Strength Training and Injury Prevention

While most American communities provide relative safety from severe crime and the tragedies of war, daily living presents a variety of physical challenges that can have significant, long-term, or even life-threatening consequences. Simple tasks such as shoveling the driveway, chopping wood, cleaning eave troughs, or even just walking down an icy sidewalk challenge your balance, stability, muscular strength, and cardiovascular health. These activities may seem trivial, but many of us are ill-prepared for the elements of risk involved or the physical exertion required and we experience injury as a result.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports over 1.5 million Americans seek emergency room care each year due to simple slip, trip, and fall injuries. Encountering these chance accidents may seem out of our control, but chance or negligence is not solely to blame for Americans vulnerability to slip and fall accidents. With thirty states having an obesity rate greater than or equal to 25%, and an average of 50% of Americans meeting insufficient criteria for physical activity in 2007, we have made ourselves more vulnerable to simple injuries by being negligent of our level of physical fitness. Being physically inactive and overweight often correlates with poor cardiovascular health, weak muscles, inadequate balance, and reduced coordination, each of which increases risk not only for slipping and falling but also potential for increased severity of injury. And although much of our health care philosophy relies upon rehabilitation from injury as a solution, health care professionals recommend exercise prescription, including cardiovascular exercise and resistance training, as a preventative strategy to diminish risk of injury and provide a mechanism for losing weight.

Fitness

Including functional movements in your resistance training routine is one component of an injury prevention program. The purpose of functional movement is to mimic real-world scenarios in a controlled environment, thereby improving your ability to perform the simple activities of everyday life. Learning proper technique for performing movements such as squatting, balancing, and lifting objects from the floor to overhead promotes proper joint mechanics that protect knees, shoulders, hips, and lower back from fluke injuries. Functional training also involves moving forward, backward, and sideways to place additional demand on core muscles and improve neuromuscular innervation. While your ability to balance on one foot probably isn't the difference between life and death, it could mean the difference between long-term hospitalization, a series of physical therapy, or an aspirin and some ice. When starting a resistance training program, the load of resistance, sets, and repetitions should be chosen according to your current physical ability level.

Add resistance progressively and be patient with yourself when adding resistance. This will prevent you from overloading joints and connective tissue during exercise. Begin with higher reps and low weight focusing on proper technique until you master the movement itself. Keep in mind that you should always consult your physician before starting an exercise program.

Sources 2007 CDC U.S. Physical Activity Statistics

Strength Training and Injury Prevention

Jes Reynolds is a fitness professional who has been studying health & fitness for over 12 years. In addition to actively participating in health, fitness and athletics, Jessica received a B.S. Kinesiology from Michigan State Univeristy. Her combined education and experience working with all types of individuals, from the physically or mentally handicapped to the elite athlete, allows her to understand both the scientific and behavioral aspects of weight loss, fitness and athletics.

Jes Reynolds is a leader in teaching proven strategies for reaching health, fitness, and athletic goals. If you want to learn more about health, fitness, and human performance, visit: http://www.jesreynolds.com

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Weight Training - Advantages And Disadvantages

Weight training is a great way to get your whole body in shape. Many people associate weight training with your upper body and arms. However if you have the right equipment then you can easily exercise the lower part of your body, such as your chest and legs. You may think to yourself that everything about using weights is an advantage. However there are disadvantages to using weights and all the advantages and disadvantages will be described below.

One of the advantages of using weights to work out is the way that you can strengthen your whole body. We all know that weights are used by the person using them standing still and then performing an action using the weights. This action can be moving your arms up and down or side to side. If you are not the type of person that likes to partake in running, swimming or any other kind of real life sport, then weights is the perfect solution to keeping your body toned and in great shape.

\"keep Fit\"

Another advantage of using weights to keep fit is when you are using these weights and your body is standing still. Your bones in your body are becoming active as they are trying to support you as you are doing the exercises. So you are in effect working out the entire body every time that you use weights to exercise.

There are disadvantages to using weights for exercising and the main disadvantage is safety. You should never exercise with weights alone. You should always have a supporter with you in case the worst happens. The most common safety concern is using the barbell. There is a possibility of becoming trapped under the barbell if you are unable to do a repetition due to the amount of weight on the barbell.

Another disadvantage when using weights is causing damage to your own body. As stated before you need your whole body when you are using weights. If you cannot keep complete control of your body when you are working out, then you are going to pull or even tare a muscle in your body. Also using heavy weights when you are not ready will always cause an injury to the part of your body that you are exercising. Always remember to start off small and then move on when you feel perfectly ready to do so.

Overall weights are a good way to work out. Millions of people use weights to do a daily work out. After one or two weeks you can start to feel your body becoming more and more toned. You can also feel the muscles in your body start to bulge a bit more then before. However safety will be the major concern to remember when you are using your weights. You must remember to stretch all the muscles in your body before you attempt to exercise your body. You have to get your heart pumping and when you are done remember to warm down so that your body knows that the workout is over. Warming down will prevent trapping any Lactic Acid in your body.

Weight Training - Advantages And Disadvantages

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Recovery from Strenuous Sports Performance Training

What is recovery from strenuous sports performance training about? People who exercise regularly and play sports often spend a lot of time preparing careful sports performance training programmes. These focus on positively building all the areas of fitness and technique important to the successful conduct of their favorite activity. Some enthusiastic runners, cyclists and triathletes plan their year's activities around participation in races (marathon, triathlon, etc) or hoping to perform maximally at each race. In the haste to go faster and stronger, an important aspect of training is often neglected: sports recovery. From the experience of successful athletes though (particularly those in endurance sports) more time spent on sports recovery leads to improvement in the quality of sports performance training as well as optimal results in competition.

What is Sports Recovery?

Exert

Exercise at all levels of intensity acts to do one thing to the body: it depletes it. The depletion involves your energy stores (muscle glycogen, blood glucose and fat products in your blood), hormones, and muscle structures. In other words, you use up the body's valuable resources as you exercise and something must be done to replace them.

In order to return to training and to continue conditioning your body to meet your exercise goals, it is
important to create time and take active steps to bring about a re-building of the depleted body resources. This is what sports recovery is all about: the conscious action to help the body return to its optimal exercise state. This is especially important if you are intending to exercise intensively or for long durations soon after an exhausting bout. This could be endurance programme training, multi-stage bike race, or sports competitions that are only 2-4 weeks apart

Why bother with Sports Recovery?

In the very simplest terms you need to bother with sports recovery to keep you physically exercising at the level that you want to. Even more importantly, to allow the body's systems to re-charge sufficiently that your mental edge remains honed to that fine sharpness you desire. A blunted edge comes about from insufficient recovery and can come back to haunt you in these ways: staleness, loss of interest, reduced physical ability, decreased sports performance training tolerance. Yes indeed, the first steps towards over-training.

A good approach to sports recovery will ensure that the quality of your sports performance training and competition is high. This will contribute to you feeling satisfied with your efforts and achievements, and bring about continued confidence in your chosen endurance sport. Good recovery also enables you to exert a greater overall sense of control of your sports performance training destiny!

When should I think about Sports Recovery?

You should consider sports recovery at both macro- and micro-levels. An example of a macro level would be a period of sports performance training preparation time (e.g. a week or month), or the period between competitions on your race calendar. A micro-level consideration would be after a single very hard or exhaustive work-out.

At the macro level, the depletion of resources will have arisen as a systematic and progressive wearing away that parallels your rigorously planned training program. It is not the single mind-blowing training session that is involved here but rather the accumulated effect of all the sessions combined, and possibly inclusive of the race. While a single sports performance training session may leave you feeling fatigued, the depletion of body resources over a period of time (it can be as short as a week or as long as months) will leave you feeling that your ability to physically exert yourself is a little blunted. Your legs feel heavy and tired, and are unable to sustain prolonged effort in the way they used to.

The micro recovery level answers the body's aching need following that supremely challenging sports
performance training session, back-to-back training sessions in some training camp, or the actual huge
effort put into a competitive event (e.g. marathon running) . The latter involves not just the event itself but also the mental stress, increased adrenaline surges, and even mundane activities such as travel to the competition venue.

What are the steps I should take to recover properly?

Ensure that you take account of your macro and micro needs. Maintain an awareness of these using a
sports performance training /race calendar that allows you to visually assess the training and competition phases you are going through. Akin to the periodisation approach to training, this will help you to plan for recovery periods and make these an integral part of your sports performance training plan. Now consider the elements of the recovery: nutrition, structure regeneration, inflammation reduction, hormonal, and mental. Make plans for each of these.

Nutrition involves replacing the resources that you have used up in your prodigious attempts to go faster and stronger. This includes particular emphasis on replacing the following nutritional components: carbohydrates to re-build muscle glycogen for muscle recovery, and minerals and electrolytes to make up for loss in your sweat. The best time to re-build glycogen stores is within the first 3 hours after sports performance training as this is when the rate of glycogen storage is highest. Such storage remains elevated in the next 21 hours but not at the same rate as during what has been called the "critical re-energising window." There is scientific evidence to suggest that the very first hour after your exercise bout is actually the time that your body responds best to glycogen replenishment.

However, for some athletes, there are barriers that need to be overcome to meet this immediate post-
exercise nutrition need. This includes not feeling hungry or not having the correct nutrition available.
Positive steps must be taken to overcome these. Have nutrition available. If you can't stomach eating, then drink your nutrition (energy drinks, carbohydrate mixes). Find nutritional sources that agree with you, and use these.

If you are quite lean (meaning your body fat content is low), you should also ensure that your energy
replacement includes a balanced diet that has FAT and protein in it. Your overall energy needs are higher than someone who has not discovered long distance runs or triathlon training yet (poor people). So meet your higher energy needs and balance the sources of your energy: about 50-60 % from carbohydrates, 15% from protein, and up to 30% from fat.

Reducing your physical exercise is a good idea for 4-5 days after a punishing race. This does not mean
just lying around doing nothing, although that may be the order of the first day or so after competing. You will want to spend time actively stretching those tired and tight muscles, and by the 4th or 5th day, a light spin on the bike or some easy laps will help to keep your mind happy while you rest the muscles, tendons, joints and bones of your body. This is what is called "relative rest" with components of "active recovery."

The sports recovery period is a useful time to catch up with equipment maintenance matters. And in the long run, these really do matter. Clean the sea water out of your running shoes, wash your bike and take it to the shop for a tune-up, wash those hard-worn heart rate monitor straps and, so on.

Finally, there is massage. Do I detect some glee out there? The aim of massaging tired aching muscles is to relieve the tension that has built up in the muscles, as well as to assist in the removal of chemical
substances that build up during exercise and as a result of cell activity. So, just as top cycling teams bring their own masseuses to races (especially cycling tour competitions), you can help your body along with some judiciously administered massage. And if aches or pain persist, perhaps there is an injury that needs some attention from your sports doctor. The recovery period is a great time to have this managed, to deliver you in optimal shape as you return to training again.

All in all then, sports recovery is not something which every athlete thinks about, and some do it better
than others. It's something you should invest your effort into as much as you do your sports performance training preparations. It is an integral part of restoring your body to a condition which allows you to enjoy regular and continuous challenging training and competition.

Recovery from Strenuous Sports Performance Training

Dr Low Wye Mun is a sports physician practicing at The Clinic @ Cuppage in Singapore. A Fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine, he serves on the ACSM International Relations Committee. Dr Low also lectures for the Singapore Sports Council & the Blackburn College diploma programme. More details at http://www.sportzdoc.com

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Exercise and Kids: The Difference between Training Children and Adults!

The greatest mistake a person can make when exercising with children is to treat them like little adults. Children are growing and developing rapidly. This means that certain physiological issues must be considered when they are exercising.

Bone Injuries That Affect Growth

Exercise

When most parents think of children and weight training their first concern is the possibility of it affecting their growth. Contrary to popular belief, weight training will actually improve the bone and muscular systems. It is when children have a lack of qualified supervision that accidents occur. Actually, growth problems are extremely rare when children are given well-designed programs with qualified supervision. In fact, growth problems occur more frequently in dynamic sports such as Tennis, Swimming, and Baseball, than they do in weight training.

Another misconception about growth related injuries is that it will happen without you noticing it. It is actually quite painful because you are actually cracking the top of the bone. It will cease the growth in that bone only so if you get this injury in your upper left thigh (femur), only your left femur will stop growing. Your right femur will continue to grow.

Kids Have Higher Heart Rates and Lower Blood Pressure

A child has a smaller heart and less blood volume than an adult so the child's heart compensates by beating more often (per minute). A child's blood pressure is also less than an adult because this is directly proportional to body size. It reaches adult levels in their late teens.

Children Don't Perform Well Without Oxygen!

Children have a limited ability to perform anaerobic activities due to the limited production of the enzymes required for provide energy in the absence of oxygen.

Keep Kids Cool In The Heat

A child's sweat glands are not yet fully developed so they are less effective at cooling down through evaporation then adults. Make sure they drink lots of water and always exercise in light, cotton clothing.

Copyright 2005 Raymond Kelly

Exercise and Kids: The Difference between Training Children and Adults!

Ray has worked extensively in the health and fitness industry for over 15 years. He has a degree in Exercise Science and is a Level 2 Strength and Conditioning coach. Ray has been involved in athlete development for the Olympics and world championships for 10 years, also lecturing at coaching accreditation courses Free Weight Loss Tips

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