Openai/692f0818-4df0-800f-a833-5d75dc7ee28e

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gpt-5-1

User: What is the Starting Strength philosophy for responding to injuries?

What is the Starting Strength philosophy for responding to injuries?

Assistant: Their approach is built around maintaining training stress while protecting the injured structure.

Their approach is built around maintaining training stress while protecting the injured structure. The distilled philosophy:

1. Do not stop training unless absolutely necessary. Most injuries are handled by modifying the lift, not eliminating it.
2. Identify the specific movement pattern or ROM that hurts. Pain at a particular joint angle or under a particular loading pattern drives the adjustment.
3. Reduce load, not frequency. The usual first step is to drop the weight significantly—often to about 50–70% of the previous working weight—and rebuild linearly while monitoring symptoms.
4. Simplify the movement rather than removing it. Examples: - Low-bar squat aggravates a shoulder → switch to high-bar or safety bar, then rebuild low-bar later. - Deadlifting aggravates lumbar flexion → do rack pulls, block pulls, or lighter deadlifts with a ROM that avoids pain, then gradually return to the floor. - Bench aggravates the shoulder → press more and bench with reduced ROM or closer grip.
5. Pain is a guide, not a command to stop. Acceptable pain: dull, mild, does not worsen during sets, does not increase the next day. Unacceptable pain: sharp, unstable, radiating, or getting worse from session to session.
6. Keep the stress on the pattern that’s injured, but at a tolerable dose. This is the “rehab protocol”: high frequency, low load, many sets of 5 with strict form, adding a little weight every session. It’s intended to promote blood flow, tissue remodeling, and correct movement patterning.
7. If the lift itself cannot be performed in any modified form, substitute the closest possible movement. For example, if neither squat variant is possible, leg press is used temporarily to maintain some lower-body stress.
8. Total rest is avoided unless there is structural damage that makes loading hazardous. Clear red flags: suspected fracture, acute instability, neurological symptoms, infection, or any injury where load could worsen tissue failure.
9. Return to normal programming gradually. Once pain-free ROM is restored and loads are approaching previous levels, resume standard Starting Strength progression.

This philosophy places you in the camp that values load management and consistency over total rest, similar to modern sports medicine and strength-conditioning viewpoints.