By: Jen Fleming
As of late, I have been discussing this concept with a lot of people. The idea that you can jump into the middle of a work out regime after you’ve either been away from the gym for an extended period of time, or have sustained an injury, can spell disaster. Not to mention poor results, or an inability to even follow the regime. Worst, you can worsen an existing injury or create a new one.
Sometimes you gotta train to train, toughen up before jumping in full throttle. In other words, start where you are.
The first step to that is to test your self. Let’s say you used to be highly conditioned and could perform a deadlift with 150lbs … a year ago. Start with half the weight, and perform as many reps as possible up to 12. Too easy? Add some pounds. Were those last 3 reps a challenge? Leave it at that weight and do another 2 sets of 8-12 reps. Too hard? Drop the weight. Just be honest with yourself – you’ll save your body the grief of an injury.
What if you have an injury? Whether it is fresh or old, that injury will probably be with you for the rest of your life, if it was bad enough. Even if you were highly conditioned before, these injuries lose conditioning faster than healthy parts and will be significantly weaker. That means you will have to cater to where that injury is in its health, rather than the rest of your body.
Some people really stick to the old adage no pain no gain, and in some instances that can be true. In others it’s just dead wrong. A good way to tell the “good hurt” from the “bad hurt” is when it starts to hurt. If you feel a little sore after you finished your last set, you may have pushed it too hard and you will likely be very sore for the next few days.
But that’s not necessarily a bad thing, pushing the boundaries is how we grow. If it’s sore in the first few reps, or even at the end of the first set, you are doing some bad damage and you need to back off the weight, or stop all together.
Injuring yourself will do you no favours in trying to reach conditioning and body composition goals and will in fact set you well back.
Another thing to consider, for those of you who have no pain scale at all and would “walk off” a broken leg is FORM. Form, hands down, is always more important than the number of pounds or reps.
If you are on rep 5 of your first set and your movement is really sloppy, or you are swinging your whole body back to do a bicep curl your weight is too heavy! Either do fewer reps and some research on pyramid weight training or lower your resistance, do it right.
So, go to the gym, enjoy yourself, lift weights, get big and strong and sweaty but do it SMART! Injuring yourself just costs you money by coming to me to help fix you. And of course I will probably make you read this article aloud while I K-Tape an ice pack to your wounded pride.
(Information extrapolated from text book, Management of Common Musculoskeletal Disorders, Physical Therapy Principles and Methods, 4th Ed. Hertling/Kessler.)
Jen Fleming RMT
jenflemingrmt@gmail.com
www.jenflemingrmt.com
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