1 – You walk funny and go up and down stairs like an old lady.
Aside from breathing and drinking water, the most
foundational activity that ensures our survival as human beings is bipedal
locomotion. Doesn't that sound fancy? We're talking about walking here, people.
Gait Assessment
Plain old walking can objectively show a lot. This is one of
the best ways to diagnose a person's functional status and likelihood of
injury. A requisite for training is being able to walk symmetrically and
without notable deviation, dysfunction, or pain provocation. Also, the ability
to continuously walk at a natural rate for ten-plus minutes without pain is a
pretty good indicator of your ability to stabilize the spine and reciprocate
the lower and upper extremities.
Doing a self assessment is easy. All you need is a mirror.
Most gyms have mirrors plastered up on every square inch of wall space. Find a
treadmill facing one and hop on. Are you shifting your weight side to side? One
foot toeing out more than the other? Are you hunched over like Igor?
Just watch yourself and evaluate. Does it look like shit,
yes or no? If it does, start with comparing your arms and shoulders side to side,
your hips and legs side to side, then finally the overall fluidity of the
movement. This is walking, it should look halfway decent. If not, you have your
new LISS (Low Intensity Steady State) training program.
Stair Climbing
The ability to ascend and descend stairs without the use of
the handrail can be a great self-diagnostic tool. From knee and hip stability
and strength to proper single-leg balance and proprioception, you need to be
able to dominate ordinary steps before you have any chance of training
effectively in the gym. And by steps, I don't mean slouching over and hanging
on for dear life on the stair-mill.
2 – You spend more time wrapping your knees and elbows than lifting.
Nothing's more emblematic of a broken-down lifter than the
overuse of external training crutches like wraps, sleeves, belts, and other
accessories designed to hold together body parts that most likely lack
ligamentous and capsular stability. Let's look at these one at a time.
Lifting Belts
The use of a lifting belt is justifiable for strength and
physique athletes that know how to properly brace and utilize the belt during
strategic sets while using maximal loads or insane intensities. Notice I didn't
say anything about lifting newbies trying to falsely inflate their already
pitiful numbers, or having a convenient place to clip their phone.
During some of the big movements like the squat and
deadlift, the use of a belt almost becomes a requirement if you want to
maximize your iron performance. No qualms with that. When used strategically,
it's a great tool.
But we have to draw the line when the lifting belt becomes a
necessary crutch for just about every single movement, including arm training
and the elliptical! Yes, yes, the belt strapped around your lumbar spine makes
you feel stable, but isn't that feeling of instability telling you something?
Take the belt off and assess your true baseline of function. Only then will you
objectively be able to evaluate your weak links, improve the chinks in your
armor, and then implement the belt correctly.
Wraps
Sure, from a biomechanical and functional orthopedic
perspective, the use of knee wraps can be a viable option for adding poundage
to your squats and presses by adding a more elastic component to the bottom of
your range of motion. So functionally, yes, wraps work and work very well. But
what about from a long term joint and soft-tissue health perspective?
The long term use of wraps for an extended number of sets
per training day can add some unwanted shear and compressive forces to local
joints. Let's be clear here, this won't be likely to happen after just a few
sets, but it will happen over time if all of your sets are compressed.
If you're using incomplete ranges of motion with wraps, your
best bet is to normalize your ranges, not wrap tighter. The use of wraps and
sleeves can be viewed as a metaphor for your entire life. If you depend on
crutches, it's just a matter of time until you fall on your ass and can't get
up.
Don't become the "compression man" where every set
is highly dependent on wraps, sleeves, and other dependencies. If your goal in
life is to keep on lifting, limit your external fixes and start improving your
internal stability, mobility, and motor control factors. You'll thank me when
you're 70 and still hitting the gym hard.
Powerlifter
3 – You keep doing the same crushing programs.
Blame it on what I call the "Football Glory Days"
program. Many long-time lifters are now paying for some brutal old school
training methods with orthopedic demise. I'm not saying that the "crush
yourself with volume and intensity in the big barbell movements" mentality
isn't an effective way to get jacked and strong. It is. But your body also pays
a price for all them gainz.
This type of training style isn't appropriate for those who
experience pain with every move they make in the weight room. Sometimes a
strategic diversification or remediation is necessary for the greater long term
good of your training. It could be as simple as using dumbbells instead of
barbells for a while.
A tremendous amount of top-notch strength information has
flooded the industry over the last two decades, so there's no excuse for not
making use of this knowledge to make strategic changes. However, the primary
problem has more to do with the psychosocial aspects of training. Adding a
little intelligent modification, like going from the barbells to dumbbells is,
for some, like transitioning from powerlifting to Zumba.
If, between sets of pain-wracked bench press, you're still
talking about how much you used to lift, you need to listen up. These old
school methods have worked wonders in the past, and that barrel chest you're so
proud of presumably played a huge factor in attracting your first wife and
possibly your second. But those days have passed – even if your mindset hasn't
progressed at the same rate.
You can only linearly periodize the same movements for so
long until one of three things happen:
You plateau and no longer experience a notable stimulus from
training.
You end up injuring yourself by pushing through workouts
And lastly, and most likely, you've mistakenly turned your
once impressive training routine into a damn travesty, which leads to the next
point.
4 – You're shortening the range of motion on the big lifts.
The quickest way to crush your shoulders, spine, hips, and
knees is to forget about using a respectable range of motion and supramaximally
loading your lifts over and over again. It's amazing how piss-poor some
movements become over a long enough period when both pain and dysfunction are
thrown into the mix with no means of movement remediation or recovery from
injuries.
You can compare the deterioration of movement to the day-to-day
mirror effect that many go through while dieting and training. If you see
yourself in the mirror ass-naked, multiple times a day, it's unlikely that
you'll be able to differentiate your physique from one day to another. But if
you had the discipline to wait a few weeks before looking at yourself in the
mirror again, the transformation would be unmistakably clear.
If you've been benching poorly for years on end, for
instance, you may not even realize how bad your form has gotten. The only
biofeedback you're getting is likely the grating pain deep in your joints and
possibly the presence of some shooting radicular pain traveling down your
extremities.
As pain science shows, people who exhibit chronic levels of
pain for long enough durations become accustomed to this level of negative
neural stimulation, thus mentally and physiologically mitigating the pain.
These guys just keep grinding through workouts, year after year, while digging
their own orthopedic grave a bit deeper each time.
Ultimately, your obsession with sticking to the big barbell
movements and other old school staples turns you into a self-justifying half
repper. With less and less range of motion being employed over time, and more
and more poundage added to the bar to keep on track with your notion of a
linearly periodized strength model, you're in for a rude awakening.
If it doesn't happen now, it will happen later. The body is
pretty resilient, but it's just a matter of time until it breaks. At times,
enough is enough for even the most out-of-touch lifter when the bar is just
moving an inch or two.
5 – You're weaker, fatter, and in more pain than last year.
If this is true for you, what have you done differently to
improve your physicality, your health, or your functionality to get back on
track and start forging a foundation you can use to rebuild what you've lost?
If you can answer those questions honestly, you've already taken the first
steps in the right direction.
Even the most broken down lifter still possesses the rare
qualities of work ethic, perseverance, and unwavering drive and passion. So
what's holding you back? The limiting factor will be different for every
person, but the solution will be the same. It's time to create a new reality, a
new set of goals, a new way of doing things; one that you can be proud of and
that fits you as an individual at this point in your life.
We're all drawn to training because it allows us to control
the controllable, challenge ourselves physically and mentally, and to escape
the realities of our daily grind and reap the benefits of our sacred practice.
It's time to pay your training the respect it deserves, use the tools in front
of you, and create an environment that will feed your passion for the rest of
your days. If you don't, your most valued daily practice will one day be taken
away from you. Make sure that day never comes.
Please make sure to visit and like our page in facebook for more: https://www.facebook.com/To-GYM-603113973185732/
Source: https://www.t-nation.com
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire