4 Ways to Stay Injury-Free and Train for Life

The healthiest people are incredibly consistent.
But they’re also incredibly durable.

They don’t miss many weeks (or even days) in the gym.
At least not due to injury.

They don’t ever seem to be hurt or even get sick very often.

So what’s the secret?
It’s not genetics or luck.

Working with 20,000+ athletes, we’ve had a very small percentage that have ever told us they’re cancelling due to an injury.

And we’re not selling Pilates programs.
Our workouts are not soft or easy by any means.

If you want results, you have to train hard.

But it’s not just about being able to go hard for a few weeks or few months.
Even a few years won’t do it if your goal is to be keeping up with your grandkids or great grandkids.

You have to be healthy and durable enough to keep working out for decades.

Life will get busy, workouts will change…but you have to look beyond short-term results.

It's not enough to only think about weight loss or better fitness over the next few months.
But also keeping joints healthy and your body running well so you can stay active for years to come.

That’s ultimately what freedom is when it comes to your health and fitness:
Being able to do whatever you want to do, when you want to do it.

This applies today and when you’re 80 years old.

Here is how to be more durable in the gym (through the body geometry system we use within all of our programs):

1. progressions

Focus on strength and movement quality first.

Don’t do kipping pullups if you can’t perform strict pullups.
Don’t max out a back squat if you can’t complete a proper air squat.
Quit trying to bench 225 if you can't perform 25 perfect pushups.

This is obvious but often overlooked.

Because it takes patience and knowledge of where your weak points are.

If you can’t perform a strict pullup, instead of jumping to banded pullups or kipping pullups, you could spend some time strengthening your back and arm muscles through other compound and isolation movements.

It's a long game.
Don't be afraid to start slow so you can stay in the game for longer.

2. contractions

Train all 3 types of contractions.

These include eccentrics (lowering), isometrics (hold), and concentric (completing the rep).

Most people only focus on the concentric part.
That’s pulling your chin over the bar in the pullup, or standing the squat weight all the way up.

But neglecting to train the isometric and eccentric parts of the movements can lead to imbalances overtime, which can lead to injury.

Not training all 3 contractions can also limit your performance.

One of our favorite ways to train these is through tempo training.

Take the same movement you’re doing, and simply change the speed of certain parts of the lift.

For example, in a squat, take a full 3 seconds to lower the weight down. Then pause for 1 second. And then move the weight explosively towards the top.

The possibilities are endless.

You’ll be surprised how much more challenging this is, and you’ll quickly see where you have weak spots in the movement.

3. balance

Train all 3 planes.

This includes sagittal, frontal, and transverse planes.

If you’re working out, I guarantee you’re performing sagittal plane exercises.
This is anything front to back: pushups, squats, bench press, curls, etc.

Most neglect the frontal and transverse planes.

Frontal plane exercises are side to side in nature, and include side bends, carries, side planks, etc.
Transverse plane exercises are rotational (or anti-rotational) in nature, and include pallof presses, rotational lunges, russian twists, etc.

Programming tip: include at least one frontal or transverse plane exercise in your warmup and/or workout.
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​4. deload weeks

All good (and hard) training programs incorporate deloads.

This is not to be confused with doing nothing or taking a week off from the gym.
Far from it.

This means intentionally reducing the volume and intensity of your training program to allow your body to recover, so that you can keep progressing and push it harder in future training sessions.

If you think you can only hit the gas and go hard all the time, your body will eventually push back.
Which means you’ll end up taking forced time off.

I'd rather choose my easy weeks instead of having an injury dictate them.

You can do this on a schedule, or you can listen to your body and incorporate them as needed.
But you can’t skip them altogether.
This could be every 4 weeks, 6 weeks, or based on how you're feeling/stress/around travel/etc

At GGA, a deload week is where we overlap the above body geometry principles (progressions, contractions, planes) to build more durable athletes and humans.
This is a great time to work on weaknesses and balance out your training.

If you think you don't need a deload week...you might not be going hard enough to begin with.
You can always come train with us and we can make sure you're checking that box.