Bulletproof Your Body
https://ift.tt/2Gd0uBr By selecting the best exercises to build maximal strength and size, while limiting unnecessary stress and risk of injury, you can build a bulletproof body that will perform as well as it looks. Unlike ‘pre-hab’ exercises which are often used as assistance exercises to help prevent injuries, a ‘joint-friendly’ approach deals with how to better select your heavy lifts. In this article, you will learn why selecting the right exercises is the key to you training longer and harder.
This approach is contrary to training with the purpose of beating up your body with the hope to look good in the short-term, but little thought over your long-term goals. We could say that joint-friendly training is simply to train smart and plan for the future.
Common MisconceptionsIn many fitness circles the idea of training for longevity and functional movement looks something like a circus act or a gymnastic routine. Unfortunately, this has developed more through popularity as a fitness craze, rather than an evidence-based approach to training.
In reality, joint-friendly training is not taking every exercise to a Swiss ball, or swinging around on a functional training rig, nor is it sacrificing heavy barbell presses for push ups. Joint-friendly training is about selecting the most appropriate exercises to achieve your goals while paying attention to injury risk and wear and tear on your body. It is identifying the risk versus reward of the exercises that make up the backbone of your training program.
How useful an exercise is should be determined by its raw effectiveness in helping you hit your end goal while taking into account the biomechanics of what is happening at the joint. It has nothing to do with the tools you are using and should have no bias towards a specific style of training. The rules are simple; choose the right tools that will help you achieve your desired goals (strength, muscle size, performance, fat loss), and select the exercises where the risk versus reward makes sense.
The Beat Up BodybuilderIf your training is very short-sighted, you will be sacrificing long-term gain. That is an inevitable fact in most walks of life, not just when it comes to training. This is your story over the next 5-10 years, so be sure to choose the smart path.
Looking back as a beginner you may have gotten some results, so there was no need to question the methods used and you continued to train in the same way. Because you were so indoctrinated in this training style, you believed it was the best (and only) way to train. Your icons trained in this way, which supposedly validated its effectiveness. Your training style became your religion, and you became a devout follower. No matter what anyone else says, or what science tells you, your approach is the best.
Eventually your body got beat up, and through a series of injuries (and pain) you change your training. You stick to what you know, and you continue to select the same old-school routines, but you go lighter for higher reps. You then experience less pain because you are using less weight and you now have a greater focus on technique. You may also start spending half of your workout warming up and doing specific mobility exercises.
Often the right balance is never found until it is too late. By looking at things from an evidence-based approach you can see how to achieve your physique and strength goals faster while being able to train harder and longer.
They Key to Becoming BulletproofThe real key to becoming bulletproof is exercise selection. With a few minor tweaks to your current training style you can get bigger and stronger, for longer.
First off you should start thinking about the strength of your smaller less superficial muscles. You can't be all ‘show’ without the ‘go’! Injury specialist Chris Stankiewicz weighs in:
Secondly, we should learn how to make smart exercise decisions when we are trying to hit larger muscle groups and produce as much force or muscle activation as possible.
Barbell lifts for example are excellent tools that can be used for a variety of goals. However, because of the fixed stiffness of the bar the joints are often not as free to move as they should be. The same could be said for doing chin ups on a fixed bar. They can be a good exercise but there is limited freedom of movement around multiple joints, resulting in sheer forces in the elbows that cause wear and tear over time.
This is not to say you should cut barbell movements or chin ups from your program, on the contrary they can be excellent movements. But there needs to be the right balance in your program of risk versus reward. The reward is based on your goals, and the risk is based on the potential long-term impact that exercise has on your body.
As an example, a barbell bench press has massive reward to a powerlifter or someone training for the NFL scouting combine. It is also a good overall builder of upper body strength and size. But for the latter there are equally as good choices to build up your upper body while being a little more shoulder-friendly.
Overuse of fixed-plane machines can be another problem. This is because they fix the direction your body is moving in. Machines serve a purpose for building muscle but fall short in many other categories. They undertrain the stabilizer muscles, while potentially exposing certain joints to unnatural positions.
Getting the right balance of exercises is the key to any good program in the long run, and there are a few simple changes you can make to your routine to feel an immediate difference.
Put It to PracticeAlways consider the cost-benefit ratio to you of any given exercise. Ego aside, if you cannot justify the risk versus reward of an exercise you are using right now, then why are you using it?
Get out of fixed plane and sagittal plane movements. Include more exercises in the frontal and transverse planes where you are most likely much weaker. For example, more lateral and rotational movements.
Include more unilateral movements. That is not to say you should be balancing on one leg all the time, but a few times a week throwing in some single-arm or single-leg work will allow greater focus on strength imbalances and working some smaller stabilizer muscles in the hips and shoulders.
Do not neglect the muscles you can not see. Those little muscles provide stability around your valuable joints, and a support system for your bigger muscles to do their thing. Focus on your pulling muscles a little more to ensure good balance of strength in your shoulders, as well as posture.
No amount of stretching or pre-hab will undo the damage of a poorly designed workout. Choose better exercises to start off with, then use pre-hab and targeted mobility work to further bulletproof your body.
The best time to start training smarter is today, the second-best time is tomorrow!
Fitness via Breaking Muscle https://ift.tt/1hdUh1E December 11, 2018 at 09:17AM
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