Archive for tag Tips
May 28, 2008 at 11:37 AM
· Tagged with tips
Overtraining is a mysterious and delicate topic, yet most of us have experienced it in some form. Rigorous training without overtraining is extremely difficult to achieve. You’re trying to intentionally and frequently cause short-term damage to your muscles without causing any long-term damage. What a balancing act!
The balancing act is even tougher when viewed as a cost/benefit relationship. Train and you’ll improve. Train rigorously and you’ll improve even more. Train too rigorously and not only will you not improve (you’ll injure yourself), but you will lose your ability to fully train while the injury heals, causing you a net decrease in performance.
Injuries due to overtraining usually result from one of two things: a single catastrophic event or chronic overuse. Here are some ways that I personally mitigate these injuries.
Try It Before You Buy It
When trying new exercises for the first time, which is something you should do often, never go full speed or with a full load your first time. This is something we all “know” but I’m not sure how religiously we practice it. Practice the motion unweighted for a few reps. Try to anticipate where you will feel the most stress and pay attention to those joints/muscles during the actual exercise. If the exercise involves a barbell then do a few reps with only the bar until you’re confident with the motion. This is especially important with complex motions like the clean. It’s OK to fool around with just the bar before you dive in head first. You don’t have to count the reps toward your workout, and you’ll benefit in the long-term.
Know Whether You Are Hurt or Injured
More specifically, know the difference as it is happening. At The Basic School in Quantico, Virginia, I once saw a captain approach one of my fellow lieutenants who was rubbing his lower leg during a break in physical training. “Are you hurt or injured?” he asked. “If you’re injured then stop and go see the doc. If you’re hurt then suck it up and let’s go.” Pain is a normal part of exercise. You should expect and even seek a certain amount of pain in your training in order to improve. However, you must be able to tell when pain is giving way to injury, and sometimes it changes in an instant. My perception of the normal muscular stress of exercise: widespread burning, tightness, soreness to the touch. The onset of injury is more acute: sharp “cutting” pain, intense cramping, immediate and severe loss of strength. When an injury is about to occur you will feel the normal pain transition to injury. Sometimes it happens so quickly you can’t prevent it during the moment. In that case you were simply doing too much too soon. However, sometimes you can feel it happening and stop it in time. Building this perception and being willing to preserve yourself can save you from some injuries.
Take a Dump in Front of Everyone
…or at least be willing to. When you feel a catastrophic injury approaching you must unload the muscle to prevent it. You essentially have two options: shift the load to a different muscle group, sometimes one that the exercise position can’t easily support, or dump the weight. Make preparations in advance and be willing to dump the weight if you need to. Admittedly, I rarely do this. A corollary to this tenet is to anticipate your performance on future sets/reps and adjust load/reps accordingly before you start. Rubber bumper plates are excellent for exercises that involve large loads and high probability of failure if pushed to the limit. A spotter can also mitigate this risk. However, if all else fails and your knee/shoulder/insert important body part here is on the line, be willing to create a scene and suddenly let the weights clang to the floor. Your embarrassment will buy you out of a lot of pain and frustration.
Give Yourself a Break
I’ve given a lot of attention to catastrophic injury thus far, but overuse has plagued me far more often. A fitness enthusiast learns and eventually expects to work through pain. This is both a virtue and a vice, because it’s this ability that causes us to substantiate working through injuring pain. This most often happens in endurance training such as running. In 2003 I developed shin splints so badly that a month of rest was necessary to regain my long-term running ability. The fact that I was limping into the gym should have been a clue that all was not well. Because the pain subsided after my first 1000m I was determined to work through it. That was a mistake. Whenever any soreness doesn’t subside after 4-5 days then you have reason for caution. You don’t always have to wait until every muscle in a group has healed completely to work the muscle again, but if the muscle hasn’t felt fully healed in weeks then you’ve got a problem. Unfortunately, there’s only one cure: rest. Resting a week at the onset of injury is preferable to resting a month after greatly aggravating the injury. If you’ve been training for months then a week or even two weeks of rest isn’t going to hinder your long-term goals.
Crying Wolf or Pleading for Help?
I hope that some of the tips can help you avoid overtraining and the injuries it brings. The advice I’ve written is the advice that I give myself every day and seek to follow in my training. The sum of all the parts is this: know your body and listen to it, but listen to it as a concerned parent -- not a whimsical friend. In order to effectively train and develop total fitness you must push your body outside its comfort zone. It’s always going to be a little upset about this, and you often must tell it to shut up and keep moving. However, from time to time it will genuinely cry out for help, and in order to effectively respond you must know how to tell the difference and be willing to listen.
About the Author: Jeff Barnett is a fitness enthusiast from Huntsville, Alabama. For the past ten years he has pursued strength and health in numerous ways including serving as a Marine Corps officer. He occasionally writes about fitness on his blog, The Midnight Hour and posts his daily workouts on his facebook group, Crossfit Huntsville.
Comments Off
May 21, 2008 at 03:05 PM
· Tagged with tips
If you have ever worked in an office environment then you know that, in most cases, it can be detrimental to your health. Everything from the birthday cakes, lack of movement, and high stress all leads to a less-than-healthy lifestyle.
Ali Hale from The Office Diet wrote a great post at the Ririan Project blog giving some helpful tips for those of us who spend most of our time cooped up in an office. Here are my 3 favorite tips (although be sure to check out all 7):
1. Take your own lunch. This is something that I have always been an advocate of. Depending on where you live, it can be almost impossible to find a healthy restaurant. Making a simple sandwich or salad for lunch will almost certainly be more healthy than anything you can find at a restaurant. Plus, you'll save a decent amount of money in the long run.
2. Get outside during your lunch break. A smart employer will allow their employees the freedom to go for a walk or a jog on their lunch break (and maybe even on a separate break). For one, healthy employees save the company money by reduced healthcare costs and less sick days spent. Second, taking short breaks and getting outside will result in happier and more productive employees. Hopefully you can convince your employer that by working less hours you can actually get more done!
3. Avoid the “free food” trap. This is by far my biggest weakness. No matter how many times I tell myself I won't partake of the free doughnuts, the next thing I know I have eaten 3 of them. Becoming a healthy office worker definitely requires self control. Another great way to think about this is that saving a few bucks right now isn't worth the tens of thousands it could cost you on healthcare costs down the road.
Comments Off
April 05, 2008 at 09:51 AM
· Tagged with tips
Whether you are wanting to become a bodybuilder or just get a more toned physique, building muscle mass is an important ingredient.
Here is an article that shares some valuable tips that can get you started down the road to looking great and feeling great. There is some useful information there that you may not be aware of, especially if you are just starting out.
Comments Off
March 04, 2008 at 09:13 AM
· Tagged with tips
A Reuters article provides some insight into the benefits of exercise to fight off fatigue. A study performed at the University of Georgia took 36 individuals who received little to no exercise on a regular basis. Part of the group did leisurely to moderately intense workouts for 6 weeks, while the other participants remained sedentary. The active participants had a 20 percent increase in energy level over the sedentary participants.
"A lot of people are overworked and not sleeping enough. Exercise is a way for people to feel more energetic. There's a scientific basis for it and there are advantages to it compared to things like caffeine and energy drinks."
Many of us have experienced this boost in energy after going for a jog or a brisk walk. But, what studies have also shown is that regular exercise will provide a lasting boost in energy level, not just that temporary high you get after your cardio session.
Comments Off (3)
January 30, 2008 at 11:55 AM
· Tagged with tips
If you are like most people, you’ve already forgotten about the resolutions that you made on January 1st. The simple fact is, it’s not easy to change habits, unless you’ve just had a heart attack or some other life-changing event. You may know how often you should exercise, when you should see a doctor for testing and what you should eat. Well, almost on what you should eat…
To make life easier, we came up with 10 practical suggestions for improving your diet. They’re backed by research, they’re specific (not just “eat less bad fat”), they go beyond the obvious (“switch from whole milk to nonfat milk”), and they are doable. How do we know? We do them daily.
1. Eat less meat or go meatless.
People who eat more red meat (beef, pork, and lamb) have a higher risk of cancer. Prevention is key. If you have a family history of colon cancer, please talk with your doctor about how often you should be eating red meat.
2. Eat bran cereal in place of other cereals.
Please don’t get us wrong, any 100% whole-grain cereal is good for you, but bran cereals appear to be better. Why? For starters, they are loaded with fiber. Without them, it’s tough to reach the new recommended amount: 14 grams of fiber for every 1,000 calories you eat per day. That works out to be about 38 grams for men 50 or younger. People often feel full longer when eating bran daily and it may help keep you trim. Instead of going with an ordinary whole-wheat cereal like Wheaties with only 3 grams of fiber per serving, try an all-bran cereal with 10 to 14 grams.
3. Don't drink your Calories.
Studies show that the calories you drink are more likely to show up on your bathroom scale than the calories you chew. Most of the studies are geared towards soft drinks, but anything in excess that your body doesn’t need is stored as fat, which includes your Starbucks venti Double Chocolate Chip Crème (without the whipped cream) at 590 calories, eight-ounces of orange juice at 120 calories, or 12 ounces of beer at 150 calories. Instead, drink your 64 ounces water or stick to other calorie-free beverages like flavored seltzers or plain tea.
4. Hold the cheese please.
Cheese is everywhere these days... in or on soups, salads, steaks, sandwiches, breads, potatoes and eggs. Restaurants love to use cheese because it pumps up the flavor without requiring much skill from the kitchen. One ounce (the size of a ping pong ball) of cheddar cheese is 110 calories and 10 grams of saturated (bad) fat.
5. Let beans squeeze out starches.
"Eat at least three cups of legumes per week," says the government’s Dietary Guidelines for Healthy Americans. What’s so special about beans? If nothing else, they are inexpensive, fiber packed and a good source of protein. Beans may also affect satiety. When adding more beans to your meal-plan, go slow to prevent too much gas buildup.
6. Make it salmon, not tuna.
“We recommend eating fish (particularly fatty fish) at least two times a week,” says the American Heart Association. Fish has less saturated fat than meat. Salmon contains omega-3 fats that appear to lower the risk of heart disease and has a lower mercury content than tuna.
7. Snack smart.
Since nationwide surveys (started in the 1970’s) say the average American eats three meals and two snacks a day, which is still true to this day. What has changed? The amounts of food eaten at snack time. Scones, muffins and danish pastries are often grabbed on the way to work or to the dinner show at 500 calories on average. Instead, trade those for fruits or vegetables, try 6-12 almonds for a healthy snack.
8. Roast vegetables, not potatoes.
Yes, potatoes are technically vegetables but a starchy one that acts more like a white flour grain in the body. Potatoes may be a complex carbohydrate, but they raise blood sugar as fast as actual sugar does. And don’t assume that potatoes are fine as long as they’re not French fries. Eating mashed or baked potatoes is not far from getting an intravenous load of glucose.
9. Sip soup, not salt.
Salt raises blood pressure which may increase the risk for stroke or heart attacks. High blood pressure or hypertension is an epidemic in the United States. It affects half of all people over the age of 60. Soup is one of the worst offenders - roughly 1,000 milligrams per serving for about 100 calories. How much salt, at maximum, should you be consuming per day? 2,400 milligrams per day. Just think, you may never truly know how much salt the kitchen from your favorite restaurant may be adding to your food.
10. Finish with fruit.
For many people, dessert is time to splurge. Many don’t know that the typical restaurant dessert is 1,000 calories and one or two days worth of saturated fat. Look for fruit on the menu or at home throw together balsamic vinegar and strawberries (Recipe: combine 1 cup quartered strawberries with 1 teaspoon sugar and a splash of balsamic vinegar. Chill 1 hour before serving). This will impress your date or significant other and is perfect for Valentine’s Day. That’s not to say that you can never have another slice of cheesecake in this lifetime, but to save it for (really) rare occasions when you can afford an extra 1,000 calories.
Enjoy every bite of food with your new additions to your healthy meals!
Contact me at TerriBlairRD@mac.com for a complimentary 15-minute appointment today.
Comments Off (5)
