As people live longer, most everyone in America has heard how important exercise is for your body as it grows older. The question is why is exercise important and the answer is very simple : flexibility. After age 30, the number one component of the body which fails most quickly is within the flexibility of the body’s tissues. This doesn’t just mean your ability to touch your toes or swing a golf club, although the lack of flexibility due to aging will be a key component for both of these activities. Flexibility is also related to non-structural tissues such as blood vessels, nerve casings, organ tissues, and even the viscosity of various fluids in your body.
Many health professionals will emphasize strength training for the aging population. This is due to recent studies which show that the body can lose 10% or more of its strength and muscle mass each decade after the age of about 35. Bone loss is also a very common boon to the aging process. Since strength training addresses both muscle and bone strength and integrity, this sort of exercise is often suggested to many people attempting to subvert the physical aging process. Strength training is an excellent method for slowing the degradation of bones and muscles, but it doesn’t address other issues like mental capacity, heart and lung strength, and ability to fight disease.
Before I go any further I should mention that aging is a very complicated process and its affects alter greatly from person to person based upon genetic factors, prior history of individual health, and current and future activity levels. Just because you exercise does not necessarily mean that you will all of a sudden live longer or more functionally than your neighbor who does not. You can’t base your own progress on someone else’s results and, therefore exercise will serve to improve your life relative to how that life would have been without the exercise, not relative to your neighbor (unless that neighbor happens to be a relative). Don’t get discouraged if you aren’t seeing as good results as your friend working with you, just remember that your body is handling your longer life of exercise the best way it knows how.
Everyone, no matter what their genetics or chosen path in life, can benefit from a healthy dose of cardio-vascular exercise in their daily life. For the younger population, this type of exercise usually means improved heart, lungs, veins and arteries, coordination, and joint and muscle function. For someone over 35 all of these characteristics apply as well as the added benefit of maintaining brain function, maintaining reproductive organ function (not necessarily the ability to bare young, but at least assisting in the absence of abnormality), maintaining digestive function, and hindering the effects of arthritis. Frequent and varied cardio training from hiking and biking to swimming or skiing is so important as we get older that practically every body system benefits as a result.
As many of us know, activity helps maintain flexibility in the physical tissues like muscles, bones, and joints. Frequent movement - tennis, walking, dancing or any other physical activity helps to maintain the inherent strength and integrity of the body structure and the muscles which hold it together. Freedom to move is one of the simplest feedoms we have and can be well maintained with proper repetitive activity. With lack of movement, the tissues and semi-liquid portions of your joints start to harden - both restricting mobility and causing pain. The only way to avoid this hardening is to keep exercising. Even your bones have flexibility related to the manner in which they consume nourishment and go through their natural building and rebuilding processes. Bone flexibility ensures fewer breaks related to impact and other unforeseen mishaps we may encounter in our daily lives.
A hardening of veins, arteries and lymph vessels (part of your immune system) restricts the ability of these systems to work properly. When your vessels harden you are more susceptible to internal pressure problems, scarring, clotting, and rupture all of which result in very serious and sometimes life threatening conditions. Again the flexibility of these tissues can be maintained with some form of cardio exercise.
It was classically thought that people could keep their mental acuity by doing “mental exercises” such as thinking games, reading, and puzzles. Thus far, there is no conclusive evidence that these activities actually maintain brain function. I’m not saying stop doing them - just because proof hasn’t been found yet doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist - but I am noting that the only result these activities have shown is better capability at solving thinking games, reading and puzzles. Cardio-vascular activity, however has actually been found to force the body to nourish the outer covering of nerves and nerve endings called the myaline sheath. In some extreme cases some studies have actually shown an increase in brain mass as a result of adhering to a new cardio routine. These results are not terribly conclusive, but even the possibility is encouraging.
Even your organs benefit from this heart pumping exercise. Cardio encourages your body to utilize oxygen and electrolytes which acts as the energy and nourishment for every one of your cells. Your liver, pancreas, stomach, lungs, intestines, and sex organs all benefit from continued activity in older age.
Hopefully I have convinced you that exercise - both cardio-vascular and strength - is extremely important as we grow older. The only question now is how much of each? Certainly it doesn’t make much sense to be doing more activity as we get older than we did when we were young and spry in our teens and early 20’s. Your body will slow down and natural processes will indeed make it more difficult to physically perform the way you did when your body was younger, but this means that to maintain some level of strength, balance and flexibility as we age, we must in fact put more effort into that maintenance. If you have the time, spend more time exercising when you are older than you did when you were young. Certainly not to the intensity you did when you were younger and don’t just jump right into it if you have been without exercise for a while, but your body will respond to exercise as you age the same as when it was younger - just more slowly. If you have the time to invest three or four hours a day of good physical activity whether that activity be in the gym, on the golf course, or anywhere else ... do it! Keeping your body active truly is the secret to everlasting life - at least everlasting capability and independence through a longer life.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Sunday, January 27, 2008
How Much Weight Training?
Similar to the “how much cardio” question I tried to answer earlier, some people want to know how much strength training to do in a given week. Opinions vary widely on this subject, but research data shows some basic fundamentals which can be applied to most people’s work out routine on a regular basis. Similar to cardio training, the frequency of strength training will depend greatly on your physical goals and what you plan to accomplish in the gym. Some people are interested in gaining strength, others are looking to gain size (they go hand in hand, but there is a difference). Some want to maintain strength, and still others want to maintain structures other than their muscles, such as their bones. In any case, there is a certain amount of strength training which is required to accomplish specific goals and I’ll try to order those goals from least time necessary to greatest time necessary here-after.
No matter what your goal, you should first understand the concept of “over-training”. Over-training is no simply doing to much but rather an actual condition of excessive fatigue your body can undergo if you are training at a level which exceeds your bodies capabilities to recover. Over-training is marked by a constant feeling of tiredness - particularly during a workout - muscle aches, joint aches, an elevated heart, weight loss and a rather than gain of strength. If you goal during strength training is to increase size, you must pay careful attention to what you eat and drink as well as how much you work out. You will be putting great demands on your body’s metabolism as well as your muscles and you must give it time to allow your body to rebuild from intense exercise. As a rule, your muscles need about 48 hours of rest time to recover from a loaded workout. Thats two days with strength expenditure of the utilized muscle group not exceeding about 50% before returning to fatigue training again.
As I mentioned, every one’s body operates under certain general rules of strength gain, loss, and recovery. If a muscle or group of muscles are enabled to maintain a certain amount of strength, say the chest and arms can do ten pushups, then that amount of strength will generally be maintained with as little as one day of strength training per week. As long as that muscle or group of muscles is brought to fatigue once every seven days, it will likely be able to maintain the strength it has for an extended period of time. After seven days, the body starts to lose a little muscle and, therefore, a little strength. This is by no means a drastic change, but going without strength training for a week or more will result in a little loss. So in order to maintain strength, each muscle group should be fully fatigued under load (with weights) at least once a week. This can be accomplished in one training session if that session is efficient and does in fact target all major motions for strength maintenance (See Major Power Movements of the Upper and Lower Body from January 08).
If you are trying to gain strength, you need slightly more activity out of your muscles than once a week... Twice a week. A second workout which again fatigues all the major movements of the body is enough to gain strength - not much, but a gain is possible. So if you want to increase your pushups from ten to fifteen, you could do so by adding a second strength workout a week which included pushups both times. You body would catch on relatively quickly and you’d probably be able to eek out those five extra repetitions within a month or two. After a certain period of time, your body would become used to the two workout per week regiment and you would need an alteration to your routine in order to continue gains, but increasing frequency would not necessarily be the answer.
For some special occasions your doctor may suggest strength training as the most productive alternative to various medical conditions or ailments. Osteoporosis and fibromyalgia are two of the more common maladies which can be managed and in some cases improved upon with proper loaded or strength training. Although the style of training one would perform to address these issues would not be the same as say, an athlete, the necessity for consistency is very similar. With conditions such as these, your body is essentially fighting itself and the best way to combat the poorer performance of your body is to maintain a higher standard than the average person. If you have one of these doctor prescribed conditions, strength training three, four, or sometimes even five days a week can reduce symptoms, reduce pain, and even slow or on rare occasions improve the processes which cause the degeneration in the first place. All the normal precautions for over-training should be managed as well as added considerations for managing the appropriate affliction, but this should not deter someone from pursuing strength training as a treatment.
Because it is so physically and even fairly mentally demanding, body building or gaining size requires the most strength training in the gym. In order to gain size, you must eat constantly and not small portions. You must also eat properly, indulging in foods which are easy for your body to use for energy, muscle rebuilding, and joint laxity. Body building is a very complex sport and only a few professionals succeed in managing the rigors of this sort of training. In order to appropriately grow muscle you must not only eat a significant amount of the correct food, but you must fatigue your muscles in a manner unlike all other gym goers. It is not uncommon for a body builder to spend 30 or more minutes fatiguing one muscle group (not in constant motion, but in cumulative effort). Thirty minutes spent on each of the upper and lower body power movements would amount to four and a half hours of training. However, the upper and lower body power movements are not exclusive for body building and there must be other actions taken to specify additional muscles in the body. To gain proper muscle weight it will likely take an hour and a half, four to six days a week of intense strength training along with appropriate eating. To gain the status of a body builder, you will likely spend two to four hours training each day you are in the gym. It is a rather significant undertaking. Even at such gregarious expenditure, the regular rules of the body apply. You have to give each muscle group at least 48 hours to repair itself after it has been fatigued so your work out schedule will need to be tightly managed.
Similar to cardio training, the time put into strength training varies greatly based upon your expected output. Unlike cardio training, however, strength training is not usually a necessity for survival. Often basic but precise movement is enough to maintain the strength necessary for your body to operate properly. In other words, in order to keep the strength your body needs to do the activities you frequently do, you need only continue to perform those activities. The weights in a gym are used to exceed these minimum strength requirements and are certainly another form of keeping your body healthy. Like cardio training also, they should not be pursued lightly and without guidance as doing so offers your body to great injury - and no one likes to back track.
No matter what your goal, you should first understand the concept of “over-training”. Over-training is no simply doing to much but rather an actual condition of excessive fatigue your body can undergo if you are training at a level which exceeds your bodies capabilities to recover. Over-training is marked by a constant feeling of tiredness - particularly during a workout - muscle aches, joint aches, an elevated heart, weight loss and a rather than gain of strength. If you goal during strength training is to increase size, you must pay careful attention to what you eat and drink as well as how much you work out. You will be putting great demands on your body’s metabolism as well as your muscles and you must give it time to allow your body to rebuild from intense exercise. As a rule, your muscles need about 48 hours of rest time to recover from a loaded workout. Thats two days with strength expenditure of the utilized muscle group not exceeding about 50% before returning to fatigue training again.
As I mentioned, every one’s body operates under certain general rules of strength gain, loss, and recovery. If a muscle or group of muscles are enabled to maintain a certain amount of strength, say the chest and arms can do ten pushups, then that amount of strength will generally be maintained with as little as one day of strength training per week. As long as that muscle or group of muscles is brought to fatigue once every seven days, it will likely be able to maintain the strength it has for an extended period of time. After seven days, the body starts to lose a little muscle and, therefore, a little strength. This is by no means a drastic change, but going without strength training for a week or more will result in a little loss. So in order to maintain strength, each muscle group should be fully fatigued under load (with weights) at least once a week. This can be accomplished in one training session if that session is efficient and does in fact target all major motions for strength maintenance (See Major Power Movements of the Upper and Lower Body from January 08).
If you are trying to gain strength, you need slightly more activity out of your muscles than once a week... Twice a week. A second workout which again fatigues all the major movements of the body is enough to gain strength - not much, but a gain is possible. So if you want to increase your pushups from ten to fifteen, you could do so by adding a second strength workout a week which included pushups both times. You body would catch on relatively quickly and you’d probably be able to eek out those five extra repetitions within a month or two. After a certain period of time, your body would become used to the two workout per week regiment and you would need an alteration to your routine in order to continue gains, but increasing frequency would not necessarily be the answer.
For some special occasions your doctor may suggest strength training as the most productive alternative to various medical conditions or ailments. Osteoporosis and fibromyalgia are two of the more common maladies which can be managed and in some cases improved upon with proper loaded or strength training. Although the style of training one would perform to address these issues would not be the same as say, an athlete, the necessity for consistency is very similar. With conditions such as these, your body is essentially fighting itself and the best way to combat the poorer performance of your body is to maintain a higher standard than the average person. If you have one of these doctor prescribed conditions, strength training three, four, or sometimes even five days a week can reduce symptoms, reduce pain, and even slow or on rare occasions improve the processes which cause the degeneration in the first place. All the normal precautions for over-training should be managed as well as added considerations for managing the appropriate affliction, but this should not deter someone from pursuing strength training as a treatment.
Because it is so physically and even fairly mentally demanding, body building or gaining size requires the most strength training in the gym. In order to gain size, you must eat constantly and not small portions. You must also eat properly, indulging in foods which are easy for your body to use for energy, muscle rebuilding, and joint laxity. Body building is a very complex sport and only a few professionals succeed in managing the rigors of this sort of training. In order to appropriately grow muscle you must not only eat a significant amount of the correct food, but you must fatigue your muscles in a manner unlike all other gym goers. It is not uncommon for a body builder to spend 30 or more minutes fatiguing one muscle group (not in constant motion, but in cumulative effort). Thirty minutes spent on each of the upper and lower body power movements would amount to four and a half hours of training. However, the upper and lower body power movements are not exclusive for body building and there must be other actions taken to specify additional muscles in the body. To gain proper muscle weight it will likely take an hour and a half, four to six days a week of intense strength training along with appropriate eating. To gain the status of a body builder, you will likely spend two to four hours training each day you are in the gym. It is a rather significant undertaking. Even at such gregarious expenditure, the regular rules of the body apply. You have to give each muscle group at least 48 hours to repair itself after it has been fatigued so your work out schedule will need to be tightly managed.
Similar to cardio training, the time put into strength training varies greatly based upon your expected output. Unlike cardio training, however, strength training is not usually a necessity for survival. Often basic but precise movement is enough to maintain the strength necessary for your body to operate properly. In other words, in order to keep the strength your body needs to do the activities you frequently do, you need only continue to perform those activities. The weights in a gym are used to exceed these minimum strength requirements and are certainly another form of keeping your body healthy. Like cardio training also, they should not be pursued lightly and without guidance as doing so offers your body to great injury - and no one likes to back track.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Exercising While Sick
Although I don’t imagine it crosses most peoples mind, I have been asked on occasion whether I think it is a good idea to exercise when you’re sick. Like so many other questions, I would have to answer this with extreme vacillation and say “yes and no”. Exercise is always important for your body - especially if we define exercise as simple activity as opposed to inactivity - but there are times when your bodies metabolic processes need to be focusing their attention somewhere other than external exertion (like combating an illness).
If you’re young, the answer to this question is often intuitive and, in fact, made for you... If Mom says stay in bed, you stay in bed. Even at a young age, however, perhaps as you progressed through college you noticed that nothing about your body was quite the same when invaded with some or another virus or parasite. Your attention may not have been as sharp, your energy depleted, even your coordination could have seemed muddled. We have a tendency to pay less attention to such details as we grow older and certain activities like playing football, studying all night or throwing a wad of paper at the cute girl across from you become less important and, therefore, less indicative of our overall well being. Certainly being sick on the job will result in a tough time, but it doesn’t always compare to the stress of being sick during finals.
Ultimately, if you have a mild illness, it is not a bad idea to get up and move around a little. In this case, we’ll define “mild” as little to no fever, and annoying but not habit altering symptoms like sneezing, headache, body ache, cough etc.. If you take this sort of mild intrusion on your body as a signal to shut down and you lie in bed until the symptoms subside, you may in fact be aiding the illness, not your body. The reason for this is found in the body’s complex transportation system for nutrients, fluids, and our battle systems like antibodies and white blood cells (although white blood cells rarely get involved with mild illness). This transportation system is based upon pressures, changing pressures which require alterations back and forth between and within vessels to keep the transport going. If we lie stagnant, our body is only able to utilize the natural pressure gradients which already exist in the vessel systems. If we move, however, the contractions of our musculature helps change the pressure as well, making transport easier. Thereby, as your body goes through killing the bug in you, it has an easier time both getting new combatants to the intruder in the first place and in removing the illness once it has been found. Lying in wait may allow a mild illness to spread more easily since it is not necessarily bound to the same sort of transport as your body’s defenses. All of a sudden your mild illness is no longer mild in a few days.
The flip side of this equation is a more severe illness - usually associated with more severe symptoms like high fever, possible rashes, mouth or nose sores, and a cacophony of other fun things no one wants to think about unless they find reading medical journals entertaining as I do. In this case you are probably under the supervision of a doctor (or at least Dr. Mom) and you do as they say. A more substantial illness will invoke further defenses in your body to work like the white blood cells I mentioned earlier. In this case, movement doesn’t assist your body in the creation of these cells no matter what you do. In fact, the added metabolic energy required to produce your new combatants puts such a strain on your system that using further energy for exercise can be damaging to your cause. In this case, you should move only when necessary - for food or when nature calls - and all other time should be spent in rest. Most people don’t have the inclination to exercise with this sort of illness - in fact they are not inclined to do much of anything, but if you are a die-hard, take careful account of what your body is telling you. If you get up to go to the bathroom and you’re exhausted by the time you return to your bed, don’t try to eek out a light run later that day after you’ve had a quick nap.
Either way, if you do decide to exercise while you are sick, scale back your activity immensely. Wether a strong or weak illness, your body is still focused on removing that illness at the moment and is not going to perform up to a normal high standard you may ask of it. Usually just getting up and walking around 15 minutes once or twice a day is plenty. If you choose to go to the gym, a very easy cardio workout of no more than half an hour may be acceptable if you are naturally used to exercise when healthy. Sitting on a recumbent bike at a low resistance or walking on a treadmill at 2-2.5 miles per hour will increase your heart rate enough to help the transportation processes I mentioned earlier without totally exhausting you. Strength training should be generally avoided because you are not in a physical condition to make progress with a strength workout and strength workouts don’t inherently maintain a high heart rate which is the necessary component for pressure changes.
Finally, pay attention to your body. If just getting to the car to go to the gym is a struggle, don’t pursue a workout! If, on the other hand, you have been lying in bed for 3 days and your symptoms just wont change or go away, try getting up and moving around a little bit - not too long - but see how it feels. You may be hastening your body on the road to recovery.
If you’re young, the answer to this question is often intuitive and, in fact, made for you... If Mom says stay in bed, you stay in bed. Even at a young age, however, perhaps as you progressed through college you noticed that nothing about your body was quite the same when invaded with some or another virus or parasite. Your attention may not have been as sharp, your energy depleted, even your coordination could have seemed muddled. We have a tendency to pay less attention to such details as we grow older and certain activities like playing football, studying all night or throwing a wad of paper at the cute girl across from you become less important and, therefore, less indicative of our overall well being. Certainly being sick on the job will result in a tough time, but it doesn’t always compare to the stress of being sick during finals.
Ultimately, if you have a mild illness, it is not a bad idea to get up and move around a little. In this case, we’ll define “mild” as little to no fever, and annoying but not habit altering symptoms like sneezing, headache, body ache, cough etc.. If you take this sort of mild intrusion on your body as a signal to shut down and you lie in bed until the symptoms subside, you may in fact be aiding the illness, not your body. The reason for this is found in the body’s complex transportation system for nutrients, fluids, and our battle systems like antibodies and white blood cells (although white blood cells rarely get involved with mild illness). This transportation system is based upon pressures, changing pressures which require alterations back and forth between and within vessels to keep the transport going. If we lie stagnant, our body is only able to utilize the natural pressure gradients which already exist in the vessel systems. If we move, however, the contractions of our musculature helps change the pressure as well, making transport easier. Thereby, as your body goes through killing the bug in you, it has an easier time both getting new combatants to the intruder in the first place and in removing the illness once it has been found. Lying in wait may allow a mild illness to spread more easily since it is not necessarily bound to the same sort of transport as your body’s defenses. All of a sudden your mild illness is no longer mild in a few days.
The flip side of this equation is a more severe illness - usually associated with more severe symptoms like high fever, possible rashes, mouth or nose sores, and a cacophony of other fun things no one wants to think about unless they find reading medical journals entertaining as I do. In this case you are probably under the supervision of a doctor (or at least Dr. Mom) and you do as they say. A more substantial illness will invoke further defenses in your body to work like the white blood cells I mentioned earlier. In this case, movement doesn’t assist your body in the creation of these cells no matter what you do. In fact, the added metabolic energy required to produce your new combatants puts such a strain on your system that using further energy for exercise can be damaging to your cause. In this case, you should move only when necessary - for food or when nature calls - and all other time should be spent in rest. Most people don’t have the inclination to exercise with this sort of illness - in fact they are not inclined to do much of anything, but if you are a die-hard, take careful account of what your body is telling you. If you get up to go to the bathroom and you’re exhausted by the time you return to your bed, don’t try to eek out a light run later that day after you’ve had a quick nap.
Either way, if you do decide to exercise while you are sick, scale back your activity immensely. Wether a strong or weak illness, your body is still focused on removing that illness at the moment and is not going to perform up to a normal high standard you may ask of it. Usually just getting up and walking around 15 minutes once or twice a day is plenty. If you choose to go to the gym, a very easy cardio workout of no more than half an hour may be acceptable if you are naturally used to exercise when healthy. Sitting on a recumbent bike at a low resistance or walking on a treadmill at 2-2.5 miles per hour will increase your heart rate enough to help the transportation processes I mentioned earlier without totally exhausting you. Strength training should be generally avoided because you are not in a physical condition to make progress with a strength workout and strength workouts don’t inherently maintain a high heart rate which is the necessary component for pressure changes.
Finally, pay attention to your body. If just getting to the car to go to the gym is a struggle, don’t pursue a workout! If, on the other hand, you have been lying in bed for 3 days and your symptoms just wont change or go away, try getting up and moving around a little bit - not too long - but see how it feels. You may be hastening your body on the road to recovery.
Monday, January 21, 2008
Shin Splints
“Shin splints” is the common term health professionals and athletes use to describe general shin pain during activity. In and of itself, shin splints are not a defined medical condition but rather the feeling that results from several different lower leg conditions which cause pain through the shin.
Shin splints are most commonly incurred from too much running or walking, or improper technique doing either running or walking. Believe it or not there is a right and wrong way for your body to run and walk within the confines of physical laws and if your body operates slightly differently, you will most likely have to change something or become injured. While the physical structure of the body is designed to walk and run, I personally feel that it was not meant to do either in a straight line for an extended period of time as in a marathon or long charity walk. I’m not saying that these endeavors should not be pursued, just understand that doing these activities offer your body to an inherent likelihood for injury.
Pain in your shin often stems from a break down in the ability of the foot and lower leg to support your bodies impact with the ground during walking or running. Each time you take a step walking, your heel pounds on the ground with a force up to four times your body weight! If you are running, this impact can be increased to nearly ten times your body weight! Imagine a thousand pounds of force striking the small bones of your foot all at once. That is what walking and running do and in point of fact, that is how the body is designed to work. Because you have so many bones in your foot and ankle, your leg is able to absorb and disperse the shock of impact with the ground evenly and without damage to surrounding tissues. If you have an imbalance in these absorptive abilities, however, one of the common results is shin splints.
Shin splints feels like a bunch of small pins being stuck into your leg up and down the length of your tibia which is in fact your shin bone. Like so many other pains, this comes from a swelling of flexible structures (muscles, tendons, fascia, connective tissue) in and around the shin location. Initially, shin splints are annoying and simply cause a little pain at the beginning of running or walking. If not treated, however, they can become debilitatingly painful and even be responsible for structural damage to the bones of the shin and ankle.
The most common causes of shin splints are weaknesses in the muscles of the lower leg relative to one another. If your calf is much tighter and stronger than its contrasting muscle, the tibialis anterior, running could cause you shin splints. To find the tibialis anterior muscle, put your hand over the front of your shin with your foot flat on the ground. Now, keeping your heel on the ground, lift your toe and the ball of your foot as high as you can off the ground. That shifting muscle you feel to the right of your right shin or to the left of your left shin bone is the tibialis anterior. Weakness in this muscle will eventually force surrounding support muscles to become overworked as you run or walk in an effort to do that movement you just performed - pulling your foot upward - a necessary movement for ambulation (walking or running).
Another possible weakness could be in a similar muscle called the tibialis posterior. This muscle can’t easily be felt because it sits on the under side of your shin bone. The tibialis posterior is a very strong tendonous structure that helps lower and lift the big arch of your foot properly each time you step - again to absorb impact. If this muscle is weak or overworked because of some other weakness (like the tibialis anterior), it will become inflamed and painful. This is the most common pain someone will experience with shin splints.
Shin splints are most frequently caused by trying to do too much too quickly. If your body is not recently used to running or walking on an extended basis, it will need a proper progression of increased use in order to acclimate it to the new activity. Even if you used to be a runner, if you haven’t done it for a few months, you will need to alter your training scheme to allow for a rebuilding phase to take care of your lower leg and re-acquaint it with the rigors of consistent running.
If you already have shin splints, you need to back way off of your current training routine. Stop running or walking and take up swimming, biking, rowing or some other activity that doesn’t involved repetitive foot impact with the ground. Stay away from running or walking until at least two weeks after the pain subsides all the while taking a mild anti-inflammatory drug like ibuprophen or acetominophen. Ice your shins after every workout and continue taking the drug and applying the ice when you are finally able to return to your walking or running. You will probably experience a little shin pain when you return to your impact activity, so start out slow - only 10 to 20 minutes at the start and work up to longer times as your body allows. Remember to ice after every workout!
To help avoid shin splints in the first place and to help your body rehabilitate from existing shin splints, try the simple exercise of walking around on your heels a few times a day. Any time you are walking around - in the kitchen, at work, around the house, or even at the mall if you are so inclined, walk exclusively on your heels with your toes pulled up toward your shin as high as you can get them. Continue walking this way for 3 or more minutes. Your shins should burn pretty significantly by the end of the timed period. This burning is sort of what mild shin splints would feel like. Doing this exercise for a short period of time (like 3 minutes) forces those support muscles of the foot and lower leg to work harder than they normally would by removing some of the absorptive ability of your foot, thereby strengthening the support. Similar to a baseball player swinging a heavy bat before going to the plate, this strengthening helps your body be stronger than the future stresses you will be enacting upon it.
Shin splints are no small matter. They definitely hinder performance and can indicate irreparable damage being done to your body so don’t try to “work through the pain”. At minimum an ice treatment should be followed after every physical activity but the best way to remove them is stop the activity that is causing the pain all together and then slowly work back into that activity (running or walking) after your body has healed. If you ignore nagging injuries like shin splints they will just spell more debilitating problems down the road.
Shin splints are most commonly incurred from too much running or walking, or improper technique doing either running or walking. Believe it or not there is a right and wrong way for your body to run and walk within the confines of physical laws and if your body operates slightly differently, you will most likely have to change something or become injured. While the physical structure of the body is designed to walk and run, I personally feel that it was not meant to do either in a straight line for an extended period of time as in a marathon or long charity walk. I’m not saying that these endeavors should not be pursued, just understand that doing these activities offer your body to an inherent likelihood for injury.
Pain in your shin often stems from a break down in the ability of the foot and lower leg to support your bodies impact with the ground during walking or running. Each time you take a step walking, your heel pounds on the ground with a force up to four times your body weight! If you are running, this impact can be increased to nearly ten times your body weight! Imagine a thousand pounds of force striking the small bones of your foot all at once. That is what walking and running do and in point of fact, that is how the body is designed to work. Because you have so many bones in your foot and ankle, your leg is able to absorb and disperse the shock of impact with the ground evenly and without damage to surrounding tissues. If you have an imbalance in these absorptive abilities, however, one of the common results is shin splints.
Shin splints feels like a bunch of small pins being stuck into your leg up and down the length of your tibia which is in fact your shin bone. Like so many other pains, this comes from a swelling of flexible structures (muscles, tendons, fascia, connective tissue) in and around the shin location. Initially, shin splints are annoying and simply cause a little pain at the beginning of running or walking. If not treated, however, they can become debilitatingly painful and even be responsible for structural damage to the bones of the shin and ankle.
The most common causes of shin splints are weaknesses in the muscles of the lower leg relative to one another. If your calf is much tighter and stronger than its contrasting muscle, the tibialis anterior, running could cause you shin splints. To find the tibialis anterior muscle, put your hand over the front of your shin with your foot flat on the ground. Now, keeping your heel on the ground, lift your toe and the ball of your foot as high as you can off the ground. That shifting muscle you feel to the right of your right shin or to the left of your left shin bone is the tibialis anterior. Weakness in this muscle will eventually force surrounding support muscles to become overworked as you run or walk in an effort to do that movement you just performed - pulling your foot upward - a necessary movement for ambulation (walking or running).
Another possible weakness could be in a similar muscle called the tibialis posterior. This muscle can’t easily be felt because it sits on the under side of your shin bone. The tibialis posterior is a very strong tendonous structure that helps lower and lift the big arch of your foot properly each time you step - again to absorb impact. If this muscle is weak or overworked because of some other weakness (like the tibialis anterior), it will become inflamed and painful. This is the most common pain someone will experience with shin splints.
Shin splints are most frequently caused by trying to do too much too quickly. If your body is not recently used to running or walking on an extended basis, it will need a proper progression of increased use in order to acclimate it to the new activity. Even if you used to be a runner, if you haven’t done it for a few months, you will need to alter your training scheme to allow for a rebuilding phase to take care of your lower leg and re-acquaint it with the rigors of consistent running.
If you already have shin splints, you need to back way off of your current training routine. Stop running or walking and take up swimming, biking, rowing or some other activity that doesn’t involved repetitive foot impact with the ground. Stay away from running or walking until at least two weeks after the pain subsides all the while taking a mild anti-inflammatory drug like ibuprophen or acetominophen. Ice your shins after every workout and continue taking the drug and applying the ice when you are finally able to return to your walking or running. You will probably experience a little shin pain when you return to your impact activity, so start out slow - only 10 to 20 minutes at the start and work up to longer times as your body allows. Remember to ice after every workout!
To help avoid shin splints in the first place and to help your body rehabilitate from existing shin splints, try the simple exercise of walking around on your heels a few times a day. Any time you are walking around - in the kitchen, at work, around the house, or even at the mall if you are so inclined, walk exclusively on your heels with your toes pulled up toward your shin as high as you can get them. Continue walking this way for 3 or more minutes. Your shins should burn pretty significantly by the end of the timed period. This burning is sort of what mild shin splints would feel like. Doing this exercise for a short period of time (like 3 minutes) forces those support muscles of the foot and lower leg to work harder than they normally would by removing some of the absorptive ability of your foot, thereby strengthening the support. Similar to a baseball player swinging a heavy bat before going to the plate, this strengthening helps your body be stronger than the future stresses you will be enacting upon it.
Shin splints are no small matter. They definitely hinder performance and can indicate irreparable damage being done to your body so don’t try to “work through the pain”. At minimum an ice treatment should be followed after every physical activity but the best way to remove them is stop the activity that is causing the pain all together and then slowly work back into that activity (running or walking) after your body has healed. If you ignore nagging injuries like shin splints they will just spell more debilitating problems down the road.
Friday, January 18, 2008
How Much Cardio?
How much cardio should I be doing in a week? This is a question I get all the time. The answer to this question depends, of course, on what you are trying to achieve. The American Heart Association and the American Medical Association both recommend Americans get at least 30 minutes of consistent activity five to six times per week. “Activity” in this case simply means walking - being up and mobile for a total of 30 minutes. This guideline, however, represents the absolute bare minimum of aerobic activity people need to attempt to stay healthy with a relatively sedentary lifestyle. If your job entails a lot of moving around like being in construction, repair, or other labor industries, you may already get enough activity to reach this bare minimum. If you spend most of your day sitting, however, whether it be at a desk, in a car, on an airplane, or on a couch, the AMA and AHA believe you need this half hour of activity just to keep your ticker ticking.
By releasing these minimum requirements, the AMA and AHA are attempting to combat the number one killer in the US - heart disease. They are not suggesting that a half hour of walking will do anything for your figure nor will it guarantee good health. Studies have found that some people move less than 1 mile per week under their own power! Instead they rely on cars, elevators, rolling chairs and other such devices to travel for them. Imagine moving only enough to cover 1 mile of ground per week! So when you read these half hour standards, understand that this sort of activity is not what the models in magazines or athletes are doing to carve out the beautiful bodies they possess. That being said, is it really your goal to look like a model or athlete? If it is, think about their professions - they are paid to exercise and paid handsomely. Therefore, these people often spend four to six or more hours per day doing rigorous physical activity. Can you really imagine trying to devote a full four extra hours a day to working out?
Try to make a reasonable goal for yourself rather than trying to be someone else. Rather than measuring your weight, measure how you feel or how your body works. Perhaps buy a pair of pants that is the next size below yours and work to fit into them. This is the sort of reasonable, achievable goal one can reach rather than looking like some 18 year old model in a magazine. So now how do we reach our new reasonable goal? Remember, a half hour of walking is the minimum for health so that is just a starting point. Which means from that starting point we must increase time and/or intensity of cardio exercise to achieve physical progress.
First of all, what constitutes cardio? Cardio-vascular activity is essentially any activity which increases heart rate and breathing. So going from a seated position to walking is technically cardio. Both heart rate and breathing do elevate in order to accomplish this change in energy expenditure, but we need to do more to force our bodies to fatigue more quickly thereby further improving our heart and lungs and enticing our bodies to burn fat as energy rather than the simple sugars and carbohydrates we ingest each day during meals. The first step to increase our cardio, then, is to increase a walking pace. Go from casual to brisk - this will further elevate heart rate and breathing. Still this is not enough for fat burning activity.
Now lets increase the walking pace again and add an extra fifteen minutes to each work out. So 45 minutes, 5 to 6 times per week at a pretty good walking pace. Now we are getting somewhere - we’re breathing heavily, our heart is pumping quickly and we’re breaking a pretty good sweat before the exercise is over. This is a good start. If you are tackling cardio exercise for the first time in a long time, this level of activity will help an overweight person loose a few pounds. (Not without some attention to diet, however).
What if you are already in decent shape - not lean and toned like a high class athlete, but not unhealthily overweight either. You want to make progress. You are going to have to work even harder than your previously sedentary counterpart. You could do a brisk 45 min walk with relative ease. You’d get the same sweat and your breathing would increase, but it wouldn’t seem that hard. So increase time and increase intensity. Its time for you to start running - and not just 45 minutes either, most likely you’ll need to be at it for 60 to 75 minutes. So already we’ve reached a threshold of an hour of cardio and we’re still wearing a 40in waist for men or a size 12 for women. Your goal is to lose more.
The next step is to further increase the time or intensity. If you have the time to spend, try running for 90 -120 minutes. This is starting to become a pretty big chunk of the day, however. We’re starting to approach that athlete/model activity level. So if you don’t have that kind of time to devote to the exercise, you are going to need to maximize your output at a lesser time of 50 - 75 minutes. Now you have to start trying techniques like sprint intervals where you run easy for 4 minutes then run as fast as you possibly can for 60 seconds and repeat that 4minute/1minute pattern for 50 - 75 minutes. In order to achieve the goal, you need to put in the work.
Fortunately there are alternatives to simply running and then running faster. Some high intensity cardio activities like martial arts, boxing, soccer, basketball and surfing can accomplish the same type of calorie burning cardio exercise that running fast would but they are usually a little more interesting. Low and behold all of these activities are sports! Now all of a sudden to look like athletes, we start playing and exercising like athletes.
Again, the answer to the “cardio question” depends on your goals. But understand if you have lofty goals, you are going to be required to work harder and longer than just about all of your counterparts. From the health perspective, 5 to 6 days with thirty minutes of cardio is barely sufficient. To make any progress, you need to do much more than that. 45 minutes of running is starting to get you physical and 90 to 120 minutes of constant intense activity is what it takes to build an athletic body.
By releasing these minimum requirements, the AMA and AHA are attempting to combat the number one killer in the US - heart disease. They are not suggesting that a half hour of walking will do anything for your figure nor will it guarantee good health. Studies have found that some people move less than 1 mile per week under their own power! Instead they rely on cars, elevators, rolling chairs and other such devices to travel for them. Imagine moving only enough to cover 1 mile of ground per week! So when you read these half hour standards, understand that this sort of activity is not what the models in magazines or athletes are doing to carve out the beautiful bodies they possess. That being said, is it really your goal to look like a model or athlete? If it is, think about their professions - they are paid to exercise and paid handsomely. Therefore, these people often spend four to six or more hours per day doing rigorous physical activity. Can you really imagine trying to devote a full four extra hours a day to working out?
Try to make a reasonable goal for yourself rather than trying to be someone else. Rather than measuring your weight, measure how you feel or how your body works. Perhaps buy a pair of pants that is the next size below yours and work to fit into them. This is the sort of reasonable, achievable goal one can reach rather than looking like some 18 year old model in a magazine. So now how do we reach our new reasonable goal? Remember, a half hour of walking is the minimum for health so that is just a starting point. Which means from that starting point we must increase time and/or intensity of cardio exercise to achieve physical progress.
First of all, what constitutes cardio? Cardio-vascular activity is essentially any activity which increases heart rate and breathing. So going from a seated position to walking is technically cardio. Both heart rate and breathing do elevate in order to accomplish this change in energy expenditure, but we need to do more to force our bodies to fatigue more quickly thereby further improving our heart and lungs and enticing our bodies to burn fat as energy rather than the simple sugars and carbohydrates we ingest each day during meals. The first step to increase our cardio, then, is to increase a walking pace. Go from casual to brisk - this will further elevate heart rate and breathing. Still this is not enough for fat burning activity.
Now lets increase the walking pace again and add an extra fifteen minutes to each work out. So 45 minutes, 5 to 6 times per week at a pretty good walking pace. Now we are getting somewhere - we’re breathing heavily, our heart is pumping quickly and we’re breaking a pretty good sweat before the exercise is over. This is a good start. If you are tackling cardio exercise for the first time in a long time, this level of activity will help an overweight person loose a few pounds. (Not without some attention to diet, however).
What if you are already in decent shape - not lean and toned like a high class athlete, but not unhealthily overweight either. You want to make progress. You are going to have to work even harder than your previously sedentary counterpart. You could do a brisk 45 min walk with relative ease. You’d get the same sweat and your breathing would increase, but it wouldn’t seem that hard. So increase time and increase intensity. Its time for you to start running - and not just 45 minutes either, most likely you’ll need to be at it for 60 to 75 minutes. So already we’ve reached a threshold of an hour of cardio and we’re still wearing a 40in waist for men or a size 12 for women. Your goal is to lose more.
The next step is to further increase the time or intensity. If you have the time to spend, try running for 90 -120 minutes. This is starting to become a pretty big chunk of the day, however. We’re starting to approach that athlete/model activity level. So if you don’t have that kind of time to devote to the exercise, you are going to need to maximize your output at a lesser time of 50 - 75 minutes. Now you have to start trying techniques like sprint intervals where you run easy for 4 minutes then run as fast as you possibly can for 60 seconds and repeat that 4minute/1minute pattern for 50 - 75 minutes. In order to achieve the goal, you need to put in the work.
Fortunately there are alternatives to simply running and then running faster. Some high intensity cardio activities like martial arts, boxing, soccer, basketball and surfing can accomplish the same type of calorie burning cardio exercise that running fast would but they are usually a little more interesting. Low and behold all of these activities are sports! Now all of a sudden to look like athletes, we start playing and exercising like athletes.
Again, the answer to the “cardio question” depends on your goals. But understand if you have lofty goals, you are going to be required to work harder and longer than just about all of your counterparts. From the health perspective, 5 to 6 days with thirty minutes of cardio is barely sufficient. To make any progress, you need to do much more than that. 45 minutes of running is starting to get you physical and 90 to 120 minutes of constant intense activity is what it takes to build an athletic body.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Selecting Running Shoes
Proper equipment is an essential part of any athlete’s performance arsenal. This statement is no less true for a runner who, in the grand scheme of sport athletes, has very little equipment to contend with. A runner’s shoes, however, are an integral part of their success and consistency capabilities for running. No matter what your distance as a runner from 100 meters to 100 miles, your shoe is the only buffer your body has with the ground besides the natural impact reduction capabilities of your body. Your body is designed to disperse the stresses of impact with every step and you need to make sure you have a shoe which encourages and even assists this dispersal rather than hinders it.
The first thing a runner needs to know about shoes is that only designated running shoes are actually designed for running. There is quite a bit of biomechanical engineering that goes into the design of any shoe and running shoes receive perhaps the most technical attention due to the brevity of their use. If you run on a track frequently, you should own track shoes, if you run long distances, you should own distance running shoes. Not doing so is just offering your body up to injury for an entirely fixable reason.
The body is actually designed to run without shoes and a some cultures in the world still operate almost entirely in this manner. If a developing child never wears shoes, their feet will become externally tough yet internally extremely mobile allowing for that proper absorption of the forces of walking and running. Shoes were originally designed and are still necessary for foot protection in a modern world. They protect from the elements, from objects on the ground, and from impact with external structures (no stubbed toes). Since your body was designed to run without shoes, shoes which you do wear should impede this design as little as possible. The first thing to remember when you look for running shoes is - you should never have to “break in” running shoes. They should be instantly comfortable and impede your movement minimally. If you so much as feel a chafing of your ankle or your toes occasionally touch the sides or end of the shoe upper, you need a different pair of shoes.
Because of aesthetics, many people make poor decisions when purchasing new shoes. There are types of shoes, like high heels, which our bodies were never meant to wear. Heels are unfortunately societally attractive, but extremely detrimental to the body of the wearer. In the same vain, people will sometimes buy running shoes for their appearance rather than their fit. Just because you like the look of a shoe doesn’t mean that shoe is good for you! Buying shoes that are too small or have awkward stability is a bad idea if you actually want to wear them frequently or during activity. Make sure none of your toes touch the end of your shoe. If they do, this restriction will impede the ability of your foot to properly propel you forward and absorb the shock of impact with the ground - whether you are running or walking.
Be careful of arch support. Depending on your foot structure, too little arch support will force your foot to flatten out too much and you will strain structures of the foot and lower leg. Too much arch support my restrict the ability of your foot to flatten properly and thereby causing the opposite problem of the former situation. Again, the shoe should feel immediately comfortable when you put it on. You shouldn’t feel like you have an arch support lump in the middle of your foot, nor should the shoe sag to the inside because of too little support.
The final thing to keep in mind about running shoes is that they need to be replaced. If you are going to use your shoes for impact exercise like running on a regular basis, you will need to replace your shoes at least once a year. If you have high mileage goals in your running routine you will need to replace your shoes much more often, perhaps as frequently as every three months. The reason for this is simple physics. The material that is used to make the soles of running shoes starts as a liquid. Over time, liquid evaporates and becomes more solid. In the case of running shoe soles, this means the cushion part of the shoe becomes harder and harder over their life span. For this reason it is also not a good idea to buy shoes that have been sitting on a shelf for more than a year. Try to buy current models of shoe. These shoes are generally more expensive but the cost of the shoe will outweigh the cost of recovery from an overuse injury you will most likely incur as a result of poor equipment.
Probably the best way to select running shoes is to go to a premium store where the staff members can do a custom gate fitting for your body. These professionals fit shoes every day and take a lot of time matching different body types and foot configurations to different types of shoes. This kind of service is expensive, but if you are a serious runner, it is extremely important. If you are simply running for recreation you still need properly fitting shoes and you should follow the guidelines of size and comfort I have mentioned previously. When making your purchase, consider how you plan on using these new shoes. If you are only wearing them to walk around a gym and perhaps do some strength training, you shoes won’t affect your performance too much and a cheaper option is viable. If, however, you are planning to wear the shoe frequently and get a lot of use out of it for cross-training or running, it is in your interest to spend a little more to get the proper fit and remove yourself from the possibility of equipment injury.
The first thing a runner needs to know about shoes is that only designated running shoes are actually designed for running. There is quite a bit of biomechanical engineering that goes into the design of any shoe and running shoes receive perhaps the most technical attention due to the brevity of their use. If you run on a track frequently, you should own track shoes, if you run long distances, you should own distance running shoes. Not doing so is just offering your body up to injury for an entirely fixable reason.
The body is actually designed to run without shoes and a some cultures in the world still operate almost entirely in this manner. If a developing child never wears shoes, their feet will become externally tough yet internally extremely mobile allowing for that proper absorption of the forces of walking and running. Shoes were originally designed and are still necessary for foot protection in a modern world. They protect from the elements, from objects on the ground, and from impact with external structures (no stubbed toes). Since your body was designed to run without shoes, shoes which you do wear should impede this design as little as possible. The first thing to remember when you look for running shoes is - you should never have to “break in” running shoes. They should be instantly comfortable and impede your movement minimally. If you so much as feel a chafing of your ankle or your toes occasionally touch the sides or end of the shoe upper, you need a different pair of shoes.
Because of aesthetics, many people make poor decisions when purchasing new shoes. There are types of shoes, like high heels, which our bodies were never meant to wear. Heels are unfortunately societally attractive, but extremely detrimental to the body of the wearer. In the same vain, people will sometimes buy running shoes for their appearance rather than their fit. Just because you like the look of a shoe doesn’t mean that shoe is good for you! Buying shoes that are too small or have awkward stability is a bad idea if you actually want to wear them frequently or during activity. Make sure none of your toes touch the end of your shoe. If they do, this restriction will impede the ability of your foot to properly propel you forward and absorb the shock of impact with the ground - whether you are running or walking.
Be careful of arch support. Depending on your foot structure, too little arch support will force your foot to flatten out too much and you will strain structures of the foot and lower leg. Too much arch support my restrict the ability of your foot to flatten properly and thereby causing the opposite problem of the former situation. Again, the shoe should feel immediately comfortable when you put it on. You shouldn’t feel like you have an arch support lump in the middle of your foot, nor should the shoe sag to the inside because of too little support.
The final thing to keep in mind about running shoes is that they need to be replaced. If you are going to use your shoes for impact exercise like running on a regular basis, you will need to replace your shoes at least once a year. If you have high mileage goals in your running routine you will need to replace your shoes much more often, perhaps as frequently as every three months. The reason for this is simple physics. The material that is used to make the soles of running shoes starts as a liquid. Over time, liquid evaporates and becomes more solid. In the case of running shoe soles, this means the cushion part of the shoe becomes harder and harder over their life span. For this reason it is also not a good idea to buy shoes that have been sitting on a shelf for more than a year. Try to buy current models of shoe. These shoes are generally more expensive but the cost of the shoe will outweigh the cost of recovery from an overuse injury you will most likely incur as a result of poor equipment.
Probably the best way to select running shoes is to go to a premium store where the staff members can do a custom gate fitting for your body. These professionals fit shoes every day and take a lot of time matching different body types and foot configurations to different types of shoes. This kind of service is expensive, but if you are a serious runner, it is extremely important. If you are simply running for recreation you still need properly fitting shoes and you should follow the guidelines of size and comfort I have mentioned previously. When making your purchase, consider how you plan on using these new shoes. If you are only wearing them to walk around a gym and perhaps do some strength training, you shoes won’t affect your performance too much and a cheaper option is viable. If, however, you are planning to wear the shoe frequently and get a lot of use out of it for cross-training or running, it is in your interest to spend a little more to get the proper fit and remove yourself from the possibility of equipment injury.
Friday, January 11, 2008
Defining PAIN
Pain. Nearly everyone has it at some point in their life. (There is a medical condition with which a person cannot feel physical pain but this is very rare). Whether that pain is from over activity or lack of activity, pain is the tactile response the body gives your brain to signify when something is amiss. Although it is uncomfortable, the existence of pain is usually a good thing. Pain signifies that your body is functioning properly and it knows when it has worked too much or too little. If part of your body is in pain, it is not the end of the world, and rather than be avoided, pain should be embraced as a signal from your body to change something. Not that one should try to induce pain upon themselves! Pain is still a signal that something is wrong or was wrong with the body and needs attention, not exacerbation.
Pain comes in many different forms that we can describe in different ways. The feel of different types of pain often signify different things. If you pinch yourself, you receive one kind of pain, if you get your hand caught in a door, you feel a different kind of pain, if you get hit or scraped or burned - all of these induce slightly different negative feelings which we can categorize as pain. Usually when we have pain from an external wound, we can identify the source and the reason for the pain - we can see it. The hard part is taking this understanding of pain and recognizing signals of internal pain as well.
Pain on your skin and pain within your body is actually very similar. In both cases, you can feel burning, tingling, pressure, sharpness, and nagging ache. We can see the source of any one of these pains on the surface, but it is much more difficult to identify the sources inside your body. So lets go through some types of pain and what these various pains could mean. NOTE!!!! If you are injured and any kind of pain persists beyond your control, you should not try to self-diagnose any malady you may have. Defining pain doesn’t mean you can cure it! You should seek professional assistance for any pain you cannot safely manage yourself but by defining the pain, you can give that medical or health professional a better understanding of what may be going on in your body.
The most common source of pain at any point in the body from arthritis to tendonitis to heart attack is swelling. Swelling is just an increase in blood flow and fluid movement within a certain area. All of the pain signals described above can be the result of some sort of swelling or inflammation. When your body is injured it will try to send more blood and healing fluids to that injured site to help in the repair process. The collection of fluid hurts - sometimes a little or sometimes a lot, but it will always hurt. Medical jargon defines swelling in confusing ways - edema, any word that ends in “-itis” - but ultimately it is all swelling and can be treated to some extent through simple maintenance procedures.
Now that we understand there are different types of pain, the next step is to understand what different types of pain may mean. Again, all pains could ultimately be the result of inflammation, but some locations of inflammation is more dangerous than others (like in the heart). Here, I’ll describe the different types of pain you could experience from physical activity as in a fitness gym.
D.O.M.S. - DOMS, or Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness is actually one type of pain that doesn’t necessarily come from inflammation, however you experience it quite frequently after periods of high activity. DOMS is the normal result of a workout in the gym, shoveling snow, doing a difficult hike, or any other activity you haven’t engaged in for a while. DOMS occurs within the belly of the muscles, that is, not in and around joints, and not near internal organs. You don’t get DOMS in your elbow, nor would you experience DOMS in your pancreas. To be honest, the health industry is still not sure exactly what the direct cause of DOMS is, other than to recognize that the pain experienced from DOMS is not an indication of injury, merely an indication of fatigue. If you don’t feel DOMS once in a while in the day or two after your workout, you may not be working quite hard enough. On the other hand, if you experience this type of soreness for five days or more, you may have overdone it a little bit.
Ache - The word ache is almost synonymous with soreness. Ache is essentially the feeling one would use to describe the feeling of DOMS within the muscle. Ache is also frequently associated with conditions like tendonitis, arthritis, fasciitis ... notice all the “-itises”. NOTE: a headache is not usually a condition of physical strain and should be considered differently than other aches in the body. A headache may, however, evolve from other aches within the neck, back or shoulders. Ache is often the result of simple lack of movement or over movement of a particular structure. Aches are usually most evident when the body is or has been at rest for an extended period of time like after sitting or sleeping. Aches are often affected greatly by weather conditions and barometric pressures. The “ache” pain can frequently be alleviated with mild movement of the afflicted area. General simple activity which increases blood flow and allows tissues to move properly like taking a walk or doing some other mild exercise for over 5 or 10 minutes time will often help relieve the ache feeling. The ache will return, however, when the body has cooled and slowed its metabolic processes. Ache in organs should not be overlooked for more than a few days as it could be indication of a greater problem. Aches which occur in joints and other parts of the extremities shouldn’t last much more than a week or two. Again if they continue, seek professional examination.
Burning - Burning is kind of an odd pain. Burning feeling can result from both the feeling of too hot, but can also be the result of feeling too cold. Anyone who has been skiing in thin socks knows this. The sensation of burning isn’t necessarily a heat related response (although it is frequently) but rather another indication of something wrong with your body. If you touch something too hot or too cold for long enough you will feel burning, but the same kind of sensation can occur on the inside of your body as well. Unless you have a fever, your internal temperature doesn’t rise or fall much past the well known 98.6°F, so burning isn’t usually in response to a major temperature change. Rather burning is usually inflammation again often caused by chafing. Not so much the type of chafing you would experience from sitting on a horse saddle too long, but rather the chafing of one structure (like a tendon) over another (like a bone). NOTE: Persistent burning in and around your chest cavity or stomach can be indication of a serious problem! Contact emergency personnel immediately if this type of burning reaches and unbearable state or doesn’t diminish within a few hours! Burning in and around your joints is more common after exercise. Burning in your muscles is common during exercise. The burning in your muscles is actually necessary and is cause by acid which your body creates in response to using energy. If you are trying to strengthen muscles and they don’t burn, they aren’t being strengthened. Burning in and around joints is often related to another -itis. Usually an -itis like burn is not exclusive, however and will be accompanied by other sensations like tingling or numbness which we will discuss later.
Pressure - This is an odd sensation. Pressure doesn’t necessarily always hurt. Sometimes more serious injuries such as a broken bone or impaling will initially feel like pure pressure for a moment before other pain receptors alert you to the fact there is something really wrong. Pressure is often associated with aching when it does start to hurt but can lead to a very intense pain if the pressure persists and grows. Pressure, of course, can also be a sign of inflammation due to an excess of fluid in a certain area, but if a pressure sensation does persist and increase to unbearable levels, seek emergency help immediately! Pressure isn’t usually used to describe injuries unless they are injuries of inactivity. Someone may feel a pressure or stiffness in certain areas due to a lack of movement as opposed to excessive movement. This sort of pressure, like aching, may be alleviated with mild repetitive movement or stretching, but is not usually detrimental to the structure feeling the pressure. Rather it is another one of your bodies indicators that something is amiss.
Sharpness - Sharpness is the most cut and dry kind of pain. If you feel sharp pain, usually your body will react without your conscious control to alleviate that pain as quickly as possible. Sharp pains are rarely indications of minor maladies and should not be overlooked. Rather than “-itis”, sharp pain is more often associated with words like tear, break, or rupture. Much more gruesome sounding words for much more serious injuries. Sometimes sharp pains happen within a very specific range of movement and can be avoided, but unfortunately, the body can rarely heal the cause of a sharp pain without some kind of medical help. Sharp pains frequently require minor surgery to remove and can be the cause of greater problems if they are not addressed promptly. Your body will compensate to avoid the sharp pain, thereby creating some other imbalance in your structure which will most likely initiate a whole new pain in time.
Tingling or Numbness - Tingling or numbness are probably the most fickle of all pain feelings mostly because they don’t actually hurt. Tingling is not usually excruciating and numbness simply means lack of feeling period so there is no pain associated. These two sensations are, however, indicative of the most potentially dangerous conditions. All pain is a recognition and response of the nervous system. Tingling or numbness, on the other hand, frequently means that the nervous capability of the associated part is being restricted or completely cut off. Numbness should never be overlooked - even if it afflicts only a few fingers or toes because this could be a strong indication that something is wrong in some other part of your body - not necessarily the finger or toe that feels nothing. Tingling is more like a severe warning. If you feel tingling doing a certain activity and continue with that activity, there is a good chance you can do irreparable damage to some part of your body. Tingling is often felt in tendonitis in the knee or foot from activities like heavy weight lifting or running. If you persist with the activity that causes this tingling, the sensation will never go away and eventually the structure causing the sensation will break down and cease to function properly. If you have persistent numbness or tingling of any part of your body over a few weeks, seek medical advice.
No pain should be taken lightly. That being said, not all pains are an indication that something is injured. The muscle burning found in exercise is actually a good pain and one that should be sought during training activity. Burning in joints is a different circumstance, though, and must be addressed. If you have pain, pay attention to it. Thats what it is there for. Some part of your body is uncomfortable for some reason and wants to be noticed. Take note of how the pain started: What you were doing? What time of day? Was it consistently before or after a particular activity? Did it persist? Does it increase or decrease with activity? How bad is the pain? Can I make it worse? Can I make it better? These are all questions to ask yourself and tell your health professional the answers to these questions if you happen to seek ones advice. Most minor pains can be reduced and sometimes removed with the help of anti-inflammatory drugs like ibuprophen or Aspirin and application of ice to the afflicted area. Major or consistent pains should not be overlooked and need to be addressed before irreparable damage is incurred. Most of all, listen to your body - pain is it’s way of talking to you!
Pain comes in many different forms that we can describe in different ways. The feel of different types of pain often signify different things. If you pinch yourself, you receive one kind of pain, if you get your hand caught in a door, you feel a different kind of pain, if you get hit or scraped or burned - all of these induce slightly different negative feelings which we can categorize as pain. Usually when we have pain from an external wound, we can identify the source and the reason for the pain - we can see it. The hard part is taking this understanding of pain and recognizing signals of internal pain as well.
Pain on your skin and pain within your body is actually very similar. In both cases, you can feel burning, tingling, pressure, sharpness, and nagging ache. We can see the source of any one of these pains on the surface, but it is much more difficult to identify the sources inside your body. So lets go through some types of pain and what these various pains could mean. NOTE!!!! If you are injured and any kind of pain persists beyond your control, you should not try to self-diagnose any malady you may have. Defining pain doesn’t mean you can cure it! You should seek professional assistance for any pain you cannot safely manage yourself but by defining the pain, you can give that medical or health professional a better understanding of what may be going on in your body.
The most common source of pain at any point in the body from arthritis to tendonitis to heart attack is swelling. Swelling is just an increase in blood flow and fluid movement within a certain area. All of the pain signals described above can be the result of some sort of swelling or inflammation. When your body is injured it will try to send more blood and healing fluids to that injured site to help in the repair process. The collection of fluid hurts - sometimes a little or sometimes a lot, but it will always hurt. Medical jargon defines swelling in confusing ways - edema, any word that ends in “-itis” - but ultimately it is all swelling and can be treated to some extent through simple maintenance procedures.
Now that we understand there are different types of pain, the next step is to understand what different types of pain may mean. Again, all pains could ultimately be the result of inflammation, but some locations of inflammation is more dangerous than others (like in the heart). Here, I’ll describe the different types of pain you could experience from physical activity as in a fitness gym.
D.O.M.S. - DOMS, or Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness is actually one type of pain that doesn’t necessarily come from inflammation, however you experience it quite frequently after periods of high activity. DOMS is the normal result of a workout in the gym, shoveling snow, doing a difficult hike, or any other activity you haven’t engaged in for a while. DOMS occurs within the belly of the muscles, that is, not in and around joints, and not near internal organs. You don’t get DOMS in your elbow, nor would you experience DOMS in your pancreas. To be honest, the health industry is still not sure exactly what the direct cause of DOMS is, other than to recognize that the pain experienced from DOMS is not an indication of injury, merely an indication of fatigue. If you don’t feel DOMS once in a while in the day or two after your workout, you may not be working quite hard enough. On the other hand, if you experience this type of soreness for five days or more, you may have overdone it a little bit.
Ache - The word ache is almost synonymous with soreness. Ache is essentially the feeling one would use to describe the feeling of DOMS within the muscle. Ache is also frequently associated with conditions like tendonitis, arthritis, fasciitis ... notice all the “-itises”. NOTE: a headache is not usually a condition of physical strain and should be considered differently than other aches in the body. A headache may, however, evolve from other aches within the neck, back or shoulders. Ache is often the result of simple lack of movement or over movement of a particular structure. Aches are usually most evident when the body is or has been at rest for an extended period of time like after sitting or sleeping. Aches are often affected greatly by weather conditions and barometric pressures. The “ache” pain can frequently be alleviated with mild movement of the afflicted area. General simple activity which increases blood flow and allows tissues to move properly like taking a walk or doing some other mild exercise for over 5 or 10 minutes time will often help relieve the ache feeling. The ache will return, however, when the body has cooled and slowed its metabolic processes. Ache in organs should not be overlooked for more than a few days as it could be indication of a greater problem. Aches which occur in joints and other parts of the extremities shouldn’t last much more than a week or two. Again if they continue, seek professional examination.
Burning - Burning is kind of an odd pain. Burning feeling can result from both the feeling of too hot, but can also be the result of feeling too cold. Anyone who has been skiing in thin socks knows this. The sensation of burning isn’t necessarily a heat related response (although it is frequently) but rather another indication of something wrong with your body. If you touch something too hot or too cold for long enough you will feel burning, but the same kind of sensation can occur on the inside of your body as well. Unless you have a fever, your internal temperature doesn’t rise or fall much past the well known 98.6°F, so burning isn’t usually in response to a major temperature change. Rather burning is usually inflammation again often caused by chafing. Not so much the type of chafing you would experience from sitting on a horse saddle too long, but rather the chafing of one structure (like a tendon) over another (like a bone). NOTE: Persistent burning in and around your chest cavity or stomach can be indication of a serious problem! Contact emergency personnel immediately if this type of burning reaches and unbearable state or doesn’t diminish within a few hours! Burning in and around your joints is more common after exercise. Burning in your muscles is common during exercise. The burning in your muscles is actually necessary and is cause by acid which your body creates in response to using energy. If you are trying to strengthen muscles and they don’t burn, they aren’t being strengthened. Burning in and around joints is often related to another -itis. Usually an -itis like burn is not exclusive, however and will be accompanied by other sensations like tingling or numbness which we will discuss later.
Pressure - This is an odd sensation. Pressure doesn’t necessarily always hurt. Sometimes more serious injuries such as a broken bone or impaling will initially feel like pure pressure for a moment before other pain receptors alert you to the fact there is something really wrong. Pressure is often associated with aching when it does start to hurt but can lead to a very intense pain if the pressure persists and grows. Pressure, of course, can also be a sign of inflammation due to an excess of fluid in a certain area, but if a pressure sensation does persist and increase to unbearable levels, seek emergency help immediately! Pressure isn’t usually used to describe injuries unless they are injuries of inactivity. Someone may feel a pressure or stiffness in certain areas due to a lack of movement as opposed to excessive movement. This sort of pressure, like aching, may be alleviated with mild repetitive movement or stretching, but is not usually detrimental to the structure feeling the pressure. Rather it is another one of your bodies indicators that something is amiss.
Sharpness - Sharpness is the most cut and dry kind of pain. If you feel sharp pain, usually your body will react without your conscious control to alleviate that pain as quickly as possible. Sharp pains are rarely indications of minor maladies and should not be overlooked. Rather than “-itis”, sharp pain is more often associated with words like tear, break, or rupture. Much more gruesome sounding words for much more serious injuries. Sometimes sharp pains happen within a very specific range of movement and can be avoided, but unfortunately, the body can rarely heal the cause of a sharp pain without some kind of medical help. Sharp pains frequently require minor surgery to remove and can be the cause of greater problems if they are not addressed promptly. Your body will compensate to avoid the sharp pain, thereby creating some other imbalance in your structure which will most likely initiate a whole new pain in time.
Tingling or Numbness - Tingling or numbness are probably the most fickle of all pain feelings mostly because they don’t actually hurt. Tingling is not usually excruciating and numbness simply means lack of feeling period so there is no pain associated. These two sensations are, however, indicative of the most potentially dangerous conditions. All pain is a recognition and response of the nervous system. Tingling or numbness, on the other hand, frequently means that the nervous capability of the associated part is being restricted or completely cut off. Numbness should never be overlooked - even if it afflicts only a few fingers or toes because this could be a strong indication that something is wrong in some other part of your body - not necessarily the finger or toe that feels nothing. Tingling is more like a severe warning. If you feel tingling doing a certain activity and continue with that activity, there is a good chance you can do irreparable damage to some part of your body. Tingling is often felt in tendonitis in the knee or foot from activities like heavy weight lifting or running. If you persist with the activity that causes this tingling, the sensation will never go away and eventually the structure causing the sensation will break down and cease to function properly. If you have persistent numbness or tingling of any part of your body over a few weeks, seek medical advice.
No pain should be taken lightly. That being said, not all pains are an indication that something is injured. The muscle burning found in exercise is actually a good pain and one that should be sought during training activity. Burning in joints is a different circumstance, though, and must be addressed. If you have pain, pay attention to it. Thats what it is there for. Some part of your body is uncomfortable for some reason and wants to be noticed. Take note of how the pain started: What you were doing? What time of day? Was it consistently before or after a particular activity? Did it persist? Does it increase or decrease with activity? How bad is the pain? Can I make it worse? Can I make it better? These are all questions to ask yourself and tell your health professional the answers to these questions if you happen to seek ones advice. Most minor pains can be reduced and sometimes removed with the help of anti-inflammatory drugs like ibuprophen or Aspirin and application of ice to the afflicted area. Major or consistent pains should not be overlooked and need to be addressed before irreparable damage is incurred. Most of all, listen to your body - pain is it’s way of talking to you!
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Basic Lower Body Power Movements
A “power movement” is any movement of the body which can be accomplished with the addition of external weight above and beyond body weight. Power movements are the basic form of exercise used for weigh lifting both on machines and with free weights. Because the resistance of free weights is in the direction of gravity rather than the pre-positioned direction of an weight machine, free weights do resemble real life situations outside of the gym more directly. Almost every object we move outside of the gym exerts its resistance on our body through the weight of gravity and is therefore a free weight.
Power movements of the lower body are slightly more complicated than power movements of the upper body because they rarely occur in isolation in real life. Power movements of the lower body only apply loosely to the regular motion of our body. The power movements of the lower body include, bending the leg at the knee, straightening the leg at the knee, pointing the foot at the ankle, raising the foot at the ankle and lifting the entire upper body to a standing position from a leaning forward position at the waist.
Standing the body from a leaning position at the waist - This is the least obvious power movement of the lower body. Generally if we think of standing up from a leaning position at the waist we envision our back doing most of the work. This is not the case, however, because muscles of the back don’t cross the line of the hips into the legs. Therefore, they mostly offer support to the spine during this movement rather than exerting much of the power to lift the body. The muscles that actually raise the torso from a leaning position are primarily in your rear end and in the back of your thigh - your hamstrings. These muscles right the pelvis which is attached to the spine, and through the use of those back muscles, the body straightens up. To picture this, imagine a bath tub lying on it’s side. The bath tub is your pelvis. Now picture several people trying to right the tub by pulling on the high edge of the tub. These several people would represent the major muscles of your lower body trying to turn the tub upright - which would right your pelvis, and in turn raise the rest of your upper body. These movements are most commonly practiced with dead lift or occasionally good morning exercises. They require extreme attention to proper technique to avoid injury.
Bending the leg at the Knee - The back of your leg, your hamstrings, have another function - lifting the lower leg off the ground. Any time you pull your heel upward or backward toward your rear end, you are contracting the hamstring muscles. A basic hamstring or leg curl machine forces this motion under stress. If you think about this movement, however, you’ll have trouble finding an activity which would mimic this type of strength outside of the gym. Leg curls are designed to make the backs of the legs larger and stronger.
Straightening the leg at the Knee - This is the opposite movement of bending the leg at the knee. In this circumstance, the muscles in the front of your thigh, your quadriceps lift the lower leg from a bent position to a straight one. This movement is similar to kicking as in sports like soccer or martial arts but again is not something we would naturally engage in while in a seated position (as most leg straightening or leg extension exercises position us). This motion is designed to strengthen and increase the size of the front of your thigh.
Pointing the foot at the ankle - If you point your toe, straightening out your foot, you are pointing the foot at the ankle. There are some tendonous muscles at the bottom of your foot which help do this movement but most of it is a function of the powerful muscles in your calf. In regular movement, this pointing of the toe will often happen in conjunction with a bending of the leg at the knee - allowing processes like walking or running. Restricted to weight bearing isolation in the gym, we strengthen the calf by using calf raises, donkey calf, or heel raise exercises. Although it is possible to gain size in the calf it is rather difficult because of the tendonous nature of these muscles.
Raising the foot at the ankle - This is the least utilized motion in traditional strength exercise. The muscles which allow you to keep your heel planted on the floor but lift the ball of your foot off the floor are actually located in the front of your lower leg next to and around your shin bone. This movement of the leg is much less significant in regular mobility of the body, so the muscles are much smaller than the contrasting calf and, though they can be strengthened and size gained, they will not have nearly the pure strength of the calf muscles on the back of the leg. They should not be neglected, however, as they are an integral part of balancing the joints in the foot, ankle, and knee.
Truly, the lower body is active in almost any movement we make unless we are sitting or lying down. Even under those circumstances, our legs and rear may counter balance movement of the torso and arms. Properly isolating the lower body is somewhat precarious and easily offers one up to injury. This is not to say that lower body isolation is wrong - just difficult. Care must be taken to perform power movements of the lower body with precision and as full a range as can be stably maintained. Our bodies were certainly meant to do lower body power moves - every time we sit down, we both squat and dead lift our own body weight. So go ahead, make your lower half stronger, just make sure you know what you are trying to do before you undertake the challenge!
Power movements of the lower body are slightly more complicated than power movements of the upper body because they rarely occur in isolation in real life. Power movements of the lower body only apply loosely to the regular motion of our body. The power movements of the lower body include, bending the leg at the knee, straightening the leg at the knee, pointing the foot at the ankle, raising the foot at the ankle and lifting the entire upper body to a standing position from a leaning forward position at the waist.
Standing the body from a leaning position at the waist - This is the least obvious power movement of the lower body. Generally if we think of standing up from a leaning position at the waist we envision our back doing most of the work. This is not the case, however, because muscles of the back don’t cross the line of the hips into the legs. Therefore, they mostly offer support to the spine during this movement rather than exerting much of the power to lift the body. The muscles that actually raise the torso from a leaning position are primarily in your rear end and in the back of your thigh - your hamstrings. These muscles right the pelvis which is attached to the spine, and through the use of those back muscles, the body straightens up. To picture this, imagine a bath tub lying on it’s side. The bath tub is your pelvis. Now picture several people trying to right the tub by pulling on the high edge of the tub. These several people would represent the major muscles of your lower body trying to turn the tub upright - which would right your pelvis, and in turn raise the rest of your upper body. These movements are most commonly practiced with dead lift or occasionally good morning exercises. They require extreme attention to proper technique to avoid injury.
Bending the leg at the Knee - The back of your leg, your hamstrings, have another function - lifting the lower leg off the ground. Any time you pull your heel upward or backward toward your rear end, you are contracting the hamstring muscles. A basic hamstring or leg curl machine forces this motion under stress. If you think about this movement, however, you’ll have trouble finding an activity which would mimic this type of strength outside of the gym. Leg curls are designed to make the backs of the legs larger and stronger.
Straightening the leg at the Knee - This is the opposite movement of bending the leg at the knee. In this circumstance, the muscles in the front of your thigh, your quadriceps lift the lower leg from a bent position to a straight one. This movement is similar to kicking as in sports like soccer or martial arts but again is not something we would naturally engage in while in a seated position (as most leg straightening or leg extension exercises position us). This motion is designed to strengthen and increase the size of the front of your thigh.
Pointing the foot at the ankle - If you point your toe, straightening out your foot, you are pointing the foot at the ankle. There are some tendonous muscles at the bottom of your foot which help do this movement but most of it is a function of the powerful muscles in your calf. In regular movement, this pointing of the toe will often happen in conjunction with a bending of the leg at the knee - allowing processes like walking or running. Restricted to weight bearing isolation in the gym, we strengthen the calf by using calf raises, donkey calf, or heel raise exercises. Although it is possible to gain size in the calf it is rather difficult because of the tendonous nature of these muscles.
Raising the foot at the ankle - This is the least utilized motion in traditional strength exercise. The muscles which allow you to keep your heel planted on the floor but lift the ball of your foot off the floor are actually located in the front of your lower leg next to and around your shin bone. This movement of the leg is much less significant in regular mobility of the body, so the muscles are much smaller than the contrasting calf and, though they can be strengthened and size gained, they will not have nearly the pure strength of the calf muscles on the back of the leg. They should not be neglected, however, as they are an integral part of balancing the joints in the foot, ankle, and knee.
Truly, the lower body is active in almost any movement we make unless we are sitting or lying down. Even under those circumstances, our legs and rear may counter balance movement of the torso and arms. Properly isolating the lower body is somewhat precarious and easily offers one up to injury. This is not to say that lower body isolation is wrong - just difficult. Care must be taken to perform power movements of the lower body with precision and as full a range as can be stably maintained. Our bodies were certainly meant to do lower body power moves - every time we sit down, we both squat and dead lift our own body weight. So go ahead, make your lower half stronger, just make sure you know what you are trying to do before you undertake the challenge!
Monday, January 7, 2008
Basic Upper Body Power Movements
A “power movement” is any movement of the body which can be accomplished with the addition of external weight above and beyond body weight. Power movements are the basic form of exercise used for weigh lifting both on machines and with free weights. Because the resistance of free weights is in the direction of gravity rather than the pre-positioned direction of an weight machine, free weights do resemble real life situations outside of the gym more directly. Almost every object we move outside of the gym exerts its resistance on our body through the weight of gravity and is therefore a free weight.
Despite the difference between machines and free weights, each moves the upper body in very similar motions. There are four basic power movements of the upper body excluding isolation of the arms. These four basic power movements are: pushing forward, pulling back, pushing up, and pulling down.
Pushing Forward - The pushing forward motion in weight bearing activities are designed to overload the muscles of the chest, front of the shoulder, and, to a degree, the back side of the arms. Essentially a pushing forward motion is used in a bench press or chest press as it is in the functional movement of a pushup. The variations most commonly found in pushing forward are a slight incline or decline to the relative strait forward motion. This angular adjustment does change slightly the location of muscle fiber recruitment for the exercise, but rarely changes the muscles being targeted as a whole. A chest or bench press will always utilize the muscles of the chest and the front of the shoulder.
Pulling Backward - A pulling backward motion is designed to utilize the muscles of the central and upper back, specifically the muscles between your shoulder blades. If your shoulder blades are not approaching one another in a pulling back movement, you are not isolating the proper musculature in a pulling motion. Unlike pushing forward, it is possible to pull backward without using these muscles between your shoulder blades. This is accomplished by pulling with improper technique, isolating the arm and back side of the shoulder, rather than the middle of the back. A pulling back motion is found in any kind of a machine or free weight row. Any of these type of rowing movements should involve one or both shoulder blades coming closer together or approaching your spine. When pulling back, imagine there is a penny sitting in the middle of your back on your spine and you are trying to pinch that penny between your shoulder blades.
Pushing Up - The pushing up movement is perhaps the most precarious and potentially damaging power movement one can attempt in a fitness facility. Adding load to your arms and lifting that weight overhead is not easy and often requires the body to compensate for the movement in an undesirable manner. The pushing up motion is classically called a shoulder press, military press, or vertical raise. This movement is meant to strengthen the muscles of the shoulder, upper back around the neck, and, to a lesser extent, the back of the arms. Pushing up puts the shoulder joint in a relatively unnatural position and should not be attempted unless the shoulder complex has full range of motion. There are other techniques for strengthening the shoulder which don’t involve putting weight over one’s head, but the basic movement of the joints is similar.
Pulling Down - A pulling down movement, oddly enough, is most commonly associated with what is called a “pull-up”. The “up” part of pull-up implies the direction your body is going of course, not the direction of motion. A pulling down motion is also associated with the Lat Pulldown exercise as well as a pull-over exercise. Although these couple of movements are somewhat different, the concept is the same - pulling your arm from and upward position to a downward position. Similar to a pushing up exercise, the pulling down exercise can put a great amount of undue stress on the shoulder complex if it is not flexible enough to properly handle the movement. Pulling down movements are extremely important for people into out-door adventure ie. hikers with poles, skiers with poles, rock climbers, rowers, etc..
Certainly there are many more movements the body can accomplish above and beyond the ones mentioned here. However, these are the basic four power movements that the upper body will perform for strength gain and size. A good work out design will include all of these movements equally and may alternate between two contrasting movements - pushing forward/pulling back or pushing up/pulling down. If your workout is lacking any of these basic movements, you are setting yourself up for later injury due to strength imbalance. You will not necessarily move the same amount of weight in contrasting power movements, generally the body is a stronger puller than pusher, but the weight loads should be close. Evaluate your work out - are you including all of the power movements equally when doing a weight loaded workout?
Despite the difference between machines and free weights, each moves the upper body in very similar motions. There are four basic power movements of the upper body excluding isolation of the arms. These four basic power movements are: pushing forward, pulling back, pushing up, and pulling down.
Pushing Forward - The pushing forward motion in weight bearing activities are designed to overload the muscles of the chest, front of the shoulder, and, to a degree, the back side of the arms. Essentially a pushing forward motion is used in a bench press or chest press as it is in the functional movement of a pushup. The variations most commonly found in pushing forward are a slight incline or decline to the relative strait forward motion. This angular adjustment does change slightly the location of muscle fiber recruitment for the exercise, but rarely changes the muscles being targeted as a whole. A chest or bench press will always utilize the muscles of the chest and the front of the shoulder.
Pulling Backward - A pulling backward motion is designed to utilize the muscles of the central and upper back, specifically the muscles between your shoulder blades. If your shoulder blades are not approaching one another in a pulling back movement, you are not isolating the proper musculature in a pulling motion. Unlike pushing forward, it is possible to pull backward without using these muscles between your shoulder blades. This is accomplished by pulling with improper technique, isolating the arm and back side of the shoulder, rather than the middle of the back. A pulling back motion is found in any kind of a machine or free weight row. Any of these type of rowing movements should involve one or both shoulder blades coming closer together or approaching your spine. When pulling back, imagine there is a penny sitting in the middle of your back on your spine and you are trying to pinch that penny between your shoulder blades.
Pushing Up - The pushing up movement is perhaps the most precarious and potentially damaging power movement one can attempt in a fitness facility. Adding load to your arms and lifting that weight overhead is not easy and often requires the body to compensate for the movement in an undesirable manner. The pushing up motion is classically called a shoulder press, military press, or vertical raise. This movement is meant to strengthen the muscles of the shoulder, upper back around the neck, and, to a lesser extent, the back of the arms. Pushing up puts the shoulder joint in a relatively unnatural position and should not be attempted unless the shoulder complex has full range of motion. There are other techniques for strengthening the shoulder which don’t involve putting weight over one’s head, but the basic movement of the joints is similar.
Pulling Down - A pulling down movement, oddly enough, is most commonly associated with what is called a “pull-up”. The “up” part of pull-up implies the direction your body is going of course, not the direction of motion. A pulling down motion is also associated with the Lat Pulldown exercise as well as a pull-over exercise. Although these couple of movements are somewhat different, the concept is the same - pulling your arm from and upward position to a downward position. Similar to a pushing up exercise, the pulling down exercise can put a great amount of undue stress on the shoulder complex if it is not flexible enough to properly handle the movement. Pulling down movements are extremely important for people into out-door adventure ie. hikers with poles, skiers with poles, rock climbers, rowers, etc..
Certainly there are many more movements the body can accomplish above and beyond the ones mentioned here. However, these are the basic four power movements that the upper body will perform for strength gain and size. A good work out design will include all of these movements equally and may alternate between two contrasting movements - pushing forward/pulling back or pushing up/pulling down. If your workout is lacking any of these basic movements, you are setting yourself up for later injury due to strength imbalance. You will not necessarily move the same amount of weight in contrasting power movements, generally the body is a stronger puller than pusher, but the weight loads should be close. Evaluate your work out - are you including all of the power movements equally when doing a weight loaded workout?
Sunday, January 6, 2008
Mobility VS Isolation
Mobility: the quality of being mobile.
Mobile: capable of moving or being moved readily
Isolation: an act or instance of isolating.
Isolate: to set or place apart; detach or separate as to be alone
( www.dictionary.com )
When you are in the gym, look around you. You’ll find machines and lead weights, balls and bands, steps, slides, and stretch mats. Each one of these items was designed to utilize a certain function of your body. Your body, however, was not designed to work within the confines of a certain function. Your body has many functions, and unless you consciously tell it otherwise, it will perform any action it feels necessary to generate your desired end result. If you want to pick up a glass, for instance, your brain says “pick up glass”. Your body responds by activating muscles in your shoulder, arm, hands and even back to accomplish the end result, “pick up glass”.
In other words, your body does not isolate any one part of your musculature. It will not send signals to your muscles in order. When you think “pick up glass”, your brain doesn’t respond by saying,
“OK, shoulder, you contract first to lift the arm, now arm ... you bend to put hand to the glass, and hand when shoulder and arm are finished I want you to bend the fingers and grip the glass. Now everybody hold on while the shoulder lifts more to pick up the glass ... good job everyone!”
Instead, the signal “pick up glass” is sent to all muscles at once, and your muscles in turn send constant and unconscious signal feedback - not only to your brain, but also to your spinal column - which returns the signal in an order that accomplishes the original order to pick up a glass.
So if your body doesn’t isolate, why are all those machines and other tools in the gym designed to isolate? Weight machines and particular weight lifting techniques were not designed by doctors, anatomists, or physiologists, they were designed by athletes - a particular type of athlete called a weight lifter or body builder. Almost everything we know to do in a gym is designed for the particular athletic goal of weight lifting or body building/sculpting.
Now you have to ask yourself, “Am I or do I want to be a weight lifter or body builder?” If the answer is no then you shouldn’t be isolating your body the way a weight lifter or body builder does. You can, however, use the tools of a body builder or weight lifter to improve the movements you want your body to accomplish like carrying heavy groceries or climbing a ladder or even pushing a car out of the snow. Pushing a car out of snow is not a mobility inhibiting motion, so neither should your training be.
Try to imagine health or fitness and body building/weight lifting as unrelated pursuits with common materials. Similarly think of a newspaper. A newspaper is most commonly used for reading, but it can also be used to start a fire, insulate packaging, or swat a fly. If you want to swat a fly, you’re not going to sit and read the paper the way it was originally intended to be used hoping that the act of reading will somehow nab that pesky fly. Rather you will roll up that paper and swing it around like mad - a use totally unrelated to reading - until you accomplish your goal. The same is true for the materials in a fitness gym. If you don’t want to be a body builder/weight lifter, don’t use the fitness club materials exactly as a body builder/weight lifter would.
If you do want to be a body builder, or even if you just want to build your body for beach season, there is no reason you can’t do the exercises designed by these athletes to accomplish such ends. There is nothing wrong with isolation exercises and in point of fact much study and many years of practical application has lead these athletes to excel in their profession, but what they do is no more applicable to everyone else than is shooting a basketball or learning to crochet. You just have to understand that by using isolated movements, you are sacrificing mobility one way or another and in order to maintain proper range of motion you will need to practice mobility separate from your isolation exercises.
Mobile: capable of moving or being moved readily
Isolation: an act or instance of isolating.
Isolate: to set or place apart; detach or separate as to be alone
( www.dictionary.com )
When you are in the gym, look around you. You’ll find machines and lead weights, balls and bands, steps, slides, and stretch mats. Each one of these items was designed to utilize a certain function of your body. Your body, however, was not designed to work within the confines of a certain function. Your body has many functions, and unless you consciously tell it otherwise, it will perform any action it feels necessary to generate your desired end result. If you want to pick up a glass, for instance, your brain says “pick up glass”. Your body responds by activating muscles in your shoulder, arm, hands and even back to accomplish the end result, “pick up glass”.
In other words, your body does not isolate any one part of your musculature. It will not send signals to your muscles in order. When you think “pick up glass”, your brain doesn’t respond by saying,
“OK, shoulder, you contract first to lift the arm, now arm ... you bend to put hand to the glass, and hand when shoulder and arm are finished I want you to bend the fingers and grip the glass. Now everybody hold on while the shoulder lifts more to pick up the glass ... good job everyone!”
Instead, the signal “pick up glass” is sent to all muscles at once, and your muscles in turn send constant and unconscious signal feedback - not only to your brain, but also to your spinal column - which returns the signal in an order that accomplishes the original order to pick up a glass.
So if your body doesn’t isolate, why are all those machines and other tools in the gym designed to isolate? Weight machines and particular weight lifting techniques were not designed by doctors, anatomists, or physiologists, they were designed by athletes - a particular type of athlete called a weight lifter or body builder. Almost everything we know to do in a gym is designed for the particular athletic goal of weight lifting or body building/sculpting.
Now you have to ask yourself, “Am I or do I want to be a weight lifter or body builder?” If the answer is no then you shouldn’t be isolating your body the way a weight lifter or body builder does. You can, however, use the tools of a body builder or weight lifter to improve the movements you want your body to accomplish like carrying heavy groceries or climbing a ladder or even pushing a car out of the snow. Pushing a car out of snow is not a mobility inhibiting motion, so neither should your training be.
Try to imagine health or fitness and body building/weight lifting as unrelated pursuits with common materials. Similarly think of a newspaper. A newspaper is most commonly used for reading, but it can also be used to start a fire, insulate packaging, or swat a fly. If you want to swat a fly, you’re not going to sit and read the paper the way it was originally intended to be used hoping that the act of reading will somehow nab that pesky fly. Rather you will roll up that paper and swing it around like mad - a use totally unrelated to reading - until you accomplish your goal. The same is true for the materials in a fitness gym. If you don’t want to be a body builder/weight lifter, don’t use the fitness club materials exactly as a body builder/weight lifter would.
If you do want to be a body builder, or even if you just want to build your body for beach season, there is no reason you can’t do the exercises designed by these athletes to accomplish such ends. There is nothing wrong with isolation exercises and in point of fact much study and many years of practical application has lead these athletes to excel in their profession, but what they do is no more applicable to everyone else than is shooting a basketball or learning to crochet. You just have to understand that by using isolated movements, you are sacrificing mobility one way or another and in order to maintain proper range of motion you will need to practice mobility separate from your isolation exercises.
Welcome!
Welcome to the new web log for AGJ Health & Fitness! Here you will find frequent new information related to health issues you encounter every day. Written by the owner and creator of AGJ Health & Fitness, Master Health Trainer Austin Gregory Johns, the AGJ healthfitness Interactive is designed to be a sounding board for new ideas and curiosities relating to fitness and general health. Austin will be posting near daily articles on all sorts of topics related to your health and fitness. If you ever have any questions or comments about the content you see here, feel free to question or otherwise dispute it either in a follow-up comment or in a direct e-mail to Austin at austingjohns@gmail.com.
Thank you, and hopefully you find the resources found here and at AGJhealthfitness.com helpful and informative!
Thank you, and hopefully you find the resources found here and at AGJhealthfitness.com helpful and informative!
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