There Is A Method to the Madness
This is a podcast where I will be discussing all aspects of physical fitness. I am an exercise physiologist and personal trainer and owner of Maxwell's Fitness Programs for the last 25 years. My passion is health and fitness and I am excited to share my views, some stories, interviews and much more with you.
There Is A Method to the Madness
From Aches To Action: Finding The Line Between Soreness And Injury
Welcome to There is a Method to the Madness. My name is Rob Maxwell, and I'm an exercise physiologist and personal trainer. I am the owner of Maxwell's fitness programs and have been in business since 1994. The purpose of this podcast is to get to the real deal of what really worked and most importantly why things worked. Hence the name, there is a method to the magnet. Before I get started today, let me thank Jonathan and Lynn Gildan of the Gilden Group ELT Pros. They are committed to providing the highest level of customer service in home sales. Why don't you give them a shout and figure out what your home is worth? 386-451-2412. Do I have any Gen Xers out there? If you're a Gen Xer like me, you were probably in junior high. That's what we called it back then. In the late 70s, mid-70s, getting ready to go into high school. And um Nike sneakers were all of the rage. And I'm not talking like Air Jordans that came out a little bit later. I'm just talking about the regular leather tennis shoe-looking Nike with the light blue swoosh. So if you are a uh Gen Xer, you know exactly what I'm talking about. And um when you got those shoes, man, you just thought you were the bomb. I can remember not having as much money as some of my friends growing up, and uh I had to get the canvas ones, and some of my friends are getting the leather ones, you know, but still I thought the canvas ones were the bomb too. So you'd wear them to school, and it wouldn't be maybe you get in your second or third class before some uh you know what came up and uh stepped on them and like ruined them, you know. You thought they're ruined, you didn't want them messed up, or maybe it was just you didn't want to go run in the grass or anywhere else that was going to mess up these perfect Nike shoes. Or finally, later on, they get messed up and you realize, man, now I really enjoy these shoes, you know? And let me give you another story similar to this as I break into what I'm going to talk about today. Around this same time of my life, and by the way, I'm sure you uh, whatever generation you are, have your own deal with shoes or anything else, and you know exactly what I'm talking about. You want to keep them perfect, right? Not possible, never were, but you want to keep them that way. Well, for me, somewhere around the same time, it must have broken to the 80s a little bit. I got my uh driving permit at 15, which you were allowed to then. And back then, and maybe now you were allowed to have a license to have a small motorcycle. So a lot of us wanted our freedom, and when we turned 15, we got our permit, and then we were able to get a small motorcycle. Well, I can remember getting one, learning how to ride, learning how to drive, getting one and being so proud of it. But the same thing, wanted to keep it so perfect. And I can remember I'd hear like little rattles and things in the engine and stuff, and I'd take it back up to the motorcycle dealer. And I remember one day he he said to me, he said, you know, it's never supposed to run perfectly, it's just going to run good. So that leads me into what I want to talk about today. I've been in this field as a personal trainer, exercise physiologist, strength conditioning coach for roughly 31 going on 32 years. Been doing this a really, really long time. And what I see often is clients who think their body is supposed to feel perfect, like there's never supposed to be any aches or pains. So this can become problematic because we are really setting up a false expectation. Now, it kind of happens in two different scenarios that I see. In one scenario, it happens after somebody has been injured. And that, you know, I mean, it all makes sense. There's this guy I like to listen to, and I've read at least two of his books, Morgan Housel. He wrote The Psychology of Money and the Psychology of Spending, and I really enjoy his books. And one of his lines he uses a lot is that with enough information, everything makes sense. So I think about that. So when clients want their bodies to feel perfect, it makes sense no matter which side they are coming from. Because again, there are two predominant sides that I see. The one side is the client who is or the athlete that is coming off of an injury, the other one is the client who is just afraid of getting injured. So it's not really that they don't like discomfort. I don't want to confuse people. It's not like a pain threshold thing. Like I'm not implying that some people are tougher than others. I mean, I do think that's true, but that's not what I'm talking about here. What I'm talking about is more of a fear that something is wrong when something doesn't feel perfect. Now, the problem with this is number one, of course we know, or hopefully we know, there is no such thing as perfect, right? We're never going to feel perfect, we're never gonna be perfect, perfection doesn't exist. But when somebody really feels like they're not supposed to feel anything, that is a big problem. So as a trainer, I've often had to teach people the difference between normal sensations and pain and injury. And it's hard to teach people because there is a very fine line. But I do believe listening to this and getting more information on this topic can help somebody because it's the fear of injury, the fear of a problem that becomes the problem. And ultimately, what it comes down to is trying to control the thing, like we have that much control over our body. We don't. We have a lot of control over what we choose to do, of course, but we don't always have control of our body. So those are the two scenarios. You'll get somebody who is coming off an injury, and I get it, it's scary, it sucks when you are used to being very active and you enjoy being active, and all of a sudden your body isn't allowing you to do what you want to do, it is extremely frustrating. And when you've tried to come back a few times, and each time you have, you've re-injured it, you get a little paranoid. So again, it makes total sense. But what ends up happening is if we can't figure out the balance of what is healthy and unhealthy pain and sensations, then we're not going to be able to do what we need to do to get it better. Because oftentimes it's movement that's going to make it better. It's it's very um contradictory because there are areas we need to rest when we have an injury. So let's say we have pulled a muscle, that muscle specifically, or at least part of that muscle specifically, needs to rest. That doesn't mean bed rest. That's one of the worst things we can do in that case. It just means don't do anything that aggravates that injury. But at the same time, we need to do things to work around the injury because that's going to strengthen up the areas around it and it's going to increase blood flow to the area, which will help it heal, and it'll give the mind some peace of mind knowing that you're doing something. So we don't want to get so paranoid where we don't do anything. And I will tell you, or I will do the best I can to tell you how to kind of differentiate good from bad. All right. So the second scenario, though, is the person who maybe hasn't been overly active their entire life and they've heard stories of people getting hurt. I can think of a lot of people, you know, who have said they've thought about playing pickleball, but they hear of these injuries. And there's been other sports that come up, but the bottom line is there's just this fear that they're going to get hurt. And so when they start feeling some sensations in a muscle or a joint, and I'm not talking about people that feel the burn on a leg extension, whatever. I mean, generally speaking, people know that that's not an injury that is a part of a response to exercise, but they may like overreact to a little bit of a uh, you know, pain or sensation they get somewhere when they're done with the exercise or possibly the next day. So there's that group too. But ultimately, they kind of are sharing the same mindset of control. If I just don't do this, then this injury won't occur and I will be okay. Well, again, yeah, maybe, but also you're going to miss out on a lot. I mean, I had a couple different clients pass in the last couple years, and uh they were long-term clients that I had for over 20 years, and one was late into his 80s and the other one was deep into her 90s. And I can tell you that, like, they stayed very, very active their entire lives, and they basically fought through all kinds of aches and pains because they knew having some aches and pains wasn't the end of the world, and it was far more unhealthy to let the body deteriorate and have different forms of cardiovascular disease that could have been prevented with a lot more movement. So, you know, that mindset of I'm going to be safe doesn't necessarily keep you safe. I can't change that in people. Um, it's been my experience that people like that are very hard to get to. They simply don't want to believe it. They just think that if they basically don't do anything, then they're never going to get hurt. And, you know, it's that safety in them that actually creates problems that could have been prevented down the road. I mean, you know, not being able to be very mobile as you age is not safe and not healthy. And it's exercise and particularly strength training that's going to help you stay mobile as you age. So, you know, dealing with some potential little aches and pains along the way, I can promise you, from my elder clients' experiences that have lived extremely long, healthy lives, would tell you it is very, very worth it. So, in both cases, it's a fear thing. The fear of if I just don't do this, this won't happen. And, you know, in both cases, I would say that that can become problematic as well. So let's talk a little bit about how we figure out the difference, because that is the critical element, especially for the person coming back from injury, because they don't want to sit on the sidelines, they're ready to roll. I always tell people that an injury is an injury when it keeps you from doing what you want to do. In other words, if you have a knee injury and you go and run and you start running, and your knee hurts to the point where you have to stop. That is a knee injury, and you need to stop. You need to make sure that you're doing what you need to do so that knee can heal. But now let's say you've done what you need to do. You have gone to the orthopedic, they've diagnosed it, you've done what they've suggested that you're supposed to do, you've done some strengthening, you've listened to your physical therapist or your physiologist or your good trainer, and you've got it ready to roll. And now you go for a run and you feel some soreness in the knee. Well, most likely that is very normal. You're going to have some soreness. And I and I think oftentimes our brain is thinking about it so much that we're so conscious of it that we probably weren't conscious of it before it ever happened. So we're just a little bit too hyper-vigilant on what we're feeling in there because it is normal to have some soreness. Now, the rule of thumb is if it gets worse as you go, you are still injured. If you just feel some minor soreness in there, most likely it's going to pass. Now, I'm not one of those guys that says no pain, no gain, work through things. Not at all. I always say, let pain be the guide. You know, there are certain things we need to do once we become hurt. And allied health professionals that know how the body heals will gladly give you the recommendations. You need to follow them. In a case of a pulled muscle, it's going to take at least two weeks for that thing to heal. You're simply going to have to not stretch it because you're going to stretch the fibers apart if it's pulled, and you're going to have to rest it and you're rest it and you're probably going to have to use some compression with that compression wraps. And then you can't beat time. Time takes time. You just have to rest it. So there are protocols. But once you've done the protocols and you've corrected the problem, whatever the problem is, and you've become pain-free, you know, in your daily activities, you just realize, oh wow, I haven't felt pain. Well, don't start looking for it. Don't start being too hyper-vigilant and start thinking about it. It's funny when I have somebody who's in the rest phase and they're like, oh, I don't feel it. I'm going to go test it. No, don't test it. That might aggravate it if it is healing. Instead, when it's time to try, try and differentiate between pain that gets worse as you go, pain that doesn't allow you to do the activity in some simple soreness. Because soreness isn't all bad. Soreness is normal. My knees are sore often. I don't have a knee injury, nor do I pay much attention to the soreness because I know as I'm going into squats when I'm doing my goblet squats, before I get overly warmed up on the first set or two, I'm going to feel a little bit of soreness in my patella tendon and the areas around the knee. Yes, I ignore that because that is just some soreness in my body. I want to keep my knees strong so I continue to squat. As I go, meaning as the sets go and even as the reps go, I don't feel it anymore. So that is the sign I want you to look for. Does it get better as you go? If it does, you are probably just being kind of hyper-vigilant and had your mind on it. And, you know, yeah, adrenaline can make us forget things and all that. But most likely you're on a very good track and it's going away. If it continues to kind of gnaw at you and get worse, by all means stop. Okay. So I'm just going to finish this up by saying that there is a happy balance. There's a tension between jumping in and being kind of careless and reckless, and also being careless and reckless by not doing things because that can cause just as much problems as the other. Okay. So I'm wanting to really wrestle with that. And by the way, my sneakers, my tennis shoes are always at their very best after they're a little bit worn. They got some stains on them. They're broken in, but man, they just work good. They're not perfect, but man, they're great. And the motorcycles I've enjoyed the most, same deal, man. They might have a scratch on the tank, you know, they might miss fire here and there, but man, they're reliable. They start up and they get me where they need to go. All right. Think about that. Until next time, B Max Fit and B Max Well. Thanks everybody for listening to today's show. I want to ask you to please hit automatic download from wherever you get your podcast from. It really helps me and it really helps the show. Now I'd like to take a second to thank our sponsors. Without them, we would not be able to have the podcast. First overhead door of Daytona Beach. They are the area's premier garage door company. They have the best product and the best service. I personally vouch for Jeff and Zach Hawk. They are great people. If you have any garage door needs, please give them a call. 386 222 3165. Now I'm very, very happy and excited to announce we have a new sponsor, Procharge Liquid Protein Enhancer. Each container has 40 grams of protein. And what's really cool about About this, it's very portable. You can throw the tiny little containers into a suitcase, take it wherever you go. Now you don't have to worry about spilling, and you know what? It tastes really, really good. Just open up the cap, suck down the protein, it's that easy. 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