Aidan Donnelly Coaching

Demand exceeding capacity. 📉

That’s how most injuries happen. 🩹

You can draw a direct parallel between this and how so many life problems arise: what is being demanded outstrips the capacity available to tolerate or cope with it. ⚖️

I post a lot about pain - and this concept is deeply applicable there, too. Pain frequently stems from the nervous system responding to an overwhelming level of stress. 🧠⚡

When it comes to actual tissue damage, MOST issues (not all, there are always exceptions!) arise from stress exceeding tolerance - aka demand exceeding capacity.

* When stress is tolerable, we adapt and grow stronger.
* When stress is intolerable, things go wrong - either in an instant or gradually over time through chronic overload.

Posture, positioning, stability, and technique are simply tools to redistribute stress across a system, helping tissues accommodate more or do less. But they are not the sole drivers of injury.

🚫 ‘Poor’ posture or ‘poor’ technique does not instantly lead to tissue damage.

The trickiest part? Figuring out where all that stress is actually coming from and identifying what’s pushing you past your threshold. 

Most people blame a single movement or exercise, completely missing the big picture - and the forest for the trees. 🌳👀

Feeling stuck with a nagging injury or persistent pain? Stop guessing and start looking at the bigger picture. Drop a comment below or send me a DM today so we can map out your total stress load and build back your capacity!

Ever feel a sudden pull or ‘tweak’ during a workout and instantly assume the worst?

You’re not alone - especially when it comes to back pain, people tend to panic. But most of the time, nothing is torn, snapped, or broken. It’s usually not your posture or technique, either.

You likely just overloaded the area.
Training is all about balancing demand vs. capacity. If demand spikes past what your body can handle right now (from pushing too hard, poor sleep, or high stress), things get irritated and need time to recuperate.

That doesn’t mean you have to stop training entirely. Unless it’s severe, we can usually modify movements, train around it, and use a simple scale to guide recovery:
* Keep pain at or below a 4/10 during movement.
* Check how it feels 24 and 48 hours later.
* (Swipe through the slides for a full breakdown)

Most importantly: don’t let a minor setback keep you stuck.

Sidelined by a recent tweak? Let’s get you back on track to hitting personal bests safely.
Drop me a DM with ‘PB’ whenever you’re ready to chat through it - no pressure.

Disclaimer: This isn’t medical advice and isn’t intended for severe or debilitating injuries.

Keep the goal the goal!

Having a priority, a focus and maintaining that over enough time to see it pay off or know how best to adjust can be a challenge.

Check out the slides for more information.

If you struggle with this DM me the word ‘goal’ for a framework to help solve this.

Change is difficult. Easier to keep doing the same thing hoping for a different outcome, especially when you don’t want to have to change what you are doing.

Load management, proper recovery and identifying what triggers your back pain is huge for being able to make sustainable progress.

Do you have ongoing back pain?

Lots of things start off as great ideas and theories and later on are shown to be not as expected. The theory was great, but the outcome wasn’t - it just didn’t happen or caused a different result than anticipated.

A couple of big ones I see and I jumped on the bandwagon with at one stage or another is going too ‘sports specific’, activation exercises and foam rolling.

A lot of the times these things are reported to be superior, less uncomfortable or more time efficient than the alternative which requires more time, effort and change which is rarely an appealing combination.

Without testing and tracking it’s very hard to know if something is doing what you want and you end up wasting far more time and effort in the long run.

Finding a baseline/ entry point and a way to track progress before implementing something is a huge time and frustration saver. Bit more effort up front to find a solution quicker and decide if something is really worth your time or not.

Give this post a like if it resonates with you.

Can you relate to the owl in picture 1? I can.

Injuries and pain that won’t go away, training taking a hit, no clear plan or progression, feeling frustrated and desperate to get back training but all you seem to get are low level rehab exercises and things ‘not to do’.

Great.

If you’d like to know what the Owl did to go from picture 1 to 3 ask A.I. But if you’d like to know how to get back training and making progress the DM me ‘owl’.

I have simple frameworks you can use to get the ball rolling.

There’s the injury and all the things you can’t do or lose with it.

Then there’s all the things you CAN do, but unable to focus on.

You can’t see the forrest for the trees yet.

When encouraged to problem solve, most people come up with good solutions and alternatives. They just haven’t asked the question:

“What else can I STILL do?”

Knee? - Train upper body and the unaffected leg
Back? - Upper body, seated machines
Can’t run? - off feet conditioning
Can’t make contact? - Skills training
Social? - Help out at training, go to the social events
Terrible personality? - Frontal lobotomy (joke)

There’s things you can still do.

Feeling under confident and finding it difficult to trust your ability or decisions comes up regularly in coaching scenarios.

Frequently after an injury, or set back. It’s also task specific. What I mean is you can be confident in one after, and completely under confident in another.

A way to improve this is to gradually demonstrate to yourself that you CAN do or change something.

Like with loading or acquiring a skill, it’s gradual. Big steps or jumps usually aren’t the answer. It increases likelihood of failure, or negative consequences and erodes confidence.

Though the vast majority of people try to do too much at once, and set the bar too high and the inevitable happens.

If you are trying to improve confidence in an area I recommend trying this for 6-8 weeks. You’ll see a difference.

If you want a copy of the framework then DM me ‘confidence’. If you need help implementing it then book a consultation using the link in my bio. It’s free and doesn’t come with a hard sell.