The Diagnostic to Help Prevent Injuries

When someone comes to me with an injury or a nagging ache, I run the same diagnostic almost every time. It's simple and can be done on yourself. And it'll teach you what to look for to dodge future issues. The 3-part diagnostic I'm looking for a recent spike in any of these three: Volume – how much of the thing you're doing Intensity – how hard the thing is Novelty – how new the thing is to your body A big jump in any ONE of these increases your injury risk. A jump in two or three at once? Bingo. Here are some examples: You fall in love with a new hobby, like rock climbing (novelty), and spend hours at the climbing gym your first week (volume), but pick up a nagging wrist injury you can't seem to shake. You decide to sign up for a half-marathon race with your friend. A few weeks out, you jump right into the later stages of a training program to catch up (volume & intensity), but get shin splints and can't complete the race. You start a new strength training program and decide to max out on each lift to really test yourself (novelty, intensity), but partway through your shoulder does something funky and now it aches when you try to sleep on your side. Running the diagnostic in real life I've been coaching Steve (founder and Rebel Leader of Nerd Fitness) for the last couple of months, and recently his back started getting tight after a round of golf. When we ran the diagnostic, things became clearer: His step count jumped from around 6,500 on a normal day to 17-20k on golf days (volume spike) He went from sitting at a desk straight into cranking full-power swings (intensity spike) Golf also asks the body for rotational power it doesn’t get much of day-to-day (novelty spike) His back was responding as we might expect when we turn the dial up on all three variables at once. Here’s how we use that information to build a plan. Raise his baseline daily walking week over week so 15k+ steps isn’t a shock to the system Build in a real warm-up before he tees off to prep his body properly Create a bigger buffer of strength, mobility, and stability in the areas golf demands most (rotation, hip mobility, etc.) The bigger idea: graded exposure This diagnostic works because it points at the same principle running underneath almost everything we do in coaching: graded exposure (AKA Progressive Overload). Strength training? The goal is to challenge your body just the right amount. Too little, nothing happens. Too much, you put yourself at risk. It’s the Goldilocks zone we’re after. Training for an event? Give yourself plenty of time to build up for it so you never have to spike up your intensity or volume at the same time. My client CJ just finished a half marathon and felt amazing the whole time.