Easing back into cleans after injury

[Peter_k]

Hi Charles,

I've been struggling with cleans and deadlifts for quite a while because of a weak serratus anterior muscle that led to chronic tightness in the traps. Now that I've eliminated some exercises aggravating it and done some rehab work it's getting better steadily.

Do you have any recommendations for someone like me to ease back into doing cleans? I was thinking of starting with clean pulls with light weight and seeing if that yanks the trapezius, and maybe doing extensive stretching to make sure I'm not "shrugging" the weight up inadvertently.

Would this be a good way to go about it?

[Charles Staley]

Start with a light stimulus and document/quantify the response. Next workout, apply the same stimulus and again quantify/document the response. If the negative response (pain, tightness, whatever it is) is less, that's your cue to add a small amount of weight on the bar. Then apply the new increased stress and quantify/document the response, etc.

In other words, you gotta be a scientist about this. Work with one variable at a time. If you do 3-5 exercises per session, you won't know what's causing the problem.

Let me know how this goes


Hi Charles,

I've been struggling with cleans and deadlifts for quite a while because of a weak serratus anterior muscle that led to chronic tightness in the traps. Now that I've eliminated some exercises aggravating it and done some rehab work it's getting better steadily.

Do you have any recommendations for someone like me to ease back into doing cleans? I was thinking of starting with clean pulls with light weight and seeing if that yanks the trapezius, and maybe doing extensive stretching to make sure I'm not "shrugging" the weight up inadvertently.

Would this be a good way to go about it?