Training with Injury or Disability

My personal training career actually started in a physical therapy setting. Since then, I have learned a tremendous amount about the human body, health and fitness, and wanted to relate it back to my past experiences.

Movement is truly the expression of life and without it our bodies can quickly fall into a state of dysfunction, depression, and sickness. The body is made to move, and move a lot, so the first thing to understand is that the more you move, the better. This can be any movement, from swimming to stretching to working on machines to using a handrail to help take a few steps. When we move, our muscles are required to contract, which requires our nervous system to wake up and our brain to start transmitting messages. Our blood begins to flow and our heart rate elevates, increasing the oxygen usage in the body. All of this means that toxins are more readily removed, nutrients are delivered to our cells and our brain, and our nervous system is forced to figure out how to coordinate our movement, creating energy and adaptation within the body. This process is what the body thrives on! No matter what our limitation, movement is the answer.

Obviously injury and disability are different topics, but they both deal with limitations, so I wanted to talk about them in the same piece. With injury, the focus is to let the area heal while still engaging the rest of the body, and as soon as possible, to restore movement to the injury area. Let’s take a leg injury for example. It would be important to do whatever necessary to reduce inflammation and support healing, but during the rest and recovery period, training the healthy leg will be key. There is energy, neuromuscular connections and strength that will transfer over from the training of the healthy leg, and as mentioned before, the increased blood flow from any activity will help keep the time of recovery to a minimum. I would also like to add that it is always important to determine why there was an injury in the first place, because often, injury is more a result of poor movement patterns or asymmetries in the body than a blunt force or random occurrence. This will be important to discuss with a physical therapist or trainer, but you want to make sure that you are not cleared as recovered just because there is no more pain.

When it comes to training with disabilities, there are two goals to keep in mind. First we must work around the disability and then we must try to work through it. While those with disabilities may never fully gain movement, there has been promising work done by Emilie Conrad who has used her philosophy of continuum movement in working with spinal cord injury patients. The patients can have little to no movement at all, but by working slowly and consistently, she helps them gain back some of their movement by focusing on the smallest of movement and working up from there. So in terms of working around the disability, this would involve doing whatever movements your body will allow. If you’re recovering from a stroke and your left leg and arm do not work, use your right side to actively engage in as much movement as possible. For working through the disability, it is all about working every day to develop movement. I remember working with a stroke patient that could barely walk, but we used parallel bars so that he could balance himself with his right side and then work every day to keep his left side active. We would work on the small movements, but over time, those movements got bigger. It was slow, but that is what the body needs.

For those of you with injuries or disabilities, I hope that you have a good support system and knowledgeable therapists to give you the guidance you need. If you are interested in more specifically what you should do for exercise, please check out my other posts on exercise and modify them to your situation. There are obviously many different situations that people are in, but in the end, movement is always a good thing. Good luck and keep moving!

Colin

The Key to Longevity

When looking at the various aspects of the health and fitness industry, one topic that they can all really be linked to is longevity: living a long, but more importantly, health and happy life. This article and video have uncovered some of the most basic need that humans have. While we may all know innately that these things are good for us, it is interesting to see them all together and looked at as a group. I hope you all can take something from the video, I think it ties in nicely with my last post, expanding on what it really means to be healthy and happy. Enjoy!

http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/26/buettner.long.life/index.html?hpt=Sbin

Only One Body

I received an e-mail this morning from one of the top strength coaches in the industry, Mike Boyle. He sent this out to all the members of his website, strengthcoach.com, and I thought it was a wonderful analogy to help people start thinking in a different way about their health and fitness. Here is a copy of the e-mail, I hope you take as much from this as I did.

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Imagine you are sixteen years old and your parents give you your first car. They also give you simple instructions. There is one small hitch, you only get one car, you can never get another. Never. No trade-ins, no trade-ups. Nothing

Ask yourself how would you maintain that car? My guess is you would be meticulous. Frequent oil changes, proper fuel, etc. Now imagine if your parents also told you that none of the replacement parts for this car would ever work as well as the original parts. Not only that, the replacement parts would be expensive to install and cause you to have decreased use of your car for the rest of the cars useful life? In other words, the car would continue to run but, not at the same speed and with the efficiency you were used to.

Wow, now would we ever put a lot of time and effort into maintenance if that were the case.

After reading the above example, ask yourself another question. Why is the human body different? Why do we act as if we don’t care about the one body we were given. Same deal. You only get one body. No returns or trade-ins. Sure, we can replace parts but boy it’s a lot of work and it hurts. Besides, the stuff they put in never works as well as the original “factory” parts. The replacement knee or hip doesn’t give you the same feel and performance as the original part.

Think about it. One body. You determine the mileage? You set the maintenance plan?

No refunds, no warranties, no do-overs?

How about this perspective? One of my clients is a very successful businessman. He often is asked to speak to various groups. One thing he tells every group is that you are going to spend time and money on your health. The truth is the process can be a proactive one or a reactive one. Money spent on your health can take the form of a personal trainer, massage therapist and a gym membership or, it can be money spent on cardiologists, anesthesiologists, and plastic surgeons. Either way, you will spend money.

Same goes for time. You can go to the gym or, to the doctor’s office. It’s up to you. Either way, you will spend time. Some people say things like “I hate to work out”. Try sitting in the emergency room for a few hours and then get back to me. Working out may not seem so bad. Much like a car, a little preventative maintenance can go a long way. However, in so many ways the body is better than a car. With some good hard work you can turn back the odometer on the body. I wrote an article a while back (Strength Training- The Fountain of Youth) that discussed a study done by McMaster University which showed that muscle tissue of older subjects actually changed at the cellular level and looked more like the younger control subjects after strength training.

Do me a favor, spend some time on preventative maintenance, it beats the heck out of the alternative. Just remember, you will spend both time and money.

Mike Boyle

Weight Loss Extras

Hello again! It has been too long since I have added to my blog, sorry to be out for so long, it’s amazing how busy we all can get during the holidays! What I want to talk about today is an addition to the post that I put up previously titled 5 Keys to Weight Loss. These are all still important, but I wanted to add a few things that are also good to think about when starting your quest toward your optimum weight. I hope you enjoy, and good luck with your fitness aspirations!

1. Drink Water

Your intake of water can have a huge affect not only on your quality of life, but also plays a huge role in weight loss. For starters, you are much less likely to over indulge in food when you have a consistent volume of water in your stomach. Often times, when we do not drink enough, we mistakenly think that our body wants food and go straight for one of our favorite snacks. Next time you are feeling hungry between meals, try drinking a tall glass of water first, and then after 10 minutes, if you are still hungry, go ahead and have a snack (hopefully a healthy one!). It is not wrong to be hungry outside of meals, but we just want to make sure that our body is asking for calories before we start eating. Another benefit of water is its ability to help our bodies function at their greatest potential. When we are deprived of water, our bodies and mind cannot function as well, and this leads to stress on the body which can result in weight retention or gain. Weight loss is hard enough; let’s not make it any harder by neglecting water. The minimum water intake each day should be half of your body weight in ounces. So if you weight 120 lbs, then 60 oz of water is MINIMUM. I recommend that everyone carry around a water bottle each day and try to have two refills a day. That way, you have to finish at least two bottles (64 oz) and hopefully have been working on the third (up to 96 oz). Now if you are heavier, then of course three or even four bottles a day would be appropriate.

2. Avoid Starch & Added Sugar

Starch is a good thing to avoid while trying to lose weight because of the high glycemic load that it puts on the body. When you consistently eat foods with high glycemic loads, your insulin is constantly at work, trying to store all of the sugar that is being dumped into your system. When you have added sugar, you are dealing with the same issue. When your insulin levels are consistently high, your body can never enter into a catabolic state where it actually uses its sources of stored energy (fat). Now, if you are going to have these things, breakfast and post workout are the times to have them, but if you are really committed to weight loss, the less the better. Once you have reached your goal weight, then we can add them back into the diet (in moderation), but for now, let’s cut them out! So what counts as starch or added sugar? Well let’s start with sugar. Added sugar is any sugar that does not come naturally in food. High fructose corn syrup, molasses, honey, evaporated cane juice; these are all types of added sugar. But don’t run off to artificial sweeteners either, these have their own problems and actually are more likely to cause weight gain than regular sugar! So we avoid sweet things, and then we also avoid starchy things. Starch is essentially how plants store sugar. Foods that are high in starch are potatoes, grains (corn, wheat), and some fruit (bananas). Now I am not saying that these are bad foods, but when trying to lose weight, we need to help our bodies as much as we can. So limit yourself here and you will be giving yourself a push in the right direction!

3. Sleep

Sleep has endless benefit to our overall health, and if we do not get enough of it, we cannot expect our bodies to help shed any of our extra weight. Much like water, sleep has its weight loss benefits because it helps our bodies to function properly, while also reducing stress. Sleep restriction as significant implications on our stress levels and without it, you just cannot hope to achieve any type of fitness goal. As we all know, 8 hours is the recommended amount, but everyone is different, so it is important for you to find the amount that works best for you. A couple of suggestions on how to help increase your amount and quality of sleep are: 1) Waking up at the same time every day. This will help your body to settle into a biorhythm that will help you to feel better and better! 2) Avoiding screens at night. For the 30-60 minutes before bed, you should avoid any TV or computer usage. When you are in front of a bright screen, your mind has difficulty understanding that it is night and that you are trying to shut down for the night. So instead of staying up late watching TV, get in bed and read for the last hour before bed, reading is good anyway and it will help you to get a more restful sleep! These two suggestions alone could drastically improve sleep and if you add in a nice cup of non-caffeinated tea or meditation before bed, you will be on your way to success!

4. Commitment

This is by far the most important component to weight loss. You need to know the pieces of the puzzle first, but none of it matters if you fail to commit. Commitment is about taking that knowledge and making it a priority. If weight loss is not your priority, it will never happen. This is true for any goal including other fitness goals. So if you are struggling to achieve your goals, try this. I want you to write out why you want to achieve your goals. So if it is weight loss, why do you want to lose weight? There may be one reason; there may be one hundred. Write them all down. Now, look over those reasons, and write down why those are important. Keep doing this until you discover the most true and representative description of why weight loss is important. It may be so that you can live to see your grandchildren graduate college, or so that you can find a partner in life. Whatever it is, it should be emotional. Anyone can say they want to lose weight. But that’s hardly something to find an emotional connection with. We need something that you can get up every day and commit to. Something that truly is more important than having that extra piece of cake. Something that will get you out of bed and make you WANT to go to the gym every day. If we can find this, then you will set yourself up for success and you won’t be able to make excuses to yourself, because you know what is at stake. So go find what is motivating you, write it down, post it up on your wall, look at it every day and achieve your goals!

Tip of the Day: Home for the Holidays

As we enter into another holiday season, it is easy to slip out of the healthy habits that we have worked so hard to establish throughout the year. This can be a breakup of the normal workout routine, or even more common, a drastic change in the way we eat! But the thing that is important to remember is that while they may not be the best health practices, we can still have a little fun without giving up all that we have achieved. Often times, especially when we are still working on establishing a routine, a hiccup in the road can knock us off course and we feel that if we already messed up, then why even bother trying. The problem here, however, is not that we failed to maintain our routine, but that we look at the whole concept of health as a finite goal. We feel as if we need to lose 10 pounds, or build a little more strength in our leg or arm, and then everything will be better. When our goals are structured like this, we fail to realize that health and fitness are not an end in themselves, but rather a means to a long and enjoyable life. So what is the point of being fitness crazy if you cannot enjoy all that the holidays have to offer??

So, as we all recover from our Thanksgiving feasts, do not feel guilty or shameful if you overindulged a little. The best thing you can do is to enjoy the feasts, go back to your normal routine in between, and stay active as much as time allows. There is no reason that you cannot have some time to yourself to exercise during the week—it is healthy not only for your body, but also for you mind, especially during a time of year that many people find stressful. So good luck as we start off the holiday season, and remember, health is all about balance, and sometimes, the healthy thing to do is to have another slice of pumpkin pie!

-Colin