrote in the question, this might mean having three different pressing variations, that he rotates between his sessions and kind of comes back and forth to them so he might do two of them or three of them across three weeks and then in week four he comes back to the first variation again and he's still progressing them, but he's rotating through and avoiding irritating tissue that even though you've modified to avoid pain, you still could be hitting something a little too much, and now you get more time to recover between exposures to those different stressors, right? So thinking more about Tom's situation got my notes here. He has a push pull leg split and fundamentally, fundamentally, that's like a perfectly sound split. You guys have heard of that. That's a normal type of training split. But if we were to adjust it for his situation and limitations, I would say number one for the pressing issue we would probably do more neutral grip presses, landmine presses, maybe floor presses I mentioned a bunch of these earlier.
Philip Pape: 20:27
Find shoulder-friendly variations. There are a lot and a lot of them. You don't realize until you go exploring and go look it up. Like, let's say, you want to do dumbbell, incline presses, right, a great accessory for your chest press, for your bench press. Well, most people think, okay, I need to hold them perpendicular to my body and push up just like a bar. Well, they're dumbbells. So you have one in each hand Guess what? You can rotate it so they're neutral, so they're in parallel. See how that feels. I just did those this morning and they don't bother my shoulder at all. Right, so that's for pressing. Again, you can use pin presses. There's a lot of ways to do that while you still press.
Philip Pape: 21:00
For the foot issue, he has, I kind of mentioned before reducing step volume but adding in non-step volume for movement like biking or an elliptical. You could even do something like pressing prowlers, where you make it a lot harder form of cardio but you're not getting a lot of impact on your feet. And then he also mentioned mobility concerns and my my response to the mobility concern was more of is there a form of the movement that you can still do for a full range of motion to develop the mobility? It sounds like chicken and egg, right? Some people say, well, I have, my ankles aren't very mobile, my hips aren't very mobile, whatever. And I say, hey, here's a box, can you squat down to this 12 inch box? And they have no problem doing that, just without any bar or anything else Like if you can get fully down below, parallel onto a box, you could do it with load on your back, and then you can do it with heavier load on your back, and guess what that is? Mobility.
Philip Pape: 22:03
Now you may have mobility issues that are more severe, like, for example, I do with my left shoulder where it's just so tight with the external rotation, and in that case I use the squat safety bar oftentimes instead of the a normal bar for my squat, and that way you're just kind of working around them. You can still develop the mobility through, you know, physical therapy, stretching, stretching into the movement, et cetera. For example, with a back squat you can stretch into the bar as part of your warmup and kind of open up yourself, so you have better mobility. But if it's more severe than that, you may have to just do other movements. So this is the framework. If you're listening, you're trying to navigate your own unique challenges, whatever they are. Again, they're they're unique to you, but there are not unique in general. Everybody has challenges, the. I hope these frameworks and these principles can help you think through it.
Philip Pape: 22:49
One more thing I want to emphasize is that when you train with limitations, you have to, you have to shift your perspective about what constitutes progress. Okay, because I think we've been conditioned to measure ourselves through PRs. I think I'm going to do a whole episode on this. I think sometimes we treat PRs kind of like we treat weight on the scale, like if it's not going in the direction we want, constantly we're a failure. And that's not true at all. Right, you know, maybe when you're a rank beginner and nothing is going up in load, there's something going on for sure. But once you get a bit strong and have a bit of muscle, there's other ways we progress, kind of like we talked about earlier. And so in this case, in this context where you have injuries or limitations, what I'm talking about specifically is having things that you can celebrate as wins, besides just the pure training progress. For example, being able to move through a greater range of motion without pain. I mean, that's a huge one. Until you don't have range of motion, you don't realize how valuable this is.
Philip Pape: 23:51
When I recovered from my shoulder surgery, I obviously couldn't even I could barely lift my arms above parallel, let alone get into an overhead press. Are you kidding me? And so my dream then became to get to an overhead press. Are you kidding me? And so my dream then became to get to an overhead right, and there's a process, and now you have to progress over time to get closer and closer to the overhead. So I would take video of myself pushing this bar hanging from straps from a pull-up bar, pushing it out and getting it higher and higher and being hugely excited when it would add another inch to the height. That's progress, right? Or what about just maintaining your strength when you're healing from an injury or surgery? Have you heard of the crossover effect when, let's say, your left arm is in a sling? Well, you could still do some, say, bicep curls with your right arm. There's going to be a crossover, a transfer through cellular and hormonal mechanisms in the body it's not really fully understood that maintains strength on the injured arm. It's incredible Instead of it atrophying, instead of the muscles wasting not wasting but instead of muscle decline, you'll hold onto it and that's progress.
Philip Pape: 24:57
What about the quality of your movements, right? Maybe before you were injured, you didn't really think too much about your form and your squat or your deadlift, and now that you have been injured you have to be really, really careful. So it's gonna force you to say you know what I really need to go back in that book, go watch those videos. Go listen to Phillip, go do a form check and really dial this in so I get the movement quality correct. It's better lifter. Also, better fatigue management. Right, again, that's a form of progress.
Philip Pape: 25:24
Are you able to manage your fatigue, your recovery, where you no longer have those really sharp pangs in your lower back because you've been deadlifting too much. Right Just was too much volume, for example, and you never gave it another thought, you just pushed through. Well, now you need to manage it and you're like, well, I'm going to get in some Romanian deadlifts, that I'm going to get in some other poles, some rows, maybe do some rack poles and then do some deadlifts. I'm going to rotate through, I'm going to keep the volume reasonable, the intensity high, and I'll be much better off, and so you can grow from that. And then, finally, I would say mind-muscle connection.
Philip Pape: 26:03
As much as it gets criticized in some circles, I think there's huge value in understanding the neuromuscular connection there between your brain, your thoughts conscious and otherwise, your muscles, how they move, what you're feeling when you move them and how that translates to growth, injury prevention, fatigue management and working around your limitations. So these are all valid, meaningful forms of progress that are going to contribute to the long-term success. You see, this isn't a cakewalk. This isn't something you learn in a day. This is a lifelong process of growth and learning and I take that as a really amazing, fun, exciting thing.
Philip Pape: 26:37
If that sounds like a negative to you, it's time to reframe this whole thing. Why are you doing this right? Are you doing this because you want to get strong and be able to get off the toilet when you're 85 and be able to pick up kids and grandkids and go play outside and play sports, to walk with an upright posture, to avoid bone brittle, bones and frailty and breaking your hip when you fall right. Like what is that for you? Just revisit that and why it's important, because I don't I don't know about you. I do not want to be weak and frail when I'm get older, where other people, including my family and kids, have to take care of me. I just don't want to be there, and I guess I guess the last thought I'll leave you with is going full circle to one of my earlier statements that everyone who lifts is going to have some limitations or injuries at some point.
Philip Pape: 27:26
You're just going to accept it, except that you're going to and the most successful lifters aren't the ones who didn't get injured. They're also not the ones who have any sort of genetic advantage or perfect health. They're the ones who master the art of training around limitations. That's a powerful statement. Think about it Almost every long-term lifter eventually encounters injuries or limitations, and not even long-term, I'll be honest, like it won't take long before something happens. And again, it's not always caused by lifting, but it's going to happen in your life. It's just practically unavoidable if you train for decades, if you're a human living in the world. And the difference between those who continue to make progress and those who stagnate, it's not their programming, it's not because this person had this injury and this person had this. It's how they respond to the limitation.
Philip Pape: 28:11
Do they embrace this constraint as catalyst principle we talked about? Right? That fuels innovation, creativity, growth. The blessing of constraints, these limitations that force you to experiment, to adapt, ultimately to build that resilient, balanced physique that we're going for that's going to actually accelerate the process. Isn't that great, isn't that amazing? Your limitations will get you to the result you want faster, right?
Philip Pape: 28:36
You just have to be curious. I hope that's why you're listening to this podcast in general, and I hope you listen to lots of other episodes, because the recurring theme is always, yes, skepticism, but also curiosity. And all of that goes beyond physical training. I hope you guys know that I'm more of a philosophical type thinker. Here I try to understand where this all fits in the world, in the arc of human history, in my own life, in my relationships, in how I interact with other people, in being positive, in my psychology and mental health. It's all connected.
Philip Pape: 29:08
And the principles today of adapting rather than abandoning, of looking at constraints as a catalyst, of always trying to progress, of making everything work holistically, of being aware of how you compensate to things and deliberately varying things up so you can keep making everything work holistically, of being aware of how you compensate to things and deliberately varying things up so you can keep making progress these can be applied to any area of life where you face limitations. Just change the metaphor to apply to whatever the thing is right Adapting to a new job where you have restricted resources, navigating a challenging relationship, pursuing a goal where you don't have much time I mean, that's all of us right. These provide a framework for continued growth despite the constraints. So the obstacle is the way. The limitations aren't roadblocks, they're redirections. They don't determine whether you can progress, only how that's it, just how that's it. And so, once you know that you just have to find the how, have the right mindset, have that growth mindset, continue building muscle and strength, regardless of whatever cards you've been dealt, because you can and you will.
Philip Pape: 30:10
All right, I'll get off my soapbox, but I hope that resonated with you and Tom, I kind of went all over the place off of your question, but I think this is an important topic that you were the catalyst for.
Philip Pape: 30:21
So thank you, anyone listening. If you have a question for the podcast and you want a personal reply, and then you want me to go off and ramble like this and get deep and philosophical into the answer, or potentially I'll just answer it very practically and simply. We'll see. And then you want me to shout you out or not. Either way, go to witsandweightscom slash question or click the link in the show notes. I will personally read and respond to every question that comes in, and I think your question can then help lots and lots of other people who all face similar challenges like you. Until next time, keep using your wits lifting those weights and remember the most impressive strength isn't found in how much you can lift, but in your ability to adapt and thrive despite the inevitable challenges. This is Philip Pape, and you've been listening to the Wits and Weights podcast and I will talk to you next time.
