Dealing with Injuries: Why the Boom-Bust Cycle is Wrecking Your Progress

Injuries are frustrating. Whether you're an experienced lifter, an older athlete, or just beginning, the irritation of pain, disrupted progress, and rehabilitation setbacks can affect both your mind and body. However, the most significant challenge isn't the injury itself — it's how you react to it.

This is where the Boom-Bust Theory comes in.

Struggling with Injuries: Navigating the Boom-Bust Cycle with Determination.

Understanding the Boom-Bust Cycle and Dealing with injuries

It’s simple:

• You get injured.

• You rest (usually too much).

• You start feeling better.

• You jump back in full throttle — trying to "make up" for lost time.

• BAM — you flare up or reinjure.

• You crash.

• Rinse and repeat.

That’s the boom-bust cycle: go too hard, fall flat, go again, break again.

It’s a loop driven by impatience, ego, and poor planning — not weakness or laziness.

Reasons Behind It

1. Emotional Response: You feel better and assume you're "back."2. Poor Load Management: You jump from 0 to 100 with no build-up.3. Lack of a Plan: You return to your old program like nothing happened.4. Identity Crisis: You feel like “less of an athlete” if you’re not training full tilt — so you force it and that's not dealing with injuries.

Disrupting the Cycle

Here’s how to get out of the boom-bust trap without becoming soft or stagnant:

1. Load Progression > All-Out Effort

Start with what you can handle, not what you used to do. Increase volume, load, and intensity in stages — not leaps.

2. Accept the Dip

You will temporarily lose some capacity. That's fine. Trying to skip that reality is what prolongs recovery.

3. Use the “50% Rule”

First week back? Do 50% of your usual volume or intensity. Next week? Go to 70%.Week after that? Evaluate and adjust.

Earn your way back — don’t crash your way in.

4. Fix What Broke You

Look at movement patterns, recovery habits, and load tolerance. If you don’t change what caused the injury, it’ll return.

5. Train Around, Not Through

Find what you can do. Injured shoulder? Work legs. Sore knee? Focus on upper body or isometrics. Movement is medicine — just pick the right dose.

For Neurodivergent Lifters and Veterans

If you live with ASD, ADHD, PTSD, or have a military background, you may have a go-hard-or-go-home mindset deeply ingrained. That grit is useful — until it becomes destructive. Injury management requires discipline, not just intensity. Don’t confuse the two.

Structured rehab doesn’t mean weakness. It means you’re serious about staying in the game.

Final Word

The boom-bust cycle is predictable, preventable, and fixable — but only if you choose long-term progress over short-term ego boosts. At Old Tyme Strength, we coach and train with that principle in mind: smart load, solid movement, no bullshit.

Get hurt? Don’t quit. Don’t charge back in. Rebuild — properly.