Repetitive Movement Injury and why translative exercises are necessary

I think we can agree on one thing. If you do a movement enough times, the muscles and tendons and ligaments involved gradually weaken over time. If you fight through the pain, it will eventually lead to injury.

Look at people who work in manufacturing. They constantly do the same movements day in and day out. Over time they develop carpal tunnel syndrome or other repetitive movement related  injuries, and they don't even lift maximal loads.


How does this relate to strength training?   Strength training involves consistently doing the same movement over time. If you constantly do the same workout, even though you're making gains you raise the probability you will become injured.

How do you avoid injury but still make strength gains in your targeted movement? The solution is to add translative exercises to your workout. For example, the standing barbell bicep curl puts severe stress on the forearms and wrists because you're constantly fighting the fixed position of your hands wrapped around the bar.
The translative exercise to remedy this is the  dumbbell bicep curl. In this movement  you're giving your hands an increased mobility but you're still working the biceps, forearms and wrists.

The bench press puts severe stress on the fronts of the shoulder. If you fight through the pain, you risk tearing ligaments and tendons that run across the chest and shoulders.

Interestingly enough, the translative exercise which avoids injury puts the shoulders in a more severe swept back position and has the elbows bent more to take on more severe sharper angles. I know I'm always talking about the cambered bar and it gets repetitive, but the cambered bar actually stretches the chest and shoulders and loosens them up which helps alleviate stiffness in them which will help you to lessen the potential of repetitive movement injury. If you don't have a cambered bar, use dumbbells or get on a machine that will sweep the shoulders back and have you sink your hands  behind the chest.

It's important you don't do the same exercise two workouts in a row. That's why you worry about translative exercises. You're looking to do exercises that will help you gain strength in your targeted movement such as the bench press or squat. Although of course for some stubborn plateaus, you  might have to do the more difficult translative exercise such as the cambered bar bench press two or three  workouts in a row to bust through your bench press plateau.  But keep in mind you're increasing the likelihood of becoming injured  and  negating the  adaptive response effect because the body only can adapt so much before it stops responding so for you to  keep on doing the translative exercise is a waste of time.

Of note, the translative exercise for the back squat, the pause back squat, uses the same range of motion as the back squat. The only difference is the pause that occurs when you bottom out. Because they have identical ranges of motion, the potential for soreness and swelling in the knees is great.  But I can't think of any translative exercise that complements and sees more consistent strength gains in the back squat as the pause back squat. I suppose you could do front squats where the bar is laid across the front of the chest. But the knees do not bend deep enough I'm assuming to make strength gains in the back squat.