Itâs no mystery that we are fans of resistance training at IPPTW. And itâs not only because it keeps us strong.Thereâs a whole lot of other benefits to training with load, and Iâm here to dive onto a fewâŚ
Improve flexibility
This one might be a little confusing. We donât typically associate resistance training with flexibility. However, especially when focusing on full range of motion, resistance training will promote flexibility, and has proved in some cases to be superior to static stretching.
Increase bone density
We need to do load bearing resistance training to keep our bones strong, its physics! Especially as we age, it is important to combat bone wasting with lifting in ways that load our skeleton- squats, deadlifts, lunges, push ups, etc. , etc.
Improve BP and Sugars
Compared to other forms of exercise, resistance training proves to be superior for managing bood sugar levels long term. A combination of resistance training and endurance training has shown to lower blood pressure just as much as antihypertensive medications, and in theory, should have longer lasting effects
Sleep More!
Lifting helps us sleep better. In fact, compared to the non lifter, a person who regularly strength trains is less likely to have poor sleep quality. Sleep is so important for so many reasons, but more as it relates to physical therapy and what I do on a daily basis, it is important for managing pain. Sleep deprivation has been linked to higher levels of inflammation and pain, and therefore is a factor when Iâm treating an injury.
Improve mental health
Resistance exercise training has been shown to greatly reduce depressive symptoms in adults regardless of health status, total volume of training, or significant improvements in strength. Getting stronger is great for both the physical and mental body.
Aging Well
In addition to balance training and functional exercise, resistance training is one of the most effective types of exercise to age gracefully. By working on making strong muscles, we can help combat and reverse the adverse effects of aging, while preventing future disability and injury! Simply put, strong=less fragile.
Everyone likes to try to search for the best “How-to” when it comes to helping their own injuries.
There is NO WAY that you can tell me you haven’t googled for “the best treatment for [ENTER PAINFUL AREA HERE]”
I decided that it would be a great idea to put out some content that I am calling the “Resiliency Series“. Over the next few months (or however long it takes for me to run out of content), I will be covering the most common areas of the body where people have their aches and pains. Each week will cover a specific area that we suggest people work on in order to resist injury.
This will NOT serve as a way to treat an injury or direct medical advice, but it will be a resource that will house the most up-to-date information on how to make yourself stronger and and more… RESILIENT! We ALWAYS suggest you seek medical attention if you feel you need more help.
Topics that will be covered include:
The lower back! The most common area of long lasting pain for MANY people in our population.
The knee! A very common area for many active people to have issues with at some point in their lives.
The shoulder! Another very common place that needs long-lasting attention in regards to strength and flexibility. There are SO many misconceptions about what someone should or should not do with regards to their shoulders – with a history of pain or not…
The foot! Lots and lots of foot pains have hobbled into the clinic from all the COVID-19 warriors looking to become runners all of a sudden… Feet need strength training, too! In pain or not, if you want healthy and happy feet, stay tuned.
I will probably keep going but that’s all for now đ
I am going to start off the series today with some of the BEST ways that you can stay resistant to injury on a more general level.
Here are my most helpful tips that you can apply TODAY.
Sleep is the most effective performance enhancing drug known to man… And it’s free. This is INCREDIBLY important to remember and should be the #1 place to begin when trying to address long-term resiliency and injury prevention. Sleep doesn’t only improve and enhance your physical state, but it also enhances your mental capacity as well. We all function better with more Z’s… You can do all the stretching and strength training in the world, but if you are running on 4-5 hours or sleep per night, its like driving with your E brake on. You’ll get to your goals but it will absolutely take longer to get there
Most injuries are from doing too much, after doing too little for too long… If you do more than your body can handle, it will tell you. If your capacity to handle that said activity is low, then the ramp up needs to be MUCH slower than you may think it needs to be. If you have a goal to increase how much you do (ie. increase how far you are running), you should absolutely be adding to your overall activity (mileage in that case) little by little. Also… think about the entire week of activity, vs day to day. In the example of running, you should be thinking about your total mileage over the course of the week vs just the day itself, it all adds up.
Understand that when your stress levels are high and life is a bit nutty, you can be at risk of an injury. Just like when your body is a bit stressed and tired you are more apt to get sick? Same thing goes for injuries. If life’s tossing you lemons, don’t try and squeeze the shit out of them with super hard workouts. Ease up a bit, stay active but don’t shoot for personal bests.
Your GREATEST risk of an injury is a previous injury. Sorry folks, this is a proven fact and complete prevention isn’t ACTUALLY possible. If you have had an injury once, you are at risk for developing it again. You can only reduce your risk of getting hurt!
How can you reduce your risk? Learn more in the Resiliency Series to come!
One question I get all the time is, âHow do I know when Iâm ready to make an exercise harder?â. Usually thatâs followed up with another question, âHow do I safely make an exercise harder?â. These questions are really important! When youâre working out consistently, itâs important to continue to challenge yourself so you stay on track to make steady progress. Today Iâm going to list 6 tips to help you answer these questions and make sure you keep making progress.
1. Have a goal
This is really important because a goal helps determine what we are prioritizing in your exercise program. For example, if you goal is to lift heavier weights the program should be built around improving strength. If your goal is to run a certain distance, your program will look completely different! So, first thing you have to do is figure out what your goal is. It could be focused on strength, endurance, or even just burning calories to stay fit. Keep that goal in mind as we go through the next few tips.
2. Understand the different parts of an exercise
Every exercise can be broken down into a few specific things. We have the movement itself, the how much weight youâre using (intensity), how many times youâre doing this (sets and reps), the speed of the exercise (fast or slow), and how many days/week you do this (frequency). So for example if youâre doing squats as part of your program, think about those different components. Are you doing bodyweight squats or are you adding weights? How many reps and sets do you regularly do? Are you moving fast through each squat or are you intentionally moving slow? Also, how many days per week are you squatting? Each of these different factors can be changed to make an exercise harder or easier. The fun is you can pick and choose which one you want to use!
3. Which of these do I pick?
Think about your goal for your exercises. If youâre trying to build strength, I would probably recommend increasing the weight of the exercise. If youâre more focused on endurance, it might make more sense to add more reps or sets. If you exercise to burn calories and stay fit, you might try to increase the speed or even add an extra day of the week youâre exercising. Having balance is important here so make sure you only pick one of these factors at a time!
4. Things to track during a workout
Tracking a few small things during a workout can be really helpful in deciding when youâre ready to progress your exercises. First off, keep a workout log and write down what you do each day and how you felt doing it. For example, you would write down that you did squats on Monday, 3 sets of 10 with a 25# kettlebell and at a smooth controlled speed. You also would write down how that felt, âThey were definitely challenging, but I felt in control and by the end of each set I felt as if I could do probably 4 or 5 more repsâ. The key things here are writing down exactly what you did and then how you felt in that moment. A great way to do this is writing down how many more reps you could have done at the end of a set. Another thing to record is how tired you were at the end of the exercise. I recommend using a RPE scale that measures how hard youâre working from 1-10. Here is the chart, so you can see where you fall on the scale after each workout.
So make sure to keep track of these few things and they will help you know when you can make an exercise harder.
5. How do I use this info to know Iâm ready to make the exercise harder?
So you wrote down the workouts you have been doing, how many more reps you feel like you could do at the end of your sets, and you scored 1-10 for how tired you were at the end of your exercises. If you feel like you can 5 or 6 more reps at the end of each set, youâre probably ready to make the exercise harder. If youâre scoring less than a 7 on the 1-10 scale, youâre probably ready to make your exercises harder. The key is NOT to score a 10/10 or to feel like you canât do any more reps at the end of each set. The idea is to work hard, but feel like youâre not draining yourself.
6. Keep up with your program and tracking your workouts
Consistency is the most important part of every exercise program. If you get used to tracking your exercises and making them more challenging, you will get a lot better at it! You will also get great results towards your goals.
This can be a lot of information to process but using it can really help you with your exercise programs. These tools will give you the ability to safely make progress towards your goals. If you want to talk this over with us so we can get specific about you and your goals, let us know!
We also did a webinar on this topic in a little more detail last week, so if you want to check that out you can see the information presented online too.
I donât need to remind anyone of all the lifestyle changes weâve had to make over the past few months. Everyone has had to make different changes depending on your particular habits, but we all can relate to the common theme of being able to do less. We definitely are spending more time at home, less time in the gym, and less time being active in general.
Because of this, weâre seeing a difference in our ability to stay fit and healthy. A lot of how we know this is based on how we feel. Personally, I feel like I havenât been as healthy as Iâd like because I canât play in my soccer leagues anymore and I havenât been able to go to the gym at all. Itâs hard to measure being less active and healthy, but thatâs what research is for! There was an article published in the European Journal of Sports Science on May 12th, 2020 that looks at this exact topic. The authors review the impact of being sedentary due to COVID-19. Even better, they also provide some recommendations for how to combat the effects of being more sedentary. Iâm going to do a birdâs eye review of this article and help outline their tips for physical activity and nutrition.
The first thing this article talks about is how we can lose muscle strength very quickly if we are totally inactive. You can see these changes after just 2 days of total bedrest. Thankfully, we are not on total bedrest. Even if we are confined to our homes and are only able to leave the house for groceries or a walk in the neighborhood, that is still a great way to maintain some muscle strength. Combine that with some structured exercise and you can definitely prevent muscle loss during this time at home.
The article also looks at some more specific topics like blood sugar levels and how people with conditions like diabetes or heart disease should especially take action to stay healthy during this time. Decreased activity has a direct effect on our bodies blood sugar levels and our cardiovascular fitness. One thing they found is that most of us are getting a lot fewer steps each day. I usually aim to get 10,000 steps on a normal day, but recently that is not even a remote possibility. I find that by the time I finish doing some work in the afternoon Iâm lucky if Iâve done 1,000 steps. This article recommends that you aim for at least 5,000 steps each day, which is much more manageable in my opinion. If possible, try getting outside and go for a walk, jog, or hike. Mixing it up and trying different ways to keep moving will help make it easier to get your steps in each day. By doing this you will help keep your blood sugar more regular and even help maintain your cardiovascular system.
Finally, the article also talks about nutrition and how we need to strike the balance between eating enough without overeating. I found it really interesting that they mention it is common for people in very stressed environments to actually under eat. People who are sick or have a very strict home confinement situation may feel so stressed that their diet is suppressed. Personally, that is how I felt at the start of quarantine. Things were changing so fast and we had no control over it. I found myself not hungry or getting full after just a few bites of dinner, which is highly unusual for me. Itâs definitely gotten closer to normal now, but I still feel my diet has changed the past few months.
The other side of this is the group of people who are finding themselves much less active, bored, and with a free time to snack and eat more. Since we have been social distancing you might have started watching more Netflix, reading, or just relaxing around your home. If you combine that with your normal eating habits, you may start to gain weight or lose some of the fitness you were maintaining. The article states people are seeing 35-40% less energy expenditure than they usually do. This basically means we are burning a lot less calories and if we donât make a slight adjustment to our intake, we will probably gain some weight. The article recommends reducing your daily intake by about 15% or so. Of course this will vary person to person so ask for help if youâre not sure what you should be doing!
Overall I found this article to be really interesting and practical for making some lifestyle changes that will help keep us healthy during this time of quarantine. The big takeaways I found were:
Exercise at least 30 minutes each day
Take at least 5,000 steps each day and getting outside can be helpful to do this
If youâve been really stressed and lack appetite, make sure youâve been eating enough
If you feel youâve been overeating, try reducing your daily intake by 15%
Stay positive and optimistic! Things will get better and return to normal
Keep these tips in mind and please let us know if you have any questions or concerns on how to use this information!
Here is the article citation for reference: Narici M, De Vito G, Franchi M, et al. Impact of sedentarism due to the COVID-19 home confinement on neuromuscular, cardiovascular and metabolic health: Physiological and pathophysiological implications and recommendations for physical and nutritional countermeasures [published online ahead of print, 2020 May 12]. Eur J Sport Sci. 2020;1â22. doi:10.1080/17461391.2020.1761076
A lot of people out there are missing their gyms and canât wait to get back to their normal workout routine. Over the past few months, weâve all had to adjust our exercise habits and try to find a new way to stay healthy and motivated. At first it was novel to change up our program and find new ways to exercises. It was even a bit of fun trying to think of creative ways to workout, but we all really just want to make sure what weâre doing is actually making us stronger, more fit, and healthier! The last thing anyone wants is to hurt themselves working out at home or waste their time not getting in better shape. Here are my 5 tips for working out at home to make sure what your doing is safe, smart, and effective.
1. Your workout program should be consistent. When you think about your exercise routine it should be consistent. The frequency of how often youâre exercising, and the intensity of the workouts should be relatively steady. Of course itâs fine to add one extra day in a week or to have a bit of a more challenging session, but overall things should be pretty consistent. What I would NOT recommend is a schedule where you take a whole week off and then workout 6 days the next week. Or where week 1 the workouts are super easy and then the next week are the hardest workouts of your life. Keep things consistent and slowly make things more challenging to see progress.
2. It should get more challenging over time. If you want to see yourself get stronger or healthier, you need to increase the challenge of your program over time. This means slowly making things harder as your body adapts to the workouts youâve been doing. Here is an example- day 1 you do 3 sets of 10 bodyweight squats and they were tough to do. On day 15 you do 3 sets of 10 bodyweight squats and they were easy! This means your body has adapted and gotten stronger, which means you have to change something to make it harder now. You could add a few more reps, weights, or even an extra set. Choose one of these to change, but donât choose all of them.
3. Choose one progression at a time. When you realize youâre ready to make an exercise harder, pick one small thing to change at a time. If squats are getting easy to do, try to add more reps, weights, or even an extra set. Here is an example of what I would NOT recommend doing- 3 sets of 10 bodyweight squats is easy for me to do now. To make it harder Iâm going to hold a 20-pound kettlebell, increase each set to 20 reps, and do a 4th set as well. Donât change too many factors at once, making any one of those modifications would be awesome, just donât try to change them all at the same time.
4. Keep a goal in mind. Think about what youâre trying to get out of your home program. Is it to get stronger? Do you want to improve your cardio? Or maybe you just want to get a good sweat in a few times a week. Any of those goals are great! Keep that goal in mind when youâre exercising and make sure thatâs what the program is doing for you. Your workouts should help you reach that goal by being specific and targeting the right parts of your body. Balance is good, so having a mix of these different goals is great, but focusing on one at a time will make your workouts more effective.
5. Enjoy your workout. At the end of the day you doing a workout is something you do for yourself. Itâs something that you should enjoy and have fun with. I always say the best form of exercise is the one that you like doing. If youâre not a runner know that you donât have to be. If youâre not a weightlifter you also donât have to be one. Find the kind of exercise that gets you excited and then stick with it! Every type of exercise has its purpose and can be really helpful in specific ways, but at the end of the day you need to enjoy the time you spend exercising.
Let us know what youâve been working on at home. If you have any questions, comments, or need help making sure your home workouts are following these 5 tips let us know!
Burpees: They are that universally challenging but all-around effective move that works most major muscle groups and ups your cardio endurance.
How to: The basic burpee is a four point maneuver. From standing position, drop into a squat with hands on the ground in front of your feet. Next, kick your feet behind you into a solid plank position then jump your feet back towards your hands. Jump up into the air, then do it all over again.
This exercise is no joke. Since it’s a combo move, the exerciser should have a good master of the plank and good mobility to be able to deep squat.
You’ll notice that arms, back, chest, core, glutes & legs are fired-up as your heart rate raises. The full-body/full-cardio maneuver is super effective at burning fat and building muscle. This is a perfect at-home exercise as no equipment is needed: high intensity interval training anytime & anywhere.
Believe it or not, there actually was a Dr. Burpee who invented this infamous move. Exercise physiologist Royal Burpee created “the burpee” in the late 1930’s as a multi-part exercise for a fitness test – part of his “seven tests of physical capacity.” Its origins were for a WWII military-fitness test where participants were asked to do as many burpees as they could in 20 seconds then 60 seconds.
If you are looking to get into shape quickly for functional everyday living or sport specific training, this is the move for you. Even 90 years after its inception, it’s a training staple.
