For many of us, the journey to fitness is a never-ending. Even people in very good shape in terms of body composition, endurance, flexibility, and strength, will for some reason, feel they need to do more. Sometimes it's to avoid boredom with the same exercise routines. But just as often it seems there's just a constant drive to do more. It's like we become obsessed with the Olympic motto: Citius, Altius, Fortius, i.e., Faster, Higher, Stronger.
A very good female friend asked about doing upper body work with a barbell. Although she's plenty fit and does cardio and resistance several times a week, she's been reading some materials by body builders and is curious about standard exercises with the barbell, such as dead lifts, squats and presses. Some of her interest is driven by a desire to further strengthen her upper body (maybe a little to get a little more buff looking) and add variety to her workouts.
She's works out routinely and effectively with dumbbells, mostly high rep endurance exercise. Now she's started doing some low rep deadlifts and thinks about doing the same with presses. There are some specific benefits to pressing a barbell, but most of the benefits can also be realized with safer exercises like push ups. True, you can get stronger lifting more than your body weight, but who needs to be that strong?
My friend is a TOJ. The main reason I wonder about her getting wanting to lift significant weight on a barbell is because there is a much higher probability for injury. Lifting a weight overhead can invite shoulder or back problems if the joints aren't already strong and stable. The problem with either a shoulder or back injury is that they don't just slow your journey to fitness, they can bring it to a frustrating and permanent halt.
She's already in great shape and will do it if she decides to. Maybe she can start with just the bar with no added and see what it feels like, if pressing the bar recruits muscles she feels need more work. Or maybe she'll discover she's already doing plenty of good resistance exercises with calisthenics, straps, kettlebells and dumbbells.
Exercise is too fun and important to our health to put at risk. Whenever taking on a new challenge, ask why you're doing it and be honest about the risk. If you decide to go for it, be guided by a modified Olympic motto: A Little Faster, A Little Higher, A Little Stronger.
Showing posts with label injury prevention. Show all posts
Showing posts with label injury prevention. Show all posts
My Calves and the Denver Broncos
This week Denver Broncos and I independently discovered something important about physical training and the importance of rest.
On Saturday the Broncos won a preseason game against the Buffalo Bills. The win was nice, but what was really notable is that the Broncos had no injuries. Last year by this time, the Broncos had lost a number of key players, including their two top running backs, to bizarre injuries in practices and games.
What was different between this year and last? Last year the young kid coach Josh McDaniels, a hard ass for the TV cameras, was pushing his players hard in two-a-day practices in 90 plus degree temperatures. Each day he had them do weight lifting and 40 yard sprints on top of practicing football skills in full contact scrimmages. Naturally, the players were fatigued and their bodies prone to injury. Dehydration and consequent depletion of electrolytes reduces inhibits reflexes and muscle performance, making a player prime for injury.
However, this year, with the strike ending late, NFL teams were restricted to one practice a day. The Denver Bronco trainer convinced the new coach Fox to postpone any weight lifting until later in the season. Instead, the trainer has had the players do brief push-up, sprint, push-up routines. In other words, short bouts of high intensity, functional body work. This has enabled the players to build some strength and endurance without exhausting them, especially when training in heat. They were fresh and ready to go when they stepped onto the field.
It's very possible that much of the way the NFL has approached training has been wrong. Most of their players are already very fit athletes who body build year round and all coaches and trainers with Marine Corps boot camp mentalities do is increase injuries, not make tougher players.
What does all this have to do with a decrepit TOJ?
Three nights ago at 11 pm I awoke with an cramp in my left calf. The muscle had contracted into a hard ball and the pain was excruciating. I tried to massage and stretch it, but nothing would stop it. All I could do was wait until it passed after a minute or so. Afterwards, it was tender to the touch, but I fell back asleep.
Then at 2 am, against all odds, I experienced a similar cramp in my right calf, not as intense, but also painful.
The next day I Googled and found out it's a common problem, especially with runners, that doctors cannot completely explain, but suspect the problem is caused by muscle fatigue and a lack of potassium.
I went to my training log. The day of the severe cramping I ran my local trail, which goes two and a half miles, steadily uphill. I ran in late afternoon, after work, when the temperature was 94 degrees. That day my legs felt lifeless, and it showed in my slower than usual time. The day before, again in the afternoon, I had done several sets of vertical jumps and lifted dumbbells, with the temperature at 90 degrees. And the day before that, when I worked out in the morning, I jumped rope for a long time with the temperature in the relatively cool 80s.
Bottom line: Three days in a row of hard exercise, very focused on my calves and in hot weather, had pushed them to their limits. I didn't even know it or intend to work them that hard. They had not hurt more than usual after those three days, they just felt tired. But they had been over-worked, which set off chemical imbalances leading to the severe cramping.
The Broncos figured out less is more and to respect what heat does to a body. I guess that's why they get the big bucks.
On Saturday the Broncos won a preseason game against the Buffalo Bills. The win was nice, but what was really notable is that the Broncos had no injuries. Last year by this time, the Broncos had lost a number of key players, including their two top running backs, to bizarre injuries in practices and games.
What was different between this year and last? Last year the young kid coach Josh McDaniels, a hard ass for the TV cameras, was pushing his players hard in two-a-day practices in 90 plus degree temperatures. Each day he had them do weight lifting and 40 yard sprints on top of practicing football skills in full contact scrimmages. Naturally, the players were fatigued and their bodies prone to injury. Dehydration and consequent depletion of electrolytes reduces inhibits reflexes and muscle performance, making a player prime for injury.
However, this year, with the strike ending late, NFL teams were restricted to one practice a day. The Denver Bronco trainer convinced the new coach Fox to postpone any weight lifting until later in the season. Instead, the trainer has had the players do brief push-up, sprint, push-up routines. In other words, short bouts of high intensity, functional body work. This has enabled the players to build some strength and endurance without exhausting them, especially when training in heat. They were fresh and ready to go when they stepped onto the field.
It's very possible that much of the way the NFL has approached training has been wrong. Most of their players are already very fit athletes who body build year round and all coaches and trainers with Marine Corps boot camp mentalities do is increase injuries, not make tougher players.
What does all this have to do with a decrepit TOJ?
Three nights ago at 11 pm I awoke with an cramp in my left calf. The muscle had contracted into a hard ball and the pain was excruciating. I tried to massage and stretch it, but nothing would stop it. All I could do was wait until it passed after a minute or so. Afterwards, it was tender to the touch, but I fell back asleep.
Then at 2 am, against all odds, I experienced a similar cramp in my right calf, not as intense, but also painful.
The next day I Googled and found out it's a common problem, especially with runners, that doctors cannot completely explain, but suspect the problem is caused by muscle fatigue and a lack of potassium.
I went to my training log. The day of the severe cramping I ran my local trail, which goes two and a half miles, steadily uphill. I ran in late afternoon, after work, when the temperature was 94 degrees. That day my legs felt lifeless, and it showed in my slower than usual time. The day before, again in the afternoon, I had done several sets of vertical jumps and lifted dumbbells, with the temperature at 90 degrees. And the day before that, when I worked out in the morning, I jumped rope for a long time with the temperature in the relatively cool 80s.
Bottom line: Three days in a row of hard exercise, very focused on my calves and in hot weather, had pushed them to their limits. I didn't even know it or intend to work them that hard. They had not hurt more than usual after those three days, they just felt tired. But they had been over-worked, which set off chemical imbalances leading to the severe cramping.
The Broncos figured out less is more and to respect what heat does to a body. I guess that's why they get the big bucks.
My RehabTeam
Years ago, I read an article about Denver Bronco linebacker Bill Romanowski. To perform at the top in the NFL, he had a personal masseuse, doctor, dietitian, cook, and trainer (who, in turned out, injected him with human growth hormone, steroids and other banned drugs) to keep his body strong and accelerate his recovery after bruising Sunday games.
I happened to read this article about the time I was going to have my first knee surgery. When I went in for a visit prior to the surgery, I had asked the orthopaedic doc if there was some other alternative to removing part of my medial meniscus, the cartilage that keeps your leg bones separated so the don't grind and provides a cushion. I told him I'd seen an article somewhere that they were growing cartilage then successfully placing it back in the athlete's knee. He got a vague smile on his face and nodded. "Yes, there are some things we might be able to try if you were an elite athlete," he said, "but you're not."
Unless you are in extreme pain and need immediate medical attention, most of us are left to our own wits to figure out how to rehab an athletic injury. When I pulled up lame two weeks ago with a calf pull, threatening my participation in the Bolder Boulder, I was fortunate to have family, friends, and colleagues with all expertise needed to get me rehabed quickly (not easy if the patient is an un-young).
My virtual rehab team formed as soon as I got home after aborting the run during which I injured myself, and my wife suggested I get ice on the site of the pain. I followed her advice then, and for the next couple of days, and that helped keep the pain down.
Then my daughter, who's a nurse and runner, emailed to instruct me to rest it so it would have a chance to heal. It was good advice, but asking a TOJ to rest is like asking a smoker not to smoke. I did stay off it for two days, then tried to get out for a short run, but stopped immediately when the pain increased. She was right-- it did need more rest. Lesson learned. I stopped running.
Then I asked a family practice doc, who's a runner and colleague, what he thought I could do. I was going through exercise withdrawal. He agreed a rest from running was a good idea, but gave me some exercises to do slowly to strengthen the muscles involved in the injury, which I did, and within days could detect an improvement in my range of motion and less pain.
A few days later, I ran into a friend who's a physical therapist, and asked her opinion. I wasn't sure whether the Achilles tendon or calf was the problem because I'd noticed the pain seemed to move a little lower at times. She asked me to take a few steps, then advised me to not run at all until I could walk without limping. She advised me to keep doing what the family doc/runner suggested and also ride my bike to both maintain my cardio-endurance and work the calf in a less stressful way.
Finally, a friend who's a Clydesdale triathlete heard I've been gimpy and also sent an email. He had a serious Achilles tendon injury that put him off his feet under doctor's orders for a month. He told me to stay off that leg, period. Total rest or risk long term injury. When I told him that might be hard to do being a TOJ because I wanted to run the Bolder Boulder and needed to do some preparation, he asked me what starting wave I was in. Turns out he's two waves behind me because it's the one time of the year he runs with his wife. He told me he'd catch me, then tackle me and drag me over to one of the lawn parties that are going on along the course.
Today I ran five miles, slower than I usually do, but fast enough to get a nice workout. My calf felt pretty good, even when I went up the hill where I pulled it. Mostly heeding my rehab team's advice, I haven't run much in the past two weeks. I won't be peaking for this race, but that's okay. I think I'll be able to do it.
I'll either make it into Folsom Stadium or my Clydesdale triathlete friend will catch me and drag me to a party along the course. I told him if he does that, he has to pick a party serving a good dark beer. Either way, I win.
I happened to read this article about the time I was going to have my first knee surgery. When I went in for a visit prior to the surgery, I had asked the orthopaedic doc if there was some other alternative to removing part of my medial meniscus, the cartilage that keeps your leg bones separated so the don't grind and provides a cushion. I told him I'd seen an article somewhere that they were growing cartilage then successfully placing it back in the athlete's knee. He got a vague smile on his face and nodded. "Yes, there are some things we might be able to try if you were an elite athlete," he said, "but you're not."
Unless you are in extreme pain and need immediate medical attention, most of us are left to our own wits to figure out how to rehab an athletic injury. When I pulled up lame two weeks ago with a calf pull, threatening my participation in the Bolder Boulder, I was fortunate to have family, friends, and colleagues with all expertise needed to get me rehabed quickly (not easy if the patient is an un-young).
My virtual rehab team formed as soon as I got home after aborting the run during which I injured myself, and my wife suggested I get ice on the site of the pain. I followed her advice then, and for the next couple of days, and that helped keep the pain down.
Then my daughter, who's a nurse and runner, emailed to instruct me to rest it so it would have a chance to heal. It was good advice, but asking a TOJ to rest is like asking a smoker not to smoke. I did stay off it for two days, then tried to get out for a short run, but stopped immediately when the pain increased. She was right-- it did need more rest. Lesson learned. I stopped running.
Then I asked a family practice doc, who's a runner and colleague, what he thought I could do. I was going through exercise withdrawal. He agreed a rest from running was a good idea, but gave me some exercises to do slowly to strengthen the muscles involved in the injury, which I did, and within days could detect an improvement in my range of motion and less pain.
A few days later, I ran into a friend who's a physical therapist, and asked her opinion. I wasn't sure whether the Achilles tendon or calf was the problem because I'd noticed the pain seemed to move a little lower at times. She asked me to take a few steps, then advised me to not run at all until I could walk without limping. She advised me to keep doing what the family doc/runner suggested and also ride my bike to both maintain my cardio-endurance and work the calf in a less stressful way.
Finally, a friend who's a Clydesdale triathlete heard I've been gimpy and also sent an email. He had a serious Achilles tendon injury that put him off his feet under doctor's orders for a month. He told me to stay off that leg, period. Total rest or risk long term injury. When I told him that might be hard to do being a TOJ because I wanted to run the Bolder Boulder and needed to do some preparation, he asked me what starting wave I was in. Turns out he's two waves behind me because it's the one time of the year he runs with his wife. He told me he'd catch me, then tackle me and drag me over to one of the lawn parties that are going on along the course.
Today I ran five miles, slower than I usually do, but fast enough to get a nice workout. My calf felt pretty good, even when I went up the hill where I pulled it. Mostly heeding my rehab team's advice, I haven't run much in the past two weeks. I won't be peaking for this race, but that's okay. I think I'll be able to do it.
I'll either make it into Folsom Stadium or my Clydesdale triathlete friend will catch me and drag me to a party along the course. I told him if he does that, he has to pick a party serving a good dark beer. Either way, I win.
Dynamic Stretching: The 95% Solution
This TOJ has a confession to make: I don't do much old-fashioned static stretching, the kind where you assume a fixed pose and hold it for 30 or more seconds, straining, say, to touch your toes. I prefer dynamic stretching for 95% of my warm-up and cool-down because the benefits are proven by good science and it feels more natural.
I learned to not like static stretching when I played high school football and ran track; it was boring and often hurt. I encountered the old ways again when I studied martial arts after college. That was decades ago, and even then I wondered it it really did any good. Since then exercise physiologists have affirmed static stretching is of limited help in preventing injuries, maybe even harmful, and may reduce your athletic performance rather than enhance it.
A couple years ago, Gretchen Reynolds wrote an article about static and dynamic stretching and the scientific evidence for/against both. Check it out because it's a concise overview of the issues and the superior benefits of dynamic stretching. Also included are some good examples of dynamic stretching. The most important take away point is that static stretching is useful only in small doses.
Dynamic stretching is the best warm up. It's very simple: you gently move the joints of your body prior through their range of motion, especially those parts of your body that will be stressed when you start of exercise hard. Prior to running , it might consist of jogging slowly for a couple of minutes, then gradually running a little faster for a couple more minutes. When preparing to lift weights or do calisthenics and jumps, it might consist of rotating the knees for twenty seconds, rotating the hips for twenty seconds, rotating the upper torso right to left for twenty seconds, then windmilling the arms for twenty seconds. This might be followed by a minute of light jumping with feet shoulder width, hands held loose at the side, and the feet barely leaving the ground, or a few squats and forward knee lunges. You want to just start to sweat and slightly elevate your breathing. That's it.
Unless you are a contortionist in the circus, there's no benefit to being super flexible. The right amount of flexibility enables you to generate some power in your running, lifting, x-c skiing, biking, whatever your sport might be. And some flexibility is absolutely necessary if you take a fall on a bike or slip while running on snow. But flexibility is not an end in itself unless you are a yogi. Strength plays an equal role in protecting you.
Flexibility is largely predetermined by genetics and gender. Women are usually more flexible than men. The body stretches less and less as you grow up because of natural bone growth; for example, you won't be able to do the side splits anymore because your mature femurs are more restricted by the fully developed sockets in your hips.
Dynamic stretching of the joints that will be stressed in your particular activity or sport raises your body temperature, allowing collagen in muscles, tendons, ligaments and joints to become more elastic. With the warmer temperatures comes increased blood supply to all these tissues, which in turn aids in producing metabolic energy and helping muscles quickly contract and relax, thereby generating speed and power.
For TOJs, the warm-up becomes even more important because the circulatory system is not as efficient as we age. The discs in your back, joint surfaces, and tendons have a very limited blood supply. These areas are all especially prone to injury. Dynamic stretching, combined with a light aerobic component, gets the juices (like the synovial fluid lubricating your joints) flowing and your body prepared to exert safely.
Static stretching, in particular classic hatha yoga poses, can help after a workout, especially a hard one. The stretches lengthen and relax the muscles, which in turn allows more oxygen rich blood to flood the tissues to remove the lactic acid, promote more rapid healing of damaged tissues (which occurs in all exercise), and reduce post-workout soreness. (Note that my emphasis here is on preventing athletic injuries. Gentle, controlled static stretching, especially as practiced in yoga, induces relaxation, which is effective for stress reduction.)
A favorite hybrid routine that I use as a warm-up which mixes yoga's Salute to the Sun and some everyday calisthenics like push-ups. Going slowly from movement to movement, I never stop, including during the Downward Facing Dog and Cobra poses, which you'll see people on early morning Yoga TV holding for a minute.
Watch how dogs stretch when they rise after sleeping - it's slow, smooth and continuous. Animals mastered dynamic stretching a long time ago.
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