CrossFit is Very Demanding

CrossFit is a popular strength and conditioning program where athletes perform functional movements that vary at high intensity. It optimizes cardiovascular and respiratory endurance, strength, power, stamina, balance, coordination, speed, agility and flexibility. In other words — IT’S INTENSE!

Being a CrossFit Hero means that you excel at this conditioning and have the knowledge for proper motion to avoid injuries and when injured are using the right solutions to resolve them quickly.

Because of the high rate of change in movement —injuries are quite common, especially to newer clients. Proper technique is very important but injuries can even happen with perfect technique.

Here’s a few examples of the more common injuries that we treat:

Lower Back Pain

This is from overloading the lumbar spine (part of spine at the low back) when performing squats, deadlifts and some hyperextension moves. When the athlete goes into hyperextension of the lumbar spine region (extending the low back outside of usual range), it places tremendous pressure on the spine that can lead to severe back pain. In severe cases this can lead to ligament damage, disc bulges or prolapses.

Anterior Shoulder Impingement

When the shoulder joint isn’t kept in the correct position, a shoulder impingement can occur. The client may be trying to lift weights overhead or laterally, or do pull ups. This injury isn’t always due to poor technique, but can also occur because of the high number of repetitions of movements that can occur in CrossFit workouts causing inflammation of these tissues.

Tennis & Golfers Elbow

Tennis elbow, or lateral epicondylitis, and golfers elbow, or medial epicondylitis, are common injuries among CrossFit athletes. This is from repetitive strain on the medial or lateral epicondyle (bony part on the inside or outside of the elbow) and often caused by a lot of rig work (pull ups, muscle ups, chest to bar, toes to bar), ring dips and heavy loaded front rack position. Heavy over-head squatd, or miss-catching the bar on a snatch also be a root cause.

Anterior Knee Pain

Pain around the front of the knee or the knee cap is usually from patella - femoral joint dysfunction. This is from overloading the knee joint due to muscle imbalance around the thigh, hips and glutes from heavy squats and lunges, wall balls and box jumps.

Calf Strain

Running, box jumps, double and triple unders can cause calf strains. Appropriate foot wear is vital, but sometimes the volume of work is so vast, the calves just take a beating. Left untreated, athletes can find themselves modifying WODs for long periods of time due to consistent re-injury.

These are just some examples showing that CrossFit is a very demanding sport on your body.

Finding The Right Strategy

A CrossFit Hero understands that Injuries are a key concern making it very important to discover an effective strategy to repair as well as prevent future problems including re-injury. Once injured, your body is compromised and compensates for that injured area, which reduces your ability to react and carry out movements to their optimum potential. 

Just icing an injury and foam rolling isn’t enough and just slogging through only makes things worse!

It’s also important to recover quickly and efficiently after competition or training. This enables you to gain the full benefit from a hard WOD or strength-and-conditioning session. If you don’t recover efficiently, then performance and fatigue can set in, eventually succumbing to the effects of overtraining.

A typical Sports massage is effective in aiding recovery, improving mobility, and treating and preventing injury. The deep tissue bodywork applied to affected areas will certainly help. But our approach is even more comprehensive than a typical sports massage, because we can approach the injuries using a multimodal method to accelerate the healing process.

For more serious injuries we always recommend initially performing one or more Thai Neuromuscular sessions. Our neuromuscular therapists have a very deep understanding of bio-mechanics and can pre-evaluate the root issues that your body is undergoing and then provide specific treatments using neuromuscular, dynamic cupping, graston, and trigger point therapy.

It’s important to reduce excessive adhesion and scar formation, so it’s best to get treatment right away. This also reduced excessive fascial thickening and reduces spasms and neuronal excitability. After one or more Thai Neuromuscular sessions, it’s recommended to continue with regular maintenance sessions of our Thai Sport massage on a monthly basis - this will keep your body properly limber and toned for the intense CrossFit workouts and will help prevent injuries.

By reducing tension and adhesions in muscle allows your range of motion will not be impaired. This massage will also dilate your blood vessels and have a positive effect on your cardiovascular system. This improves the delivery of oxygen and nutrients throughout the body while removing waste products and toxins at a quicker rate. Muscle repair times are faster, ultimately reducing the risk of delayed onset muscle soreness.

We can aid the process of recovery — especially as you change your program, add weight or attempt something different in your normal routine. If you are new to CrossFit, massage is even more relevant because you will be learning new skills and movements that will put a lot of strain on your body.

A Thai Sport massage also helps relieve pain and promote the growth of new muscle cells while repairing the damaged ones. Even if you are not in pain it will improve muscle function, thus making you more efficient while recovering and competing. It also can increase muscle range, increase nutrition to tissues, deactivate trigger points, and resolve soft tissue abnormalities.

Depending upon your therapist it may be recommended to switch between Thai Neuromuscular and Thai Sport massages for maximum benefit.

Don’t be one of those CrossFit athletes that work around injuries and subsequently aren’t really receiving al of the advantages and benefits of teh CrossFit workout. Be a CrossFit Hero and always be the best athlete you can be.