How to train around injuries without making them worse or losing your progress

The first rule is: do not train through pain. Training around an injury means continuing to work the healthy parts of your body while avoiding movements that aggravate the injured area.

If you have a shoulder injury, you can still train legs, core, and potentially some pulling movements that do not stress the shoulder. If you have a knee injury, you can still train upper body and potentially do seated or supported lower body work.

The key is specificity in your exclusions. Excluding "all upper body" because of a wrist injury is too broad. Excluding "barbell pressing and heavy gripping" is more precise and preserves more training options.

Budy starts with health screening that identifies risk flags. You can then add specific movement exclusions — individual exercises or entire movement patterns — with reasons for each exclusion.

When generating your plan, the AI cross-references every exercise against your exclusion list and the exercise contraindication data. If an exercise conflicts, Budy substitutes an alternative from the exercise regressions, modifications, or equipment-based alternatives.

You can also set a maximum RPE restriction that caps intensity across the entire plan, and apply an intensity reduction percentage for extra safety margin.