Tag: “how to prevent injury”

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Exercise Tutorials Flexibility/Recovery Strength Training

This is How I Roll

I like to treat myself to a massage three times a week, and not just an absent-minded shoulder rub. I’m talking about a deep tissue, muscle relaxing, performance-enhancing massage. Sounds heavenly, right? Where do I find the time and resources to indulgence myself like that? I’ll share my secret with you…This is self-massage and it’s free with a foam roller. This is such an easy way to treat our bodies right, not only with extra TLC but potentially by promoting healing and recovery.

What is foam rolling and how does it help?

Using a foam roller, or for more precise targeting, a lacrosse ball, apply low pressure by rolling in a long smooth motion across different muscle groups. This action massages the fibrous layer of connective tissue (the myofascial tissue) that surrounds the muscles. By massaging this tissue and smoothing out any knots and binding, we increase blood flow which helps with recovery and increases range of motion.

When should I foam roll?

In a perfect world, foam roll before and after each work out. I like to hit the tight spots coming into a workout. My top three restricted areas are my calves, quads, and upper back. Even with a standing desk, I find my ankles could use a little more mobility after a day at the office. I’ll get a fine looking squat with a little more movement in my joints. So many movements in my daily life are quad dominant so they get knotted up easily and affect my hip flexor mobility and lower back. Sometimes I use the heel of my hand or a lacrosse ball on my legs before a workout if I don’t have time for a full foam roll session. The upper back, or thoracic spine, likes a little attention after hours of phone calls, meetings, and desk fatigue. Even with good posture awareness, this area gets stuck from the occasional slouch or hunch. If I have the roller handy, a nice long roll over my upper back with my neck cradled safely in my hands, I feel all the day’s tension fall away- like water off a duck’s back.

After a workout hit all these spots again and add a nice long roll on the IT band down the side of your leg. For me, with a tricky knee, so much tension builds there and the massage of that tissue makes me a better person. Complete the roll out with the hamstrings, glutes, and lower back.

How long should it take?

For a pre-workout roll, take about 5 minutes, and spend up to 15 minutes as part of a cool down. Roll at a pace of about 1 inch per second, or slower. If you hit a very tender spot, try rolling the area around that first to avoid doing any damage. A little discomfort is normal, but severe pain is not what we are going for here.

Beginner tips:

If you are new to rolling, start slowly. Ask your trainer for instructions and to check that you are hitting the sweet spots. Be sure not to aggravate anything that is already inflamed. Find a way to incorporate this into your training during a dynamic warm-up or a cooldown, or both. Take your time with it, and breathe.

Indulgence

Remember this is your indulgence. Your deep tissue massage. Digging deeper into a painful area can cause tissue or nerve damage, so steer clear of the “no pain, no gain” mentality. If you listen to your muscles and the myofascial tissue surrounding them, you want to hear them take a little breath and then sigh out a sweet, “Thank you for taking care of me.”

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Strength Training

Pop Quiz and Body Mechanics

Pop Quiz! When does your kettlebell swing begin? Answer to follow…

Summer fun is coming to a close and a new batch of delightful memories are tucked away. Echoes of lakeside laughter and the patta-a-pat of little feet marching down the dock ramp are fading with the setting sun. I enjoy one last long gaze across the lake, feeling content with another year of honest fun for the family. Moments on this dock are the building blocks of ours and our children’s childhood, the dock itself a solid foundation. Three months out of the year I regard this dock with fondness, appreciation, and a touch of nostalgia. But there are two days when I stare it down like a confronted beast in the wild: Opening day and closing day. In true DIY fashion, we put in and take out our dock each year, like many Mainers do. It is a quick annual ritual with little pomp and circumstance, and usually without issue, save for a few moments when someone moves too fast or not fast enough on one side. This weekend I took care of the haul out with my 82-year-old dad. I’d guess the 20-foot long ramp is over 500#s and the float must be close to 800 or 900#s on its own. My dad and I work well together, swiftly, safely, and always with a joke or two to lighten the mood.

The first part of the job was to take out the fleet attached to the dock. The motorboat got tucked away in its winter home, and the kayaks were brought on shore. Next was the big lift and haul of the ramp. We brought it up on shore in what seemed like a snail’s procession, inch by inch. When it was time for the float, I suggested we wait for help, a few “strong backs,” but Dad was ready for the project to be done- so we continued. The logistics of getting this massive float out of the water and away from shore with our DIY manual tactics are sometimes riddled with comedy (yes, people have ended up backside in the water with a splash), and always flirt on the edge of disaster (we all know the risks involved moving something big and heavy). Almost at its final destination, progress came to a halt as the float hitched itself on a large rock. It needed a clear lift on one end. Without much thought, I squared up to the float. With a slight bend in my knees, my back flat, hinging at the hips, I grabbed hold of the edge and, squeezing my glutes, lifted. Dad gave the beast a good nudge, and we cleared the rock and finished the job.

The achievement of this job was all about body mechanics. Bringing my deadlift form to the task was notably a success. Having suffered back injuries in the past, I am astutely aware of the importance of good form and mechanics. All it takes is an over-reach, twist, or pull and we can be laid up for days. All of us are learning proper form and paying close attention to how we move through our exercises and hopefully bringing this same awareness to our everyday lives. Proper technique, from start to finish, is essential to staying injury free. So when do our movements start?

Pop Quiz Answer! Our kettlebell exercises do not start on the first swing. They actually start when you walk over to the cluster and choose your weight. Too often we see people grabbing a bell sideways, or with a rounded back. This is an invitation to injury. Treat the initial pick up as though it were a deadlift- stand near the bell, slight bend in the knees, hinge at the hips, back flat, inhale and press through your heels. The same rule applies when selecting your dumb bells for box squats, presses, weighted lunges, or re-racking your plates after bigger lifts. Keep good form even during your prep and you minimize the risk of injury. Bring this good habit to your everyday life and you save yourself a lot of backache in the yard, on the lake, or even with a bag of groceries. There’s still a few weeks left for hammock time, and as long as I am getting in and out of that safely, these should be good.

Categories
Flexibility/Recovery Motivational Personal Development Strength Training

Brick Foundation for Strength Training

Last night we got to do barbell bench presses and I remembered my first time doing them- again an intimidating exercise when it’s new. Historically these have a very masculine appeal and are not very ladylike. So the first time I did them I looked at the bar over my head and had a little chat with it making a deal that I would guide it down nice and steady to my sternum and that its job was to return safely back to the rack on my exhale. Just using the bar seemed like a big deal, almost suffocating in a certain way. Well here I am into my 2nd year of bench pressing and without hesitation I load up the bar and do some reps. (I still have my little chat with each set, just so we know we are on the same page.) It’s fun; it’s challenging; I’m sweating, and maybe even a little grunt escapes from my chest on the final rep. But I still remember when it was just the bar and how heavy that was at the time. It wasn’t just that it was heavy- it was that it was new and unfamiliar- my body didn’t really have a script for that movement. The closest thing might have been tossing my son up into the air with a giggle and catching him on the way down when he was a toddler, but I probably stopped doing that long before he was 45 pounds, and that was nearly 20 years ago. So the foundation was weak or nonexistent, but now, over time, brick by brick, I’ve built a solid foundation and can set the barbell moving without delay.

It’s good to remember this progression when it comes to exercise and strength training. Each movement no matter how small is another brick in the foundation of our strength. I often hear people lamenting their modifications during a new exercise or while recovering from an injury, a break, or illness. “I hate that I can’t do a full lunge, squat, jump, curl, press, etc.” I remind them how important this time is for their bodies and for learning or relearning a movement, to get programmed and to create proper form for safety and longevity. Each modified curl is still a curl. The smaller or more basic the move, the better we are creating proper form, and training our bodies so we can add complexity, increase range of motion, and add weight to our lifts as we progress.

It’s important to do what we can and recognize our own biomechanics. This might change from day to day- our hip flexors might be tight one day and another we are able to drop into a deep squat. When we modify a movement to adjust for these changes we leave judgement at the door and celebrate our self-knowledge, exercise safely and get a more effective workout.

When modifying, use the cues from the instructors and think about the purpose of the exercise and what movement patterns are included. Choose a modification that addresses the same muscle group and works toward this same purpose. When you are ready to add a challenge you can choose to increase your efforts when it feels right.

My challenge to you this week is not to see a modified exercise as “less than” but rather as its own valuable movement. We are layering our foundation of strength- brick by brick.

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Uncategorized

Principals of a Dynamic Warm Up

What is a Warm up?

If you don’t know what a warm up is, you have either never trained before in your life, or you have been living under a rock for the past 50 years. While most people do know and appreciate the importance of a warm up, the majority are either too lazy to do them, or they perform them incorrectly, SO incorrectly that in some cases, it may be more beneficial to not warm up at all. In this article, you’re going to learn when and how you should warm-up your body, and when and how to stretch.

For those of you who aren’t as familiar with what a warmup is, here is what Tim Roberson of STACK.com has to say:

“The main purpose behind [a dynamic warm-up], in addition to increasing the blood flow to the exercise musculature, is to increase the nervous system awareness. You’re trying to stimulate that awareness to the [exercises] that are going to follow. It’s the stepping stone before you actually start doing [more] intense exercises.” (STACK)

This definition really only tells half the story. The next half of a warm-up should consist of stretching. Only after our bodies have been primed, can we optimally stretch our muscles to illicit the best performance in the proceeding workout. So to summarize, here is how we should feel after our warmup:

-Increased Body Temperature

-Improved Joint lubrication

-Engaged Nervous System

-Improved Flexibility

-Grooved Movement patterns (Gentilcore)

What Am I Doing Wrong?

We need to get one thing straight here. The warm-up is exactly what it is, a warm-up. It should be specific to the work that is going to be done in the workout, but it should NOT be THE WORKOUT. Movements that are extremely intense, or put large amounts of stress into the muscular and nervous systems, should not be in the warm-up. These include: Max-Effort Plyometrics, Sprints, or high-intensity strength training. These movements can not be performed safely in a warm-up, because in order to execute them properly, we need an engaged nervous system, improved flexibility, increased body temperature, etc., which are all things we are trying to achieve with the warm-up.

I can’t tell you how many times I have seen people going straight to static stretching after sitting in a classroom for six hours. Have you ever tried to pull an uncooked steak apart? It doesn’t happen. If you heat it up, the steak is much more pliable. The same principal is true with our muscles. Without getting into the physiology of stretching, I will tell you that you can easily pull a muscle (over-stretch), and/or won’t be optimally preparing yourself for the work to follow, without an increased body temperature.

What SHOULD I DO?

Don’t worry, although I just picked apart your whole stretching routine, chances are you can keep it. As long as you do the following before your stretch, you should be golden. You need to do a dynamic warmup. In a dynamic warm up, exercises should be specific to the upcoming workout. It should begin with lower intensity, single-joint movements and progressively move towards medium-intensity, multi-joint movements. (Cressey) It can be preceded by soft-tissue work, but that is for a whole other article. It’s important to work areas such as the ankle, hip, and thoracic spine. (Cressey) The reason being is, for most of us who are sitting at a desk all day, these areas tend to be the tightest. Another factor to point out would be that these three areas have a tremendous amount of responsibility in some of the most basic functions of movement, such as twisting, bending, extending, pushing, and pulling.

EVEN WHEN YOU ARE WARM, STRETCHING CAN BE COUNTERPRODUCTIVE. Although this takes an individualized assessment, stretching phasic (lengthened or under-active) muscles will just worsen any postural imbalances you may have, and can lead to pain and injury. Stretching tonic (tight or over-active) muscles, will help balance postural alignment, and move the body closer to an optimal bio-mechanical position (Chek).

Group Warm-ups

When in a group setting, it isn’t realistic to assess everyone for their own postural imbalances. This can apply to boot camps, sports teams, and gym classes. In this case, the best we can do is stretch each muscle and it’s antagonist (opposite muscle). An example of this would be the bicep and tricep. Stretching both will maintain the current postural alignment, but still provide the benefit of increased flexibility in the muscle.

Should I Change my Warm-up on a Regular Basis?

Like previously mentioned, the warm-up should be specific to what’s going to take place in the main workout. It never hurts to add variety, however, but if your workout never changes, then generally, your warm-up won’t have to either. Of course, if your postural status is improving with corrective stretching and exercises, then your stretches will have to change as well.

Don’t Overdue It

There is one purpose to a warm-up, and we’ve already mentioned what that is. It’s to prepare for the main workout to come. Warm-ups that are too intense or are too long will actually take away from the main workout / competition / sports practice.

Remove Unnecessary Exercises

There are many coaches out there who will put high-intensity, low-volume exercises in their warm-ups. These exercises really deserve to be part of the workout themselves. Warm-ups generally should consist of exercises at a low to medium intensity at medium to high volume. The problems happen when you mix a high-intensity exercise with high volume. This is just asking for burnout and reduced performance in the actual competition / workout / sports practice.

Warm-ups are hardly ever changed, so if an athlete is practicing for their sport 5-6 times/week and they are using the same, high-intensity exercise over and over in their warm-up, they will eventually create some sort of postural imbalance, as well as fatigue quicker, and start to see diminishing gains. (Zatsiorsky, 96) If the coach is insisting on continuing the use of high intensity exercises, they should make sure to properly use, “rest-exercise alternation and proper exercise sequencing to alleviate fatigue.” (Zatsiorsky, 96).

Most coaches use isometric training on the field or on the court because it’s simple, doesn’t require equipment, and seems to get the job done. However, they should be aware that accommodation to isometric exercises happens quickly, and gains tend to peak between 6-8 weeks. (Zatsiorsky, 124).

If you’d like to learn more about prehab, preventing injury, and warming up correctly, Sign up in the form below! I’ll send you free content on how to improve all of these things, in the most effective way possible.

 

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Works Cited

Chek, Paul.How to Eat, Move and Be Healthy!: Your Personalized 4-step Guide to Looking and Feeling Great from the inside out. San Diego, CA: C.H.E.K. Institute, 2004. Print.

Cressey, Eric. “The 6 Characteristics of a Good Dynamic Warm-up | Eric Cressey | High Performance

Training, Personal Training.”Eric Cressey. N.p., 20 Dec. 2011. Web. 22 Nov. 2013.

“Dynamic Warm-ups vs Static Stretching.”STACKSept. 2008: n. pag. Web.

Gentilcore, Tony. “The Perfect Warm-Up.”Tony Gentilcore. N.p., 23 May 2012. Web. 22 Nov. 2013.

N.p., n.d. Web.

Zatsiorsky, Vladimir M., and William J. Kraemer.Science and Practice of Strength Training. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 2006. Print.