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Tag Archives: chronic pain

Post #44 – How to protect from the down-side of strength training?

05 Monday Oct 2015

Posted by purposelyliveto120 in Bikram Yoga, Lean Mass, Optimal Exercise, Optimal Health

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Bikram Yoga, Chronic diseases, chronic pain, flexibility, Health Span

We have all heard about the benefits of strength training or weight training:

  1. It helps keep the fat weight lost off for good
  2. It protects bone health and helps build muscle mass
  3. It makes you stronger and fitter
  4. It helps build better body mechanics improving balance
  5. It plays a key role in disease prevention, e. g. improving insulin sensitivity and HDL cholesterol
  6. It boost your energy level and your mood
  7. It improves your metabolism so your burn more calories even when not working out

With so many benefits, it seems no brainer that strength training must be part of life style of anyone pursuing Optimal Health.  

If you search on Amazon.com, you will find hundreds of books on strength and weight training.  These books elaborate on the benefits and various techniques of strength training.  Here are two that use scientific basis in their approach.

Thes slow burn fitness revolution41B2S96EXYL

Is there any downside to the strength training?  What could possibly go wrong?

If you do a quick Google search on this topic, you will find that Injuries is what most people caution about as the downside of weight training.

That makes sense. Major types of injuries during weight training are hairline fractures, pulled muscles and damaged joints.  The causes of these injuries often are:

  • Using Impropriate weights
  • Not using proper form
  • Carelessness
  • Accidents

Making sure that you take precautions to avoid such injuries is very important. Even when you are very careful and conscientious, avoiding wrong form while strength training can require a lot of vigilance. That’s where it is important to learn from a trainer the basics of using weight, machines and even your weight.

However, in my experience, there is something even more subtle and insidious that can potentially creep in and that is easily preventable, if you are vigilant. And, no one seems to talk about this topic.

So, let me tell you my story to illustrate what this insidious issue is and lessons I learned on how to prevent it.

MY STORY

Many years ago, I used to do a simple yoga routine few days a week. I found that over time, my body became quite flexible. I felt energetic.  I did have spring in my feet. However, I found that my strength was continuing to decline. I was even surprised how few pushups I could do at a time. Abdominal fat around my belly was slowly getting worse.  I was becoming what we now call “skinny fat”.

So, I figured, instead of yoga, I would switch to exercise routine that involved working with light weights and body weight. As I started this new strength training routine, I found that I was getting stronger every week. I could do more and more pushups at a time. After several months, I even achieved my stretch goal of doing one hundred pushups in a single rep!

Then after about a year, I went back and tried my yoga routine. I immediately discovered that my flexibility had significantly decreased.  I was quite discouraged that within a year while I had made so much progress in my strength, I had lost the flexibility and even some balance.

At that point in time, I ran into my trainer Saleem, who I still work out with over 13 years later. I told him my dilemma and he showed me how to stretch my muscle after EACH weight training exercise.  So, if I had just done curls, I would stretch my biceps. If I had done squats and I would stretch my quads and so on. Doing these stretches routinely as part of my workouts, I noticed that it helped me retain flexibility in muscles while building strength. Training with him, I would also start my workout always with proper warmups and finish the workout with some cool down stretches.

Then Saleem started to add stretch workout days in between strength training workout days. So, after 4 or 5 sessions of weight training, he might add a stretch workout day. On the Stretch Workout day, we would simply do all stretching exercises – stretching back, hamstrings, quads, front, all big muscles and small muscles. With this new regimen I noticed that I was retaining my flexibility as I was developing strength.

In spite of all these precautions, about four years ago, I hurt my right shoulder from the workouts.  I was able to fix most of it by doing the various stretches etc. However, as I would lift my right arm, I would feel resistance and even pain in my shoulder- may be at a level of 1 to 3 on a scale of 10. That led me to start doing Bikram Yoga, about 3 ½ years ago.  As the shoulder got more and more limber with Bikram Yoga, resistance or pain at a level of 1 out of 10 still remained.  And this resistance/pain would get worse, whenever I did bench presses or some other exercises that put strain on my shoulder.

At that point, I really got curious. I wanted to figure out what exactly would it take for my shoulder to be 100% recovered and normal.

I found various methods of making my shoulders further limber.  Using foam rollers, such as below, was a big help.

Blue Foam RollerRumble Roller

Then I found massage balls (lacrosse balls), shown below. With these massage balls, I would find muscles around neck and shoulders that were tight and then use the ball to relieve pressure and loosen those tight muscles.

massage balls

Finally, I decided to engage a massage therapist to work those muscles.  And, she immediately found tight muscles and worked on those to loosen them up.  And, finally, my right shoulder got to a point of 100% recovered and normal.

MORAL OF MY STORY

So, what is the moral of this story? Here is the insidious process that I discovered:

  • Weight training induces tightness in muscles since strength training by design involves contracting of muscles
  • It requires active work to dissipate tightness in the muscles by stretching, foam rolling and/or massaging
  • If not properly loosened, during the following workouts your form may change subconsciously to compensate for the tight muscles, which may in-turn cause some other functional issues
  • Over time these compounding issues, like the layers of an onion, may give rise to issues whose root cause may be buried deep and not be readily visible.
  • Truly fixing such issues requires series of actions to fix one issue at a time, like peeling the onions, until you get to the root cause.Otherwise all fixes will be temporary.

BOTTOMLINE

If you are engaged in strength training, it is important to be hyper-aware of the tightness in muscles.

Incorporate yoga, stretching, foam rolling and massaging into your routines to immediately dissipate any tightness.  

Chronic musco-skeletal issues can be cured by working on muscles as peeling the layers of an onion. However, it may require a lot of patience.

What do you think of this topic?

Have you had similar experiences?

What has been your approach to stay limber while developing strength?

I would love to hear from you.  Please leave comments and questions to share your knowledge and wisdom.

Post #39 – Ever heard of foam rolling? Or, how to get a good massage without a masseuses?

03 Sunday May 2015

Posted by purposelyliveto120 in Optimal Exercise, Optimal Health, Reversing Chronic Diseases

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Tags

chronic pain, flexibility

For years, our trainer Saleem has been asking us to foam roll whenever we do an intense workout with weights to loosen up and relax the muscles, and to help with their recovery. But that advice usually went by the way side, along with his other advice of taking Epsom salt baths.

That in spite of the fact, I would often get stiff shoulder after upper body workout with heavier weights. I never really saw the connection between rolling and workouts.

However, early last year, two things happened and all that changed. I attended an open house at University of Maryland Center for Integrative Medicine clinic and got a first hand experience of Rolfing and learned the theory behind it. That is, how Rolfing works on the principle of massaging and stretching fascia, also called myofascial release.

Fascia is a thin, tough, elastic type of connective tissue that wraps most structures within the human body, including muscle. Fascia supports and protects these structures. Osteopathic theory proposes that this soft tissue can become restricted due to psychogenic disease, overuse, trauma, infectious agents, or inactivity, often resulting in pain, muscle tension, and corresponding diminished blood flow. Although fascia and its corresponding muscle are the main targets of myofascial release, other tissue may be addressed as well, including other connective tissue.

Also last year, I read a book, The Life Plan, by Jeffrey S. Life, M.D. In the book, Dr. Life has a chapter on how he uses foam rolling for myofascial massage as PRE-WORKOUT warm up. I was intrigued.

The Life Plan

So, when I did an intense 21 day weight training program in the middle of last year, I started to use the foam rolling as a pre-workout warm up about half way through the program.

And that was a game changer for me. I had such a positive experience that since then foam rolling has become a part of my workout routine now. I spend anywhere from 15 to 20 minutes, rolling with the foam roller before every workout. Here is what I have experienced:

  1. First of all, it took a few weeks of regular use before the pains of using foam roller on knotted muscles such as iliotibial bands (aka IT Bands) disappeared and have mostly been gone since then.  Regular use during my 21-day program was every day. However, since then I only do strength training twice a week, foam rolling is therefore only twice a week.
  2. One downside I have discovered of intense strength training, especially with heavier weights, has been that my flexibility often diminishes, unless I do something about. Doing stretches while cooling down helps. Also, Bikram Yoga has been great help. However, foam rolling has definitely kept my body limber and flexible even after workouts with heavier weights.
  3. My shoulders, that used to stiffen up after upper body weight workouts, have been quite limber lately.
  4. My warm ups have changed significantly. Foam rolling does really provide a good pre-workout warm up for the body in general if I roll all of the body. My trainer then can focus on having me do warm up for the specific workouts we may be doing that day.

Apparently Sue Hitzmann was one of the pioneers of foam rolling. She developed The MELT method for Myofascial release as a self-treatment system to combat chronic pain using foam rolling.

The MELT Method

But now there is much written about foam rolling. Just Google ‘foam rolling’ or visit Amazon.com and look up all books and products, there is a plethora of information and products.

Searching for “foam roller exercises” on YouTube will give you a number of video on how to use a foam roller. Here are a couple of links for YouTube:

Full Body Rolling out Routine with Ashley Bordern.

Complete Foam Roller Workout, 13 Exercises.

We did have a couple of foam rollers around –the simple vanilla kind for quite a while. These worked just fine.

Blue Foam Roller

But as I really got into it, I started looking around and found some interesting choices to grow to. A product called Rumble Roller has bumpy surface. Rumble Roller not only stretches fascia and massages muscles, but it also gives deep massage. It almost feels like a Swedish massage.

Rumble Roller

The same company also has a product called Beastie. It is the size of a tennis ball, only with bumps. You can use Beastie to massage any body part even while watching TV. This is also handy especially for hard to reach areas like the crevice around the neck or forearms etc.

Beastie

I have been using both of these products now for over six months and definitely feel that those have been a welcome addition to my tool bag in my quest for Optimal Health.

Have you had experience with foam rolling?

Have you worked with fascia or done any activities for myofascial release to relieve chronic pain or just to gain flexibility?

I would love to hear. Please leave a comment.

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