Last week I described a running injury I developed and asked for your guesses about the cause.
Of course, there were many contributing factors.
I’m not a physical therapist or any kind of medical professional. So this is all opinion based, not medically based.
But one stands out, because
a) it was the most significant
b) even the other factors might have contributed, each of them alone wouldn’t have caused this; in contrast, even without all the other factors the main factor probably would have resulted in injury all by itself.
The Main Cause
The main cause was simply (more…)
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Continue reading about The Cause Of The Problem – The 3 Percent Rule
- Can you guess the cause of my running injury?
I made a stupid exercise mistake last week. One that could impact my fitness routine for months because of the resulting injury. I want to share it with you, because hopefully you won’t repeat it.
Even though injury is no laughing matter, what I’d like to do is make this into a game of sorts. What I’ll do is first, describe the resulting injury. Then I’ll give you various facts about my exercise, eating, and lifestyle leading up to the injury.
Then you guess what the biggest cause of the injury was.
For some of you it will be obvious but for others not so much. In this case, the injury was from running. But lifters could make the same kind of mistake.
Everyone who leaves a reply will get a prize! And the best answer (based solely on my opinion) will get an even bigger prize.
The Prizes
Everyone who posts an answer in the comments section at the end (by Wednesday) , with their guess as to the most direct cause, will get a copy of my ebook called Train Better. This 200 page ebook has some of the best WFN articles consolidated for you.
The best answer, in my opinion, will get Train Better AND will get a copy of my lifting routine Fat Burn Furnace.
Duplicate answers are fine, but if the “best” answer is given by more than one person, then the first person gets the routine.
Ready?
Here’s What Happened (more…)
Should you be training to failure? What does that even mean?
- The last few reps are more important than all the previous reps.
See, for strength and muscle growth, frequency trumps volume, but intensity trumps both volume and frequency. And so the absolute most important thing you can do with lifting is to do so intensely. This is true pretty much no matter what your lifting goals are. This chart shows you why [explained below].
There are a ton of ways to increase the intensity of your lifting (see here and here) but almost all of them involve dancing around with “failure” on your set. There are two basic forms of failure I’ll talk about today: form failure and muscular failure.
Form Failure
Think of form failure as the point where you are no longer able to do the movement with good form. Good form means proper alignment, proper tempo, using the muscle rather than momentum (unless it is a power movement).
This is also very mental – when you “think” you can’t do another one properly, you are probably right. In my experience though, most people fail mentally before they should (but I won’t describe mental failure here).
Here’s an example. Let’s say you are lifting alone. Your target rep count would be 8 for this exercise. You just finished your 7th rep and you are feeling a little shaky but confident you can get one more done safely. So you start the movement. But at the bottom of the move you realize you can’t finish it without sacrificing form. At that point, you’ve reached form failure.
Muscular Failure
Muscular failure is when you (more…)
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It’s great to see mainstream news catching up with the science behind exercise. Usually, I complain about how popular media get it wrong. But here’s a story from The Washington Post that confirms what you’ve heard here on worldfitnessnetwork.com for a while. (And of course, I have only been writing about this because I’ve read about the original studies in the scientific journals, so I can’t really claim credit!). You can read past articles here, here, and here. And related to recovery, check here.
I’ve reprinted the original article, which appeared online on October 30, 2009. It’s pretty long but well-written. The bolding of certain statements is mine.
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BY LENNY BERNSTEIN
Washington Post Service
It’s been a long, hard day at the office, and you need a good workout to blow off all that stress. But before you hit the free weights, the stationary bike or the elliptical machine, you spend 10 minutes carefully stretching all those stiff muscles, just as every coach, trainer and physical therapist has advised for as long as you can remember.
You won’t stave off muscle soreness.
You won’t perform better, except possibly if you’re going to do gymnastics or ice-skate. There’s some reason to believe you’ll do worse than if you hadn’t stretched. (more…)
This is the short version of Darrin’s view on muscle recovery time. To read the longer version, click here. To read Jason’s view, click here.
How long do your muscles need to recover between workouts?
That is one of the most important questions for any lifter – whether a newbie or a competitor. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the hardest to answer.
You’ve probably heard 48 hrs. Or maybe you’ve heard 72 hours. Some people even advocate a full week of rest between working each muscle group.
For this article, we are talking about resting particular muscle groups, not about rest between workouts (unless those workouts hit all your muscles).
In general, you probably need more recovery time than you think.
I’ll give you some scientific and empirical evidence as anchor points so that you can evaluate muscle recovery time for yourself.
To make this easier to digest and act on, I’m going to score each recommendation in the rest of this article into three buckets:
a) tend towards a 2-day muscle recovery period
b) tend towards a 3-day muscle recovery period
c) tend towards a full week to rest your muscles
But all of the recommendations I make interact with each other – you can’t look at just one factor and say “ok, the ideal recovery time is X”. Some guidelines may trump others, so the key is to take this knowledge and start applying the ones that you believe will have the biggest impact on your particular situation. And then test.
One final preamble. We’re talking here about force recovery – the time it takes for (more…)
Continue reading about The Truth About Muscle Recovery Time – Short Version
This is Darrin’s view on muscle recovery time. To read Jason’s view, click here.
How long do your muscles need to recover between workouts?
That is one of the most important questions for any lifter – whether a newbie or a competitor. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the hardest to answer.
You’ve probably heard 48 hrs. Or maybe you’ve heard 72 hours. Some people even advocate a full week of rest between working each muscle group.
I wish I could give you an absolute rule. But I can’t.
Part of the confusion comes from mixing two issues: are we talking about recovery between workouts or recovery between working specific muscles?
For this article, we are talking about resting particular muscle groups, not about rest between workouts (unless those workouts hit all your muscles).
In general, you probably need more recovery time than you think.
I’ll give you some scientific and empirical evidence as anchor points so that you can evaluate muscle recovery time for yourself.
To make this easier to digest and act on, I’m going to score each recommendation in the rest of this article into three buckets:
a) tend towards a 2-day muscle recovery period
b) tend towards a 3-day muscle recovery period
c) tend towards a full week to rest your muscles
But all of the recommendations I make interact with each other – you can’t look at just one factor and say “ok, the ideal recovery time is X”. Some guidelines may trump others, so the key is to take this knowledge and start applying the ones that you believe will have the biggest impact on your particular situation. And then test.
One final preamble. We’re talking here about force recovery – the (more…)
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By Tom Venuto, NSCA-CPT, CSCS BurnTheFat High Intensity Interval Training, or HIIT for short, has been promoted as one of the most effective training methods ever to come down the pike, both for fat loss and for cardiovascular fitness. (more…)
Continue reading about Steady State Cardio 5 X More Effective Than HIIT????
Last week we talked about “what are the shoulder muscles” and started on trapezius muscle exercises. If you haven’t read that yet, please do so first. We focused on deadlifts and cleans. For 90% of you, those two exercises are all you need for decent traps. But for completeness, and before we (more…)
Continue reading about Filling Out Your Shoulders – part 2 of 4
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