If we are talking about graded activities then that is much more straight forward than “You just need to get strong” or “just load it up”

There are secondary consequences associated with everything we do in our training

We have to consider the following when it comes to producing force:

• Tissues tolerances

• Movement strategies

• Behaviors are associated with you producing force

You will produce force in very specific circumstances and very specific ways. If you want to make someone more resilient to injury or enhance specific tissue tolerances or joint health you may have to take something else away from the performance side of things.

There are many situations in performance where we slowly take things away from someone because you cannot raise performance without taking something away from something like joint health or movement variability

It is a very, very, very rare situation that someone will be great at everything

Example: If you raise your squat or bench press from 300 to 400 pounds what did we take away to gain that performance?

• In order to improve that performance we usually have to increase stiffness in an area to improve that desired higher output

• If we had to sacrifice shoulder or hip range of motion to bench press or squat more, was that useful to performance or more harmful to joint health and movement?

We can’t have that singular perspective of “oh you just need to get strong” because there are consequences to that, that may not be favorable in certain circumstances.

In some situations it may not matter and in other situations it may matter a GREAT deal.

Another example: If you took a golfer and took away their ability to turn because you made them more stable to do a heavy deadlift that’s probably a bad idea.

• Yea, you raised their strength, so you loaded them and raised their force output but you created a consequence where they can no longer access a position they needed to access in order to perform at a high level.

• Maybe they are going create some sort of compensatory activity that is unfavorable to their health and performance?

Everything that we do has a secondary consequence!

On the other end of the "rehab" spectrum we have to consider that by re-establishing some type of range of motion we can reduce their force production.

• Do they need that to protect themselves in their sport?

We always have to consider key performance indicators when rehabbing or training for performance. We have certain elements that we must maintain because it is representative of their resilience or it is representative of their ability to produce more force.

It gets tricky when you’re trying to differentiate symptom relief from performance

While trying to reduce symptoms and improve performance you have to look at the spectrum of performance goals while training someone depending on what their primary goal is at the time

You have to look at the individual – it is trial and error

It doesn’t matter until it matters and you don’t know until you try