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Oh My Poor Back

June 27, 2008 By 4 Comments

Yes, even a healthy life, a good weight and high level of fitness do not make someone injury proof.  Take me as an example, I have no idea what I did, but my back is in horrible pain this morning.  I think I pulled a muscle somewhere in my mid back.  Whatever it is, I had the most miserable night last night with very little sleep and plenty of pain.  At about 2:30am, I stumbled to the nearest gas station in order to pick up a bottle of Advil.  It helped, a little, but I’m back at grad school this morning and not feeling so well.  So rather than talk about fitness today, I’d like to talk about injuries, how to avoid them and what to do if you get them.

How To Avoid Injuries

  • Don’t be stupid! – Yes, it sounds obvious but most injuries are actually easily preventable by not being stupid.  Don’t ride your bike without a helmet, don’t use broken equipment, don’t lift more than you should and so on.  Really, stupidity and carelessness are the number 1 cause of injuries.
  • Use good form – Good form isn’t just for good fitness, it’s also for preventing injuries.  If your body is flailing around each time you lift a weight, you’re going to injure yourself eventually.  You’re trying to lift too much and you’re not doing it in a controlled manner.  That’s just begging for an injury.
  • Don’t overdo it – Overtraining is dangerous.  Overdo the cardio and you’ll get a stress fracture like I did.  Overdo the weights and you’ll strain a muscle, like I did.

Those three items right there are enough to prevent the overwhelming majority of injuries.  Sometimes though, even with proper care, you still hurt yourself.  Which brings me to my next topic.

What To Do When You’re Injured

  • Nothing – No, that doesn’t mean ignoring the injury.  It means rest, as in not doing anything strenuous.  If you’re injured, you need to rest.  Your body can heal most injuries but it needs you to not add more strain on top of the injury.  It doesn’t make you tough to keep training through an injury, it just makes you stupid.
  • Take a pain killer or anti inflammatory – For some injuries, you may need a pain killer like an advil.  Yes, I hate medication as much as the next guy, but my body needs rest and if I’m in too much pain to sleep then I’m not getting that rest.  A tylenol won’t make you a drug addict.
  • See the doctor – If it’s a serious injury, see a doctor.  If you’re not sure if it’s a serious injury, see a doctor.  If it doesn’t seem to be getting better, see a doctor.  Again, I’m not a fan of going to the doctor for every minor scratch or cold but I’m also not stupid.  I know my body and if it’s serious, I have no problem with going to see my physician.

Fitness Does Not Equal Injury Proof

In fact, being fit might lead to more injuries.  You’re doing more, you’re more active.  For example, I go hiking, I work out, I bike.  All of these things have a higher injury rate than my former lifestyle of sitting in front of the computer eating microwaved pizza pockets.  So what?  Injuries are a part of life.  Don’t be afraid of them, just try to prevent them where possible and deal with them when you have to.

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I had a blast during my class field day yesterday.  Yes, I had a miserable night but I don’t regret running around yesterday.  I’m going to rest today and tomorrow and hopefully be back to normal on Sunday.  If I’m still feeling bad on Monday, I’ll go see a doctor.  Now I just need to get through this statistics session!

Filed Under: Illness and Injury, Injuries

Stretching, Injury Prevention or Useless Waste of Time?

January 25, 2008 By 1 Comment

NOTE – Today’s post is based on large part on an excellent podcast I heard from Fitness Rocks. If you’re interested in Fitness Rocks podcasts, please go here.

Stretching

From the moment I started exercising, I heard a lot of talk about stretching. Some people said I should stretch before a workout to prevent injury. Others said I should stretch after a workout to maintain flexibility. I even got some advice on stretching that said it should be done regardless of your workout. What I didn’t get was anything that resembled factual evidence on the benefits of stretching. This means that I’ve usually avoided stretching before or after a workout in the interest of time.

However, I’ve recently become more interested in stretching after discovering that my flexibility was woefully low. I’ve been looking into things like yoga as a way of building flexibility but I haven’t managed to find the time to go to a yoga class. I talked about this with a coworker and she mentioned that simple stretching could be useful. I was interested and decided to do a bit more research. What I found was the following:

No Clear Evidence but Plenty of Common Sense

The first thing I found was that there was no clear evidence one way or another of the benefits of stretching. I couldn’t locate any studies or research pieces on injury rates or flexibility and how they were decreased or increased with stretching. So for those of you who demand solid evidence, the jury is still out on stretching.

There are however plenty of opinions by people who seem to know what they’re talking about and they all agree that stretching should be good for you. Their thinking goes something like this: many training injuries occur when you move a joint or muscle past its intended range of motion. Stretching seems to increase the available range of motion for muscles and joints. Therefore, stretching should lower injury risk by decreasing the chance that you’ll go past your muscle or joint acceptable range of motion. Seems pretty logical to me.

So, I Want To Stretch, Now What?

Ok, assuming you agree with that line of thinking, the question still remains, how and when should I stretch? In regards to when, the most common recommendation I found is to stretch before your workout, preferably after a short warm up. That means a brisk 5 minute walk followed by stretching and then your normal workout.

As for the how, I found a number of useful tips on what to do and not to do:

  • To properly stretch, you need to slowly move the area you’re stretching until you feel tightness but not to the point of actual discomfort. That means if you feel pain you’ve gone too far.
  • Hold a stretch for 15 to 30 seconds. Too little and you won’t get the benefit. Too much and you risk injury.
  • Repeat each stretch twice if you have time.
  • Don’t bounce! How many times have you seen people stretch by bouncing up and down? That’s actually going to increase your injury risk, so don’t do it. Just stretch that muscle slowly and gradually until you feel it tighten. Hold that position for 15 to 30 seconds and then slowly release. No bouncing!

Stretching Exercises

I looked around for online source of stretching exercises and the best one I found was this website for the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons. Beside stretching, they also have a variety of good information, including this interesting section about injury prevention.

SummarySo, is stretching beneficial?  Well, I couldn’t come out with a solid yes or no, but I did find enough evidence to convince me to try it.  So yah, I’ll be stretching before my workouts from now on.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

Filed Under: Exercise, Injuries, Work Out

Working Out Between Workouts

January 23, 2008 By 1 Comment

I’ve happily gotten to a point in my life where I actually feel good when I work out. It used to be a chore, something I tried to avoid, but these days, a good workout will actually make me feel better, both physically and mentally. Unfortunately, I also have a tendency to overdo things, and this causes problems.

In the past, I’ve had issues with overtraining with both weights and cardio. When I was training for a half marathon, my friend came up with a really good training program that included running three to four days a week. Being the overeager idiot that I am, I immediately started running five to six days a week. The end results was not better performance, it was a walking fracture which I then ran the half marathon on, making things even worse.

Now that said, I do believe in getting my body moving every single day. That means that on days like yesterday, when I spend most of it in meetings or working on a computer, I want to work out. However, I don’t want to do anything too strenuous and I had just done a serious workout the day before that left me very tired and in need of some recovery time. This is why I came up with my “in between workouts” workout. It’s a very easy routine meant to get my muscles active without really straining them.

The Details

My usual workout has 24 different exercises and I do ten sets of each. In that workout are 3 back exercises, 3 abs exercises, 3 chest, 3 shoulders, 3 biceps, 3 triceps and 6 legs. It’s actually very similar to the four day workout we discussed on 60 in 3 except that I do one set of each and I do all of them every time I work out.

For this particular workout, I cut that down significantly.  I do 1 set of abs, 1 set of back, 1 set of biceps, 1 set of triceps, 2 of legs, 1 chest and 1 shoulders.  I’ll do 20 reps of each but with a very low weight.  That gives me the feeling of a workout but without putting a lot of strain on muscles that are still trying to recover from the day before.  I’ll choose these exercises from my overall workout based on personal preference and the equipment I have available.  For example, yesterday I did:

  • Crunches
  • Dead lifts with 20lbs dumbbells
  • Squats with 20lbs dumbbells
  • Calf Raises with 20lbs dumbbells
  • Hammerhead curls with 10lbs dumbbells
  • Overhead tricep extensions with 10lbs dumbbells
  • Dumbbell bench press with 20lb dumbbells
  • Standing Rows with 10lb dumbbells

I’ll also add about 15 minutes of cardio but I’ll keep it to low impact things like elliptical or bike and I’ll make sure to keep the pace lower than usual.  By the way, this is also a good workout to do in the morning, right when you wake up.  If you remove the cardio section, it will take you less than 1o minutes to accomplish and requires nothing more than some cheap dumbbells.

Remember, it’s great to do something that gets your body moving every single day.  However, you should also make sure that your body is getting enough rest time, especially after strenuous workouts.  The alternative is injuries and I doubt anyone wants that.   So use light workouts like these on rest days if you want to get your butt out of that office chair, but don’t overdo them.

Filed Under: Injuries, Work Out

Can You Work Out While Injured?

November 14, 2007 By Leave a Comment

A few days ago, I dropped a box of cottage cheese on my toe and broke it. It’s ironic, with all the physical activity I do I would expect my injuries to come from falling down a hill while hiking or perhaps some biking incident. But no, I break my toes by dropping groceries on them in the kitchen. So I hobbled my way through work yesterday and then went to the gym. At the gym I saw one of my coworkers who asked me “should you really be working out right now?”

First, The Usual Warning

Please remember, I am not your doctor. I don’t know you or the specifics of your body and injuries. Talk to you doctor if you’re hurt and make sure they’re ok with whatever it is you want to do.

Yes, You Can Work Out, But Carefully

Most injuries do not have to keep you out of the gym, they should simply make you more careful while working out. For example, there’s no way I’m going to run with a broken toe. The repeated impacts would be painful and damaging. However, why would a broken toe stop me from doing curls, crunches or deadlifts? These exercises in no way put stress on my toes.

At The Same Time, Don’t Overdo It

Of course, you should be careful. Even for those minor injuries that you don’t see a doctor about, you should still be aware and try not to make things worse. Remember the difference between a pain and an ache?  Well, even a minor pain can develop into a major one if you’re not careful.  My injured foot turned into a major stress fracture because I kept working out.  I was stupid.  I know my foot was injured and yet I kept running.

Don’t Use Your Injury As An Excuse

Don’t stop working out just because of a minor injury.  Too often I see people skipping workouts just because they have a minor injury.  I had a coworker who stopped working out when they scraped up their knee.  Sure, it was a pretty bad scrape and they should probably rest that knee but is that any reason not to do other forms of exercise?  There are plenty of other things you can that will not stress the knee in any way.

Summary

As with most things, injuries and workouts are all about balance.  Don’t use your injury as an excuse, but do be careful not to make injuries worse than they are.  When in doubt, see a doctor.  When in pain, stop what you’re doing.  Two simple rules that will allow you to keep working out even with a band aid or two.

Filed Under: Exercise, Injuries

Too much of a good thing: Can endurance training be bad for us?

September 3, 2007 By 2 Comments

A reader of 60 in 3 recently sent me this article by Mark Sisson of Mark’s Daily Apple.  The article describes how endurance training can actually be bad for you due to the continuous strain it places on your body.

First of all, I would recommend that everyone read this article as it has a number of good facts about your body.  Remember, the more you can educate yourself about how your body works, the better you’ll be to make decisions such as this for yourself.  Second, before you decide that the gym is the cause of all your aches, let’s actually take a look at what the article says.

Endurance training can be bad for you

Yes, this is absolutely true, and the article explains why.  Essentially, when you train for something like a marathon or triathalon, you are placing continuous strain on your body.  Your body has systems in place to cope with this strain, but this comes at a cost.  That cost is aches, pains and sometimes permanent damage to your body.  I’m not going to repeat the entire article here, but I do completely agree with its points. Prolonged endurance training can cause long term damage to your bones, muscles and circulatory systems.

So I should quit my cardio routine?

The key word in that last sentence was prolonged.  What we’re talking about here is endurance athletes who train for marathon, triathlons and other such events.  Their training regimen includes daily runs or rides that last for hours.  If this is you, then yes, you are doing damage to your body.  However, the majority of us who are not trying to train for a long endurance event and who are simply doing this to get a bit fitter are just fine.  Our cardio routines are relatively short and only happen twice or three times a week.

Example

When I first started jogging, I had the exact same mindset that Mark describes “more is better.”  Since a little running was good for me, a lot of running should be great.  I ran for an hour every weekday and longer on the weekends.  I did lose weight, but I was also in constant pain.  My shins and feet were especially painful and it got to a point where I had difficulty running.  So I cut things down a bit, to only three days a week and only 45 minutes each.  That worked like a charm.  My body felt better and the pains went away.

These days I cut running down even further.  Three times a week for 30 minutes each, but I did add a fourth cardio session on a stationary bike.  The biking is much lower stress but is still good cardio.

Summary

Interestingly enough, the only sports related injury I had was when I was training for a half marathon about two years ago.  It was a stress fracture in my right foot due to the long running sessions I was doing in preparation for the event.  To me, that really drove home the fact that endurance training is good, but only in moderation.  Three or four sessions a week, none of them more than 30 minutes.  Also, if you are running, try to avoid hard surfaces like asphalt of pavement.  Those will add to the potential injuries because of their impact on your feet and lower legs.

So yes, those marathon runners, triathlons runners and tour de France bikers you see out there are actually harming themselves in the long run.  They’re still healthier than someone 100lbs overweight who never gets off the couch, but they’re not as healthy as the fit person who works out in moderation.  That’s you I hope.

Filed Under: Cardio, Injuries
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