Stronger Bodies, Fewer Injuries

Transcript

Welcome And Sponsor Thanks

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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 I've been in business since 1994. The purpose of this podcast is to get to the real deal of what really works and most importantly why things work. Hence the name, There is a Method to the Madness. Before I get to today's show, I want to thank Jonathan and Lynn Gilden of the Gilden Group at Realty 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.

A Bike Crash That Proved It

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I can remember going back about 20 years ago or so. I was in a bicycle race near Orlando. And uh, you know, that's kind of a uh risky situation anyway. If you've ever seen a cycling race with the uh Peloton and being uh all bunched up with a bunch of people going crazy on bikes, and um I ended up in a little bit of a crash. Actually, it was a pretty big crash, and um I got pretty chafed up, beat up, and uh ended up having to go to the emergency room. And I can remember the physician after doing some x-rays and checking me over, and uh, you know, I was sore, of course. I didn't really know what I had done, but it turns out I didn't do much of anything other than abrasions. But I remember him looking at me and saying, you know, it's a really good thing you work out because you have nice strong muscles, and when you landed, that really protected you from further injuries.

Strength Training Protects Your Body

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So I bring all this up as kind of a lead into this because I want to point out that strength training is so valuable to protect you, to keep you from getting hurt. One of my pet peeves is when I hear people mistakenly say something like, they don't want to go to the gym or they don't want to lift weights because they're afraid they're gonna get hurt. And the reality is it's the complete opposite of that. So that's what I'm gonna talk about today. I um, you know, I started off with the story because you just wouldn't think of things like a bicycle crash as something that strength training actually helps you recover from quicker. And it is though, and like everything else, every sport, I see people get hurt a lot, especially people that are seniors or middle-aged folks playing sports again. And we don't have to get as hurt as we often do, and one of the keys is to strength train.

Connective Tissue And Injury Statistics

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So, what is it about strength training that is so valuable to prevent injuries? Strength training not only strengthens the muscles, but it strengthens the tendons, which connect muscle to bone, the ligaments which connect bone to bone. Bones, yes, strength training will build up your bone tissue. It's one of the best ways to prevent osteoporosis and osteomalacia and osteopenia. Strength training also does strengthen your cartilage and all other connective tissue. So strength training basically will strengthen all of your connective tissue, all of your tendons and ligaments and muscles. So when you are absorbing anything, whether it be heel strikes from running or whatever you're doing, jumping, bouncing, bounding, whatever you're doing, it's going to actually help you absorb the blow where it should be absorbed in the muscles and stronger connective tissues versus the joints themselves. And if we really want to look at what the statistics say regarding strength training and injury rates, strength training has one of the lowest injury rates of all of the physical activities. In fact, there is less than one injury per 1,000 hours of physical activity with strength training compared to roughly four to eight per 1,000 for running. Actually, running can be even up to 12 per 1,000 hours, and then something pretty injury uh causing like basketball can be up to 20 injuries per hour, so per 1,000 hours, which still isn't huge, by the way. I don't want anybody to not play basketball or run because they're afraid they're gonna get hurt. That's still not huge, but strength training is even less than those. Less than one per 1,000 hours. And by the way, how does it happen? Well, it doesn't have to happen. That's the key. If we don't ego lift, if we strength train properly, I mean, most, if not all, injuries in the weight room occur because of user error. The person is doing something silly or ignorant most of the time. All right, so it doesn't have to happen at all. Now, if we want stronger knees, hips, shoulders, lower back, what we need to do is strength train. I see people constantly talking about their injured knees. Look, I get it, life happens, arthritis happens, different types of injuries happen, different kinds of traumatic events happen. I really, really get it. But a lot of it can be prevented and absolutely made better any injuries regarding your hips, your knees, your back, your shoulders if you strength train. All right. Now, here are some more statistics for you. I think these are pretty cool. Strength training reduced all of sports injuries by 66%. I mean, that's pretty huge, right? 66%. Overuse injuries were reduced by 50% when the person actively strength trains. All right. So this the statistics are there, absolutely there. If you strength train, you're less likely to get hurt playing your sport, whatever your sport is, and overuse injuries such as patelliphemoral issues, shoulder issues for swimmers, bursitis will be reduced by 50%.

Lower Back Strength Beats Overstretching

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Speaking of back injuries, I was very, very fortunate in the early part of my career. I was working with Dr. Fulton, who um is one of the best orthopedic surgeons in the world. And it's funny, orthopedic surgeon, because that's what he was, but he never performed surgery. He really, really believed in strength training as a means to help people with their back issues. So I got to work with him and see a lot of his statistics. And basically what we found was that if people strengthened their lower back, specifically, I mean, we had data after data after data, their need for surgery dropped dramatically. In fact, most people that would come in for consultations with him left there realizing they didn't need the back surgery after all. So it was a very, very um fortunate situation for me because I could see how we do it and I could see like all the statistics on that. And it's not like it was some complicated deal. I mean, essentially, all we had to do to help people with their lower back injuries was to strengthen the erector spinae or spinal erectors, which are the muscles of your lower back and go up the spine, basically your lower back muscles. So many people neglect those muscles. And it's really, really silly because studies show that at least 80% of our population will have back pain at some point, but that back pain doesn't have to happen if those spinal erectors are strong. You hear people mistakenly say a lot, well, the lower back has to be flexible, we have to stretch. I mean, that's true and it's not true. Like flexibility can help reduce some injuries and can help reduce lower back pain and lower back injuries, but it's really more the flexibility of the hamstrings, not really the lower back. We actually want the lower back to be tighter, so we want it stronger. So when the muscles are shortened, that means they're stronger. When they're lengthened, that means they're weaker. So we really don't want to have lengthened lower back muscles. We want your lower back muscles, we want our lower back muscles to be strong. And we simply do that by doing spinal extension exercises. I mean, one of the best ways to do it is to use a lower back machine. I'm a big, big, big fan of that. If you don't have access to that, then we can do some prone cobras and different types of back extensions using your body weight or bands or lighter dumbbells. Absolutely. But I do think the lower back machine, if you have the availability of it, is the best thing to do. And so many people neglect it. If anything, they're doing way too much abdominal work, which is going to cause a muscle imbalance because now the muscles in the anterior portion of your core are overly strong compared to your lower back muscles, and it's going to pull you slightly forward, which could actually increase your risk of getting lower back injury, and especially the muscle imbalances in there and overuse syndrome. So it's so preventable by simply when you go to the gym, make sure you do your back extension exercises, whether you're doing them on the floor or again using the machine.

Balance Work That Prevents Falls

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Another area where strength training helps prevent injuries is by improving balance. After the age of 50, we start to lose some of our balance. It's just normal, it's the nature of the beast. But we can prevent that by strength training and doing other balance type exercises. As we get a little bit older, we tend to lose some balance, we tend to lose our reaction time, we tend to lose some coordination, we tend to lose some stability. Strength training helps with all of these areas. I mean, balance is so easy to work on. We've seen people that come in and can barely stand on one foot for five seconds before having to put their other foot down. And if that's you, don't worry about it. I mean, that's very, very common. We've found by just having people stand on one leg as the actual exercise itself, over and over again consistently, they can stand on one leg for over 30 seconds. I mean, so they increase like 25 seconds just by doing it. I mean, that's one basic way to do it. And balance is a big key to falls because let's say you pick that foot up like we have to to walk, like we have to go downstairs, like we have to to go upstairs, like in very common situations we're in all the time, and you slightly lose your balance, depending on where you are, you can fall. And if you break something, now you're really, really going to hopefully not, but potentially get into the injury cycle. So that can be prevented. Another simple thing to do once you get comfortable standing on one leg is I like to have people do strength training exercises on one leg, doing dumbbell exercises like side raises or front raises or curls, and you find your ability to improve your balance while doing these dumbbell exercises, standing on one leg improves your balance and it also improves your confidence in the fact you can lift your leg and not get into any kind of precarious situations. So confidence is key. We have somebody we're working with now who has a fear of coming downstairs, and I get it, I really do. I mean, you know, that can be nerve-wracking for the best of us going down, like say we're at an arena and it's darker, we're taking steps down. I mean, it could be nerve-wracking. And so we're working on helping them build the confidence by doing different types of exercises in the gym. All right, so that's another way strength training, holding dumbbells, doing different exercises can help prevent injuries because it simply can increase your balance. All

Bone Density And Osteoporosis Prevention

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right. So I touched on bone a little bit and I want to touch that on that again. One of the biggest ways to prevent any form of bone breakdown, and it begins with osteomalacia, that's like where the bone starts to get a little soft, which could turn into osteopenia, which is pre-osteoporosis. I mean, that's pretty common in our country. It is more common in Caucasian women and is more common in Asian women, basically thin bone, but not always. Sometimes it could not be so easily recognizable by thin bone sometimes. So I don't want to just say, well, you know, if you've never had thin, smaller bones, don't worry about getting a bone density scan. No, that that's not true. It's definitely more prevalent in smaller bone individuals, but osteopenia, osteoporosis can occur basically with anybody at any time. So it's always good to get your bone density scans done. But in any event, you know, a lot of people talk about weight-bearing exercise being one of the best ways to increase bone density, and it definitely helps like jogging, walking, running, whatever. But what we found is where that really helps the most is in the bones of the shin and the lower leg. But when it comes to, say, in the pelvis and in the spine and in the other areas of your body, the hip bones, then you want the strength train because that's going to increase bone density all over your body. Because basically, where you put stress on your bones, your bones are going to get stronger. And if you're not putting stress on them because you're not strength training your upper body, then there's really no way to increase the bone density in the other bones of your body beside your legs. So it's not just about weight-bearing exercise, it's also about strength training. And studies have shown that strength training is the best way to strengthen bone. All right. So talked about low back pain, talked about strengthening the ligaments and the tendons and all the connective tissue, talked about strengthening the bones.

The Five Movement Patterns To Train

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What do we have to do to make sure that we're training correctly? So the basic human movements of squat, push, pull, hinge, and rotate should be trained when you go to the gym. All right, those are like the basic movements of the human body. One of the first things we do all the time is try to get people to learn how to squat correctly. So basically, a squat is what we call a compound exercise. A compound exercise means that you're working more than one muscle at the same time, you're working more than one bone at the same time, you're working more than one joint at the same time. So, for example, the squat exercise in itself works three muscle groups. Primarily the glutes and the quads, secondarily, the hamstrings. So you have three muscle groups, three big, big, very powerful, important muscle groups being worked in the squat. Now, with the squat exercise, we're working two different joints. We're working your knee joint and we're working your hip joint. So the motions are called hip extension and knee extension. So two of the big joint actions are being worked at the same time. So that means that not only is your femur bone being worked, but also the muscles of your lower back and the bones of your spine are being worked at the same time. I'm not trying to confuse everybody. I'm just trying to get you to understand what a compound exercise is. A compound exercise works more than one muscle group, works more than one joint, works more than one bone area. So when we strengthen train properly, we want to try to choose more compound exercises to protect our body from injury. That doesn't mean that isolation exercises are bad. They're not bad. Isolation exercises would be like a hip abduction, which specifically works your glute medius and specifically works the muscles of your hips, or the leg extension, which specifically works your quad muscles, specifically works your knee joint. Those are great. And we want to do those exercises as well. But every good strength training workout program is built around primarily compound multi-joint exercises. So those would be the squat, like a squat exercise, a hinge, like doing a Romanian deadlift, or a form of a deadlift, a major upper body push, for example, a push up or a chest press, because then you're working both your shoulder joints and your elbow joints, and then you're working all of the muscles of the pushing area, such as the pectoralis majors, the deltoids, and the triceps. We would want to also strengthen the pulling muscles. So, like a pull up, a pull down, a row, because then you are working your shoulder joint, you're also working your elbow joint, you're also working your scapula joint, which is its own joint in itself. You're working your rhomboid muscles, you're working your lap muscles, you're working your bicep muscles. But the point is you're getting a lot of bang for your buck by working a multi-joint exercise. And then finally, you're going to want to do some formal rotation. That's probably outside of doing lower back exercises for your core, one of the most exercise important exercise regions you can do. A lot of people don't work on their rotations, meaning literally rotating their spine by doing different versions of, say, a side plank, a rotation with the medicine ball, a rotation with some dumbbells, a lateral flexion with dumbbells. I mean, there's a lot of different ways to do it. I'm just trying to get you to understand that that's a movement that would want to be strengthened. So if you're going to the gym and you're doing some form of a squat on a regular basis, whether it be on a machine like a leg press or a squat with weights or a squat with your body weight, you're doing some form of hinge where you're bending over at the spine, you're doing some form of a push, upper body, some form of a pull with your upper body, and then a spinal rotation. You are really making your body pretty resistant to exercise, which is pretty awesome. I'm sorry, pretty resistant to exercise. Yeah, that's not gonna ahead of myself here. Pretty resistant to injury. And then if you warm up properly and you take care of yourself, I mean, you're gonna be able to play your sport for a really, really long time, whether it be pickleball, golf, tennis, softball, baseball, swimming, running, whatever you like to do. I mean, aging doesn't have to make you fragile. I mean, the saying use it or lose it is so, so true. Any of us can go to the gym and make ourselves stronger. It's not like you're self-selected. It's not like, you know, you're privileged. I mean, it just means you can go and strengthen those muscles. Like we can all do it. And I just really, really wish more people would jump on that opportunity to do it because I really believe that you would find it so beneficial for you to do so. So many people go to the gym because, you know, they want to look better, they want to feel better. You know, there's also a big part of people wanting to go because they think they should, and they should. But I really, really wish people would go there with the idea of I really want a strong, resistant body. Because if you do, you really will enjoy your life, be able to do all your sports and activities of daily living, and sure, you'll look better too, right? But it's really about the function underneath. So I implore you to take advantage of it and go and try to strength train two to three days a week. You

Train Two To Three Days Weekly

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will be happy that you did.

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All right, thanks everybody for listening to today's

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podcast. I want to ask everybody to please help the show by following it wherever you get your podcast, and please select automatic download. That helps me to keep track.

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