Training your body may seem like a daunting task. I personally have experienced many injuries and setbacks from attempting to do too much too fast train at too high of an intensity too high of a volume for too long of a duration or with two limited sleep. All of these factors can impact your risk for injury and it’s important to note that you can still make inroads in developing your health without placing yourself at unreasonable chance for injury. I’ll start with some of the tried and true methods and then get into newer ideas.
- Train with body weight
It is still entirely possible to develop strength without weights body weight calisthenics are a great option. Make sure to incorporate at least some sets where you go to failure as growth hormone is released in muscle tissue after muscles are fatigued to failure.
2. Cross train
Many injuries are the results of overuse and repetitive motion. These actions put repetitive strain on muscles ligaments and tendons and leave all their parts of the body unused. In order to prevent this from occurring make sure to mix up your activities. Studies show that professional sports players who cross train are less likely to get injured in season.
3. Train with low impact although impact training is useful for things like bone development.
You can still train without running jumping etc. Try cycling, using the elliptical, swimming, and even yoga. One of my recent favorites for an extremely high intensity but low impact workout is going to the closest pool or body of water of tepid or warm temperature and wading in waist deep. Next run forward as hard as you can for 30 seconds. You may do this multiple times for added effect. I found this style of exercise to be incredibly demanding and to mimic sprinting; however, I did not have the risk of rolling an ankle and aggravating old injuries such as my toe which I recently had surgery on.
4. Recognize when you are likely overtraining.
This is particularly common with endurance athletes. I myself have gotten in the cycle of running for 2+ hours a day. While the habit was sustainable for a number of weeks. After a while I had trouble sleeping and would start everyday groggy. Unfortunately the only thing that would make me feel better and clear mentally was going for a run. You can see how my cycle of overtraining progressed. If you are exercising for more than an hour every day and having trouble sleeping, anxiety, rapid breath, increased heart rate, and lack of focus, you may be overtraining which typically activates the sympathetic nervous system. When the sympathetic nervous system is activated you are in the flight or fight mode. This is an adaptive strategy useful for times when your life is in danger. However chronic activation of the sympathetic nervous system is associated with a slew of health maladies, including an increased risk for injury.
5. Sleep is essential to your recovery.
I have personally experimented with training hard and intentionally skipping sleep to hit the morning workout. Unfortunately I experienced muscle fatigue and poor coordination. Studies indicate that is vital for recovery of the immune system, muscles, the central nervous system, and the cardiovascular system. With reduced sleep comes poor reaction time. Side note – for those of you who love to hit the gym in the morning or for those of you who can’t possibly pull themselves out from bed in the morning you may love me or hate me – the best time to exercise is between mid-afternoon and early evening. For the typical persons sleep wake cycle, this time range offers the best opportunity for exercise as cardiovascular potential peaks and coordination is at its highest. Consider saving your hard work out of the day for these times. Caution – working out too late in the day can disrupt sleep cycles. For more on the importance of sleep check out Matt Walker.
7. Consider the fact that high volume may not actually bring the results you were looking for.
Case one cardiovascular fitness and longevity. Studies show that life expectancy can be maximized at about 450 minutes of moderate physical activity every week. Less than this results in a shortened average lifespan while more than this does not increase lifespan. That’s right! An ultra marathon runner is no more likely to live longer than your average moderately active individual.
Case 2 big muscles. Most claim that it is necessary to work out for 2 to 3 hours in the gym lifting heavy weights in order to gain muscular size and strength. However recent developments with resistance bands training show that athletes were able to make gains three times faster than athletes with weights in the same period of time. The reason behind this phenomenon is the theory of variable resistance training. Variable resistance training offers a changing resistance throughout the range of motion of the exercise. For example if you take a large elastic band and looping one end through your foot and the other through your hand you press up towards the sky the band would apply more force back into your hand at the upper end of the exercise compared to when your hand is closer to your head or in the contracted portion of the exercise. Typically your muscles are strongest when your joints are nearly locked out or at full extension. This means that when you lift a weight you are limited by your joints weakest range of motion. As a result training with weights or another form of conventional training does not only fatigue all ranges of motion of the exercise. In order to fully capitalize and train all ranges of motion of your joint, resistance bands can apply a variable force throughout the range of motion of the exercise to meet the capacity of your joints increasing strength as you are closest to the strongest part of your range of motion. You can do this with free weights but it takes time and changing your body position throughout multiple exercises. A more streamlined approach is to train with a system like the X3 bar which the expensive offers an extremely efficient workout which hits all the range of motion of the major push and pull exercises in about 10 minutes per day. The X3 system allows you to train every range of motion to failure without the risk of joint injury from putting too many plates on your Olympic bar when bench pressing or squatting. In addition this exercise activates stabilizing or reflexive muscles to fire which AIDS in fat loss.
8. Dynamic stretching is broadly accepted as a method of preparing for a workout.
You can find tips on useful dynamic stretch routines here. Static stretching is great post workout and is associated with injury prevention but if performed pre-workout is associated with decreased muscular strength and hence an increase of injury as a result.
9. Taking it easy.
Rest and recovery are critical components to you injury prevention. Most professional athletes have to sleep between 10:00 and 12:00 hours every night just to stay in the game. There are ways to satisfy your urge to do something healthy without slaughtering yourself at the gym. Saunas are great and promote igf-1 and growth factors as well as heat shock proteins. Cold thermogenesis is also a great activity, as is light walking, light yoga, or any other form of movement that is non-strenuous. You can also do alternative forms of exercise you may not be used to doing such as martial arts, dance, or gardening. In addition, breathing exercises can be quite strenuous and give you the same satisfaction as other forms of exercise. Meditation is a great way to calm the mind and body without strain and is what I use on days to relax when I am super wound up but overtrained.
10. Other types of training.
Blood flow restricted training otherwise known as occlusion training involves the partial loss of circulation after straps or bands are wrapped around the upper and lower extremities. These bands restrict blood flow back to the heart. As a result you’re able to achieve similar gains in muscular strength and size as training with higher resistance such as bigger weights or just weights in general without the risk of injury to your joints ligaments and tendons. I like to use BFR with body weight exercises because I get a similar strain as hitting the gym without needing to drive or use equipment. They’re great thing to keep in your car or backpack so you can always have no excuses for busting out a quick workout. Training masks are also useful. They restrict their flow in or out of the mask creating either a hypoxic or superpoxic environment.
11. Stay hydrated
Isometric exercises don’t involve contraction or extension are a usually against an immovable object. The great thing about isometric exercises is that you are almost always training your muscles to failure doing these exercise; however, the lack of motion makes them safer to perform than heavy lifting.
Tips for runners. Try sprinting up a hill and walking down. This is easier on your joints and will likely change up your usual 80% of peak VO2 max routine.
Generalism 