How to Train Around Injuries and Still Get Stronger
- Archie Cunningham
- Dec 24, 2025
- 4 min read
When Injuries Start Whispering… Then Shouting
You don’t really notice the first warning signs.
A shoulder that feels “off.”A knee that nags on cold mornings.A lower back that stiffens after long days at the desk.
Most adults shrug it off.
“I’m just getting older.”
“It’ll loosen up.”
“It’s nothing.”
Until one day, it isn’t “nothing” anymore.
I’ve lived that cycle more than once — before my hip surgery, during years of ignoring shoulder pain, and even recently when a tiny niggle turned into something that forced me to rethink how I trained.
But here’s what I learned the hard way: injuries don’t mean you stop training.
They mean you start training properly.
The Mistake Most Adults Make
When something hurts, most people pick one of two options:
Push through it — because quitting feels weak.
Stop entirely — because they don’t know how to adapt.
Both options backfire.
Pushing through usually makes the injury worse.Stopping completely freezes progress and kills momentum.
There’s a third path — the one we take inside the CFC Method. And it works every single time. - If you want to find to out how - go here.
The Rule: Train Around the Pain, Don’t Train Through It
Pain during a movement means one thing:your body is telling you that that pattern isn’t currently available.
That doesn’t mean you're broken.It just means that movement isn’t the right tool today.
You can always train something else:
If squatting hurts → hinge.
If hinging hurts → step-up or split squat.
If pressing hurts → row, pull, carry.
If pulling hurts → isolate the pattern, modify the arm path, change grip, or move to rings.
There is always a version that works.
And here’s the bit people don’t expect:
Training around an injury often makes you stronger than you were before it.
Why Training Through Pain Fails
Adults get injured for predictable reasons:
Sitting too much
Old habits from their 20s
No tempo control
Poor recovery
Random training
Stress + sleep deprivation
If you ignore these, the body adapts by tightening, compensating, or shutting down movement entirely.Pain is the last warning — not the first.
If you keep pushing, you don’t heal.
You inflame. You compensate. You break something else.
That’s why the rule is simple: If it hurts, stop. But don’t leave the gym. Shift the plan.
The Framework: How Adults Should Train With Injuries
Here’s exactly what we do at CFC when someone limps in, rubs their shoulder, or says,“I think I’ve done something.”
1. Maintain the routine
The habit is more important than the exercise.Missing sessions breaks identity.Turning up reinforces it.
Even if you train at 20% intensity, you’ve still won.
2. Remove the painful movement completely
Not “go lighter.”Not “let’s try a few reps.”
If it hurts — it’s out.
3. Train the pattern next door
Pain is specific. Strength is transferable.
Examples:
Knee pain during squats → hip-dominant work (RDLs, glute bridge variations).
Shoulder pain pressing → pulling, carries, tempo-pushups in shortened ranges.
Back pain deadlifting → single-leg work, kettlebell variations, supported torso angles.
4. Keep tempo slow
This is where your book’s tempo section is gold:
Slow reps
Controlled positions
Clean movement
Zero ego
Tempo lets you keep intensity without abusing joints.
5. Add mobility where it matters
Not 20 minutes of stretching. Just enough to restore the pattern:
Hip flexors
Ankles
T-spine
Rotator cuff
Glutes firing
6. Conditioning stays joint-friendly
Sleds
Bike
SkiErg
Carries
Step-ups
No pounding the body. Just enough sweat to keep capacity high.
What Happens When You Do This
Every single time someone trains this way, a predictable thing happens:
They start noticing parts of their body they’ve been ignoring for years — and those parts finally catch up.
Weak hips strengthen. Lazy glutes wake up. Rotator cuffs begin stabilising properly. Core patterns reconnect. Balance returns. Pain fades.
The injury becomes the doorway back to proper training.
It’s not a setback. It’s a reset.
The Real Reason This Works
Injuries force clarity.
They expose:
the pattern you’ve been skipping
the movement you’ve been rushing
the load you weren’t ready for
the life stress you weren’t managing
the recovery you weren’t prioritising
And when you fix the inputs, the injury becomes a catalyst for the biggest strength leap you’ve had in years.
That’s why I tell adults this, even if they don’t want to hear it:
Every injury is a message. Ignoring it is optional. Learning from it is where progress begins.
A Quiet Truth Most Adults Don’t Want to Admit
You don’t need perfect training days. You need consistent ones.
Training while injured is actually the moment your identity forms.
Anyone can train when everything feels good. But when something hurts — and you adapt instead of quitting — that’s when training becomes who you are.
That’s the shift from intensity to identity.
If you’re dealing with:
a shoulder niggle
a hip that won’t settle
a knee that keeps flaring
or an old injury that’s started speaking again
You don’t need a body that feels fragile. You just need the right plan.
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