More Than Exercise

 We aren't all natural athletes. If we're being honest, most of us aren't. Natural athletes just seem to get it. They have what my old martial art teacher called physical intelligence. The awareness of the body and how to engage it, both at rest and in motion, that makes things look easy. If you've ever watched an amazing play in any sport that looked so effortless that your first thought was "I think that I could do that", then you saw a display of physical intelligence. Some of you might have taken it one step further and tried to reproduce that movement; and realized just how difficult that it was.

We do not remember the difficulty we overcame to stand for the first time. It has been so long since we took our first steps that we have lost touch with the memory of being so unsteady that we might fall down. What we remember is the effortlessness and joy of moving when we were children; and how good it felt to run around and play games. But we spent hours on our first movements, building endurance and strength, learning how to balance, and the timing to put it together. That is what gave us the capability to run around all day. Now that there are other responsibilities in life, we cannot go back to those carefree days of our early childhood (or move the same; some bones are fused together in adults that are jointed as children). But the more skilled we become at moving, the longer we can retain our ability to move freely, gracefully, and without pain.

We say the words exercise and workout. But I think those words are misleading and emphasize the wrong aspect of physical training. I'd argue that they are all actually a poor substitute for the word that we used as when we were kids, PRACTICE. If you've been following this blog or have talked to me in person, then you know that I believe that movement is the skill that keeps us healthy and feeling young. A skill that can be refined and gradually made more efficient through mindful effort. Practice is the act of refinement. Proper form and technique reinforce correct movement patterns and will improve your abilities and give you new ones, just as improper technique will just as surely lead to compensation and injury. The more fluid and practiced the movement, the easier it gets. If you do not have a sound technical foundation for your movements, then you will never reach your potential. It will be much harder to reach your goals. You will only get better if you challenge yourself, strive to improve; and you will know if you are practicing correctly when you notice that improvement. You will also know when your body has had enough for the day (I was better at this ten minutes ago..), or when it is better to take an extra rest day or train something else instead (My legs have been sore all week). Everything becomes easier with practice.


So make every workout into a practice. It's not how far you run that matters, it's how smoothly and efficiently you get there (Do not get me started on treadmill stomping!). It's not about how much weight you can squat if you cannot land softly from a jump. In fact, if you've been working out for years and you're still doing the same basic routine at the gym as when you started; you are shortchanging yourself. Do you even know how far you can jump or how fast you can run? What about swimming? Can you climb? Can you throw a ball accurately? From how far? With your other hand? The questions are endless. Break out of a mundane routine and try to answer a few of them. You will learn more about yourself. It will challenge your body in a different way and can be fun. But don't get discouraged if something new is difficult. Ask for help if you don't understand it. Break down the activity into its basic motions, and then practice. Build upon the foundation of fundamental movements and embrace the fact that it will not be easy in the beginning. It will take time to improve. But remember, the only way to be better tomorrow is by practicing today.

The Best Workout

Hello again! Today I'd like to discuss a topic that many people don't want to hear about, but it might be the most important information that I can pass along. It matters to everyone, whether you are a workout fanatic or a beginner that has more goals than workouts under your belt. The topic is injury prevention.

I've said before that the best workout is the workout that you've never done, and I believe that. You will get more, physiologically, out of a new exercise or routine than you will out of something that is practiced on a regular basis. Your nervous system will have to learn a new firing pattern, and it will encourage the growth of neural connections and muscle within your body. But I'd like to add a critical component into the quest for that elusive perfect workout: The best workout is the one that allows you to keep training.

In the years I've spent in gyms training and in sports, I've seen some pretty gruesome injuries. I've heard the audible pop as a muscle tears off the bone. I've seen people drop like a sack of potatoes from a punch or kick. I've seen joints move in ways that they aren't supposed to. I've heard screams of pain. But those are extremely rare and disconcerting scenes. More often, you don't see or hear someone's injury, you simply notice their absence after a few weeks. Unfortunately, I often begin to work with a client months or years after a mistake took place. One thing I can tell you with absolute certainty: It's much easier to prevent an injury than it is to rehabilitate one.

First and foremost, you have to know where you're at, currently. I can't count the number of people that need a deep tissue massage and a round of physical therapy because they overdid it on their first workout in a long time. If you're having trouble doing a handful of pull-ups, your body is not ready to attempt a muscle-up. Don't try to run a marathon if you spend five minutes waiting for a closer parking spot to avoid the fifty feet that you'll have to walk by parking farther away. Yet. I won't argue against setting goals and challenging yourself to achieve them. I believe in that. But there's more to it than willpower. Your body will adapt to the challenges, given time and consistency. But professional athletes don't start out as professionals; years of training shaped their body to the demands of their sport. Gradual increases of stress on the body will give you the lasting, positive results that you are after.

The next concern of injury prevention is to ensure that the body is ready for the activities that it will undertake. A warm-up is a vital component of every exercise routine. This opening phase of your workout should accomplish two things: increase fluid motility; both in the joints (most joints in your body are in a capsule that contains synovial fluid) and in the circulatory system (cellular oxygen and nutrient uptake increases during exercise), and connect your conscious mind with your physical body. Body looseners allow you to take your body through functional movements slowly enough to feel stiffness or discomfort, alerting you to areas that have not entirely recovered from previous activities. Lighter warm-up drills ready the nervous system by signaling to the body that it will be going through a period of greater physical stress.

During the workout, exercise form is of the utmost importance. Technique should always be considered. There are proper sequences and movement patterns for every exercise and sport. Pushing beyond your current conditioning, especially with a heavy load for that exercise, greatly increases the risk of initiating the cumulative injury cycle. When form is lost, the body will bear the consequences. Sometimes those consequences will be immediately discernible, and at other times it will be years before the ill effects become apparent. If you don't know the basic form and important components of an exercise, make sure to ask someone (preferably a certified trainer, but at the very least someone that accomplishes the motion with ease).

Finally, adequate post-exercise rest allows the body to repair the micro-tears that occur during strenuous activity. A recovery period should reflect the intensity of the workout that it follows. Any high-intensity program that demands maximum effort day in and day out will eventually break down the body to the point of injury (over-trained individuals and cross-fit enthusiasts beware!). Hopefully that injury will not be a drastic, life-changing event. But know that some mistakes have permanent consequences. Make sure that any high-intensity program has a definitive timetable, and that an adequate "off-season" is undertaken to allow the body to rebuild.

To quickly review; the best workout is one that lets you continue to train, to pursue your goals. The main points of injury prevention are to know current levels of condition and ability (gradually and consistently progressing the challenge), warm up properly for the tasks at hand, use the proper techniques while performing, and properly resting afterwards to allow the body to recover.