Hi everyone and welcome back. All the time nowadays we are seeing more and more injuries. Mostly knee, back and shoulder, but also ankle, neck and wrist. We’re seeing more and more injuries as time goes on not just in elderly adults but people of all ages. Plenty of kids I have trained started my programs with injuries. So what’s causing all these injuries now a days? Well, the problem stems from less and less activity. We now have heavy machines and automation technology doing everything for us. So we spend less and less time being active. Our physical tasks have become easier and easier. No longer are we on farms throwing around hundred pound bales of hay all day long. This inactivity and easier tasking weakens our body and makes us more prone to injury. You see, your body is a great machine and will readily adapt to the environment you create for it. You have the ability to become strong, lean, muscular, and with good endurance. You also have the ability to become weak, slow, tired, overweight, injured, and disabled at any age. The choice is in all of us. Yes you, even you!
It’s funny to the me the way some people think about strength training and injuries. I recently had a client come up to me and tell me that she was initially afraid to start training because her knees hurt. I can remember when she started just six months earlier. She could barely walk and had a very difficult time just getting on and off the equipment. However, she decided at that point in time to go ahead and trust in the strength training and injury rehabilitation program I designed. Now she is able to not only walk, but climb stairs with weight, squat, lunge, and leg press over 300 pounds with no pain! She learned two life-changing things from this process. Number one, strength training when designed correctly and applied appropriately not only helped her walk but also allowed her to be able to do things that she had never been able to do before. Please also keep in mind this lady I’m talking about is in her 70’s. Number two, you make a choice in life. Do you want energy, strength, stamina, clarity, ability, weight loss / muscle gain? Or, do you want injury, dependency, sickness, depression and loss? Luckily for her she made the right choice.
Now I am not telling you that if you lift heavy weights with sloppy form that you’ll improve. That would be careless and reckless of me. You absolutely can and will get injured worse if your form and progression is bad. However, strength training done correctly will not injure you even if you lift very heavy weight. It will in fact help prevent, yes prevent, injury. Not only that, but the heavier you can go with the weight in perfect form and progression, the less and less likely you are to have an injury occur. Notice I said perfect form and progression, don’t forget that part.
Well, you might be thinking, “What about all the powerlifters and bodybuilders with torn rotators and knee injuries? Their form seems to be perfect?” I’m going to let the cat out of the bag here on this one. It’s simple really. When you take performance-enhancing substances you push past your true abilities. Steroids and performance enhancing drugs are all different, some do in fact help with strengthening tendons and joints, but many only boost strength or build muscle. That is where the problem lies. When you take a drug that increases strength and muscle, but not tendon and ligament strength, you’re just asking for injury even with perfect form. You are simply overloading your whole system. It’s like putting 10,000 pounds in an elevator that’s only meant to hold 8,000. It might hold for now but who knows for how long – and do you really want to be in it when it snaps?? No thank you!
The point is go ahead and push as hard as you can provided form and progression are perfect. Without the steroids or drugs it’s highly unlikely that you will be able to overload your joints naturally.
Now that we’ve talked about that let me briefly explain the mechanics behind injuries. Most injuries start or happened because of poor posture. What causes poor posture? Remember when your mama used to say sit up straight? Haha LOL. Just kidding, mine never did that, and probably it wouldn’t have mattered because the problem is muscle imbalance. Muscle imbalance is a consequence of our repetitive patterns of motion. If you’re always looking down guess what? Eventually your head will sit forward and your muscle will change and adapt to that repetition. The problem is your joints won’t adapt. Injuries happen essentially because muscles on one side of a joint become short and tight. Muscles on the other side become long and weak. The short tight muscles then move or pull the joint towards themselves. This in turn causes the joint to misalign. Over time the misalignment causes destabilization, and then injury. Which brings us back to square one. Rehabilitation and strength training programs aimed at strengthening the long and weak muscles, while stretching and elongating the short muscles, will correct injury and help avoid surgery. This is why a properly designed program from a competent certified personal trainer with a corrective exercise background will be the way to go for those of you that have an injury but still want that lean muscular body.
Please don’t give up or give in so easily to injury and/or surgery. 9 times out of 10 it’s completely avoidable. Thanks and please join me in the near future for more blogs. If you have any questions or comments please leave those at the bottom.
Thanx,D
