Intensity Without Injury

Have you tweaked your back in the weight room? Do your knees get sore from running too much? How about that shoulder? Any pain when you press dumbbells over your head?

These are very common obstacles to getting into great shape. But they’re often the result of some easy-to-reverse conditions. Correcting those aspects of your exercise program can make reaching your ideal body a reality. Here are three problems I see with many of my more fit clients when we start and how to fix them so we can step up the ferocity, and the effectiveness, of their program:

· Tight lower body muscles – This is the most frequent weakness I see with new clients, especially those who have worked out regularly without direction. Short, rigid hamstrings (the back of the thighs) hips and sometimes gluteal muscles (your bottom) can all contribute to overloading the low spine for forward bends, lateral leans and rotations at the waist. Even knees can be beaten up by a misalignment of the lower body. The Fix? Stretch the hips, glutes, quads and hamstrings, gently but consistently until, while lying on your back, you can get your straight leg vertical and your crossed-over shin (over your opposing quadriceps when both knees are at a 90 degree angle) within six inches of your chest. Quad stretches are important too but tight quads are usually less of a contributing factor to back and lower body soreness.

· Unbalanced pushing/pulling muscles – I see more shoulder problems with male clients than female clients. I think it's because the women I’ve worked with generally value flexibility more than men and they don’t as often overwork the “showcase” muscles (chest and biceps) compared to their counterparts (back and triceps, respectively). When you do this, the shoulder girdle (system of muscles that stabilize the shoulder and allow it to apply force) wears unevenly, like a car’s front end out of alignment wears your tires unevenly. Except this is connective tissue and muscle that gets inflamed, so it hurts and gets worse when you keep doing what caused it in the first place. It’s even worse when you do explosive lifts, quick stops (or bounces) or take the joint close to its range limit. The Fix? Do a similar workload of pulls and pushes (number of reps, sets and comparable loads), similar workload for biceps and triceps and an even amount of work for the front and back of the shoulder, for instance, alternating upright rows with dumbbell shoulder presses.

· Bad programming for high-intensity – Many modes of high-intensity training completely ignore the need to distribute work evenly among the joints (including varying directions of force), rely on highly repetitive asymmetrical movement patterns and involve unnecessarily high impact and joint stress as a means to get in peak condition. Those are the activities that change your focus from performance to who’s going to be the next person to sign your cast. The Fix? After correcting the conditions above, Make sure your high intensity training work loads the body evenly (upper, lower, left, right, pushes and pulls), varies and balances the movement patterns and doesn’t create high-volume, abrupt joint stress.

If you aren’t sure what qualifies as a well-designed and executed high-intensity program, you may well be pointing yourself toward the emergency room. A lot can go right before it finally goes wrong if the issues above are out-of-whack. If you do want to pursue a very high intensity pathway to elite conditioning, I strongly recommend printing out this article and taking it to a qualified, experienced fitness trainer who comes well-recommended and reviewed and discuss these specific issues with him or her.

Or you can always contact me. I’ll make sure you do it right and learn how to keep doing it right.

Dan Taylor, ACE, NASM-CPT, is owner and head trainer at Pleasanton-based Tri Valley Trainer. They offer personal training and small group fitness solutions and an innovative, medically endorsed web-based group healthy eating coaching program.