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Welcome to article number five in our 5-part series "Bodybuilding Sins That
Cause Back Pain and Missed Workouts". In this article we are going to cover
some basic, yet powerful training principles that are often overlooked and are
responsible for nearly all bodybuilding injuries?
If you missed any of the previous articles, you can view them using the links
below.
Here's a breakdown of the articles to look for:
1. Article #1 - Choosing The WRONG Exercises
2. Article #2 - Training Variations for Pain Relief and Maximum Results
3. Article #3 - Targeted Stretching
4. Article #4 - Targeted Exercises
5. Article #5 - Rest, Recovery, and Injury Prevention
Article #5 - Rest, Recovery and Injury Prevention
Many of the injuries that bodybuilders suffer from could be easily prevented
just by allowing the body enough time to rest?
While most bodybuilders dread hearing the word "rest", many fail to realize that
there is far more to rest than just avoiding overtraining. When you perform a
tough workout you not only stress that muscle or muscle group, you also place
stress on the cardiovascular, neuromuscular and components of the immune
system?
For example, many bodybuilders will train their chest 2-3 times a week and spend
an hour or more performing dozens of exercises just for the pecs?
While this may sound ok to some, when you add in the stress of other workouts it
can quickly add up to too much stress in one or more ways. I hear bodybuilders
all the time say "I let my body rest by splitting up my workouts" and "I worked
chest yesterday so today I'll train my back"? that's NOT rest!
When you train your back, your chest still gets worked, stressed and it also
slows down your bodies ability to recover from stress and repair damage from
previous workouts?
So don't kid yourself and think that you can train this way over the long term?
it may take years or just a few weeks, but sooner or later your body will break
down!
Let me give you a real life example from my experience?
I, like nearly every single bodybuilder out there, created muscle imbalance
unknowingly by following the workouts recommended in all the books, magazines,
etc?
I trained 4,5 and sometimes even 6 days a week and thought that I was resting
enough by splitting my workouts? to make a long story short, after just a few
years I had tendonitis in both triceps because I worked chest, tri's and
shoulder too often, too intensely and didn't balance out my training?
I also had lower and middle back pain, knee problems and IT band tendonitis
because my lower body workouts weren't balanced? I spent too much time doing
heavy squatting, too often and neglected important muscles?
These injuries stayed with me for months, years and I still can have an
occasional flare up if I don't stay consistent with a balanced training
program. I was able to create all this damage by the age of 22? I am now 28 and
will have to spend the rest of my life trying to prevent these old injuries
from coming back and causing more pain and problems?
Don't do what I did! And if you already have, you better act fast and take a
serious look at your training and your goals because if you don't, you will
spend the rest of your life in pain and frustrated by all the injuries, big and
small.
So here's my?
5-Step Formula for Quickly Eliminating and Preventing Aches, Pains and Injuries
Step 1. Rest and Recovery
The first thing you need to do is REST! And no, I don't mean take a day or two
off? I mean no workouts for at least a week or more? you need to give your body
a chance to reduce the inflammation before you can begin work on eliminating or
correcting the cause of the problem.You may also want to use things like a
heating pad, hot tub or massage to help reduce the inflammation and speed up
the healing and recovery?
Step 2. Identify Muscle Imbalances
The next thing you need to do is find out which muscle imbalances have created
your injury or are causing your pain and work towards correcting them? you can
do this quickly and easily by performing physical assessments in which you are
looking for strength and flexibility imbalances in all opposing muscle groups.
You can do these assessments yourself and they are covered in our Lose the Back
Pain Video http://www.losethebackpain.com
Step 3. Increase Flexibility in Tight Muscles with Targeted Stretching
In order to correct a muscle imbalance, you need to increase the flexibility and
range of motion in the muscles that are too tight and causing a problem.
As we discussed in the previous articles, you have got to know what muscles NEED
to be stretched before you start stretching. General stretching may or may not
help? it may even make things worse! You have got to target the right areas and
the only way to ensure that you are, is to do assessments and find out.
Step 4. Strengthen Weak Muscles with Targeted Strength Exercises
The other major step in correcting muscle imbalances is to strength the weak
muscles that are being overpowered by the strong and tight opposing muscle(s).
The same is also true for strengthening? you have to make sure that you choose
the right exercises and the only way to know for sure is thru assessments?
don't use guesswork when choosing exercises!
Step 5. Monitor and Modify Your Program
The key to long term pain relief and injury prevention is to consistently
monitor your progress and adjust your program? for example, as you work on
correcting and preventing muscle imbalances the strength and flexibility of
your muscles will change and therefore, you must then re-assess and change your
program and workouts accordingly.
You will typically see changes in your strength, flexibility and bio-mechanics
in as little as 2-4 weeks so I recommend that you re-assess yourself at least
every 4-6 weeks.
So there you have it? 5 simple steps that you can take right now to work on
eliminating any pain or injuries you currently have AND make sure you never
create any new ones to deal with in the future.
Following these steps will not only help you eliminate aches, pains and injuries
and it will also allow you to train more intensely and productively to get you
the results you want.
Hope you enjoyed and benefited from this article series and we look forward to
hearing of your success.
Article
courtesy of Jesse Cannone of http://www.losethebackpain.com.
Find out exactly what's causing your back pain and
injuries and the steps you need to take to quickly get rid of your
pain and become injury free.
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