PAIN FREE TRAINING

& WHY YOU NEED A SPECIALIZED TRAINER

 

All too often, the “no pain, no gain” mentality of going hard at the gym can get in the way of real progress in a person’s training regimen.  The fact is, this philosophy could likely lead to injuries.  

 

Why is it then that we rarely see a young person get injured with “no pain, no gain”?  When we’re young (under 30 years) the body has enormous abilities to bounce back and recover.  But all wear and tear will catch up to everyone.

 

No pain, no gain mentality is a long term gamble for serious traumatic injury and if you incur pain while working out, you are definitely accumulating damage.

                                      

While you may be managing to avoid a serious injury, let’s look at what’s going on in the typical person’s body.   First, as said above, most people who “go hard” while training are pushing too hard and there is not enough recovery time to balance this out.  I admit, that’s a vague statement, so let’s break it down and be clear.

 

What Is Pushing Too Hard?

 

What is pushing too hard?  It’s a variety of things and usually a combination of factors.  Tissue restrictions leading to poor joint mechanics are the leading cause of pushing an area of your body too hard. You can read more about Flexibility and Mobility HERE.  

 

Once there is the beginning of restriction, time is the next factor.  Has it been a week or 5+ years of tissue restriction?  It’s easy to outline “pushing too hard” as pushing yourself beyond the efficient capabilities of your joint’s movement capacity and or ability to control the position’s intended integrity.

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What Is Recovery and Why Is It Important?

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What is recovery anyway?  At the very least, it would be an appropriate rest time before the same muscles are used maximally again; up to 5-7 days.  Also it would at least imply purposeful and direct tissue work; stretching, self-myofascial release (SMR) or massage but this rarely happens.  What else?

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What Else Has An Impact When Training?

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The average person’s posture is pretty poor or often, just dismal.  So what?  Well, how you hold yourself through most of the week is going to be how you exercise also.  This is going to set the stage for the beginning of imbalances creeping in.  

 

Next potential impact is your own unique set of habitual movements, overly repeated bicep curls and of course, your past injuries, not to mention how much you sit.

 

So with poor posture you are doing too many bicep curls or squats each week and you have that funny shoulder or hip from that weird thing you used to do a lot as a teenager or the way you hold the phone down to your shoulder.  

 

Now we can add chronic repetitive motion wear to a joint that was already slightly stiff.  Did you ever have a sprained ankle?  Now that magnifies everything said ‘til now.