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September 2, 2009
It’s the morning after you started your new workout program and you wake up feeling fantastic. Until you move. All of a sudden you’re aware of EVERY muscle in your body, plus a few you didn’t know you had.
 I know we’re all familiar with that seemingly inevitable muscle soreness that comes with changing your workout routine. It usually presents itself 24 to 48 hours after you exercise, deviously drawing out the suspense of what you know lies ahead. This delayed onset is typical of this type of soreness, and the pain dissipates rather quickly after another one or two days.
The worst part about delayed-onset muscle soreness (often called “DOMS”) is that you never know how much pain you’ll be in, so it is difficult to gauge how much to push yourself in your first workout. Push too hard and you’re certain to regret it that next morning, especially if you’re new to exercise. Yet muscle soreness isn’t just for new exercisers. Experienced athletes fall victim to it every time they increase the frequency or intensity of their strength training, or when they add new exercises.
Treatment
Although prevention is really the best treatment (continue reading below), there are a few things you can do at home that will help alleviate muscle soreness. I would start with the RICE principle (rest, ice, compression, and elevation). Ice, in particular, has proven to be useful for some in dulling the pain. Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medications (Ibuprofen and Aleve are good examples) can also help with pain and inflammation within the muscle fibers.
Most importantly, continue to move and exercise when you’re sore. You shouldn’t perform the same routine that caused soreness, but you should spend at least 20-30 minutes doing low-impact cardio such as walking or biking. This loosens up the muscles, gets blood and nutrients flowing more freely to the muscle fibers, and can minimize the level and/or duration of muscle soreness that you will experience. When you’re ready to try strength training again, make sure you’re thoroughly warmed-up beforehand. Try running through a couple exercises without weight before you add resistance back in.
Remember that muscle soreness is common and natural, but prolonged pain is NOT. If you continue to feel pain for more than a week, consult your physician.
Prevention
Because of the unpredictability of DOMS, it’s always a good idea to be cautious when beginning a new workout routine. Prevention is the best treatment. I recommend that my clients not complete the entire program the first day (and sometimes the whole first week or two).
Continue reading “What To Do About Sore Muscles” »
August 26, 2009
Q: I have to stand all day at work for 13 hour shifts. Are there any simple exercises or stretches I can do just to keep myself in shape? I’m so tired by the time I get home that I don’t have the energy to work out!
A: Although it  may seem effortless, standing all day requires strength and stamina – which is why leg fatigue and back aches are very common for people employed in such occupations. Retail, food service, construction, landscape, education, and medicine are just a few of the major employment sectors that involve standing for long periods of time during the workday. Fortunately, there are several things you can do to improve your strength and reduce that end-of-day fatigue.
Focus on Strengthening Your Legs First
Exercise has the wonderful ability to increase both your energy levels and the flow of oxygen and nutrients throughout your body. If you are consistently working out (at least 3 times per week), then you are already helping to strengthen and energize your body for your strenuous job. If whole exercise sessions are difficult to work into your schedule, then try to incorporate just 10-15 minutes of strengthening exercises each day. Four 15-minute segments in a week equals two half-hour sessions – which is plenty of time to achieve strength gains, especially if you’re new to exercise.
During your workouts, focus on lower body strengtheners such as lunges, squats, romanian deadlifts, leg curls, leg extensions, calf raises, wall sits, hip bridges, etc. Lunges and squats, in particular, are two of the best lower body exercises in the book. They strengthen and tone everything below the waist!
(Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures of these exercises to post. Eventually I’ll be able to post examples, but until then, check out the exercise library at NASMPro for animated illustrations).
Then Strengthen Your Core
Core strength is THE most important aspect of fitness, yet it is often the weakest link in a person’s muscular structure. Most sedentary adults are chained to a desk 5 days a week, where core strength and postural awareness get overshadowed by looming deadlines and a high-stress environment. Having a strong core will not only allow you to function better (both at your desk and away from it), it will help prevent back and leg pain as you get older and less active. This is especially true if your job requires you to be on your feet all day!
The best core strength exercises to include in your routine are: Continue reading “How To Avoid Leg Fatigue From Standing” »
August 10, 2009
When it comes to your fitness program, more is not always better. Just as it’s important to exercise your body on a regular basis, it’s also critical to allow your body time to recover from those strenuous workouts. Now I realize you’re thinking, I just got myself motivated to GO to the gym, and now you want me to take time off?!? But trust me, even one day off each week will give your body the time it needs to repair muscle damage, refuel energy stores, and everything else it needs in order to give you the results you want. That’s right – if you don’t let your body rest from its training, your results will suffer… along with your performance, your muscle strength, your energy, etc. And if you continuously deprive yourself of rest between workouts, you put yourself at risk of developing overtraining syndrome.
What Is Overtraining Syndrome (OTS)?
Exercise has a myriad of health benefits, from lowering blood pressure and cholesterol to increasing energy and reducing risk of injury. Ironically though, too much exercise will cause the opposite to occur. With overtraining syndrome, you could experience a higher resting heart rate, higher blood pressure, less energy, more injuries… the list goes on. You fall victim to overtraining when you continuously exercise in excessive amounts without planned recovery time. This behavior will inevitably lead to injury, chronic fatigue, and a host of other symptoms that not only hurt your performance, but will require time off to recover from.
One such consequence of overtraining syndrome is the overuse injury. As the name implies, this type of injury occurs from repetitive movements performed over an extended period of time. Although not always associated with overtraining, an overuse injury can be a preliminary sign to step back from your training a little. Overuse injuries can also be caused by muscle imbalances or inflexibility that have gone unchecked or by training too hard for your fitness level. Examples here would include runner’s knee, swimmer’s shoulder, tennis elbow, shin splints, tendonitis, and IT band syndrome. If you are suffering from an overuse injury, allow yourself time to heal with plenty of rest, icing of the injured area, and cross-training with different activities.
What Causes Overtraining Syndrome?
Overtraining is usually caused by one of these situations: 1) not enough planned recovery time in a training program, 2) too much high-intensity training, 3) increasing the intensity or frequency of your training too quickly (a good guideline is to increase your workout intensity by no more than 5 to 10% at a time), or 4) a combination of too much training, too much stress, and too little sleep – all of which have an impact on your body’s ability to rest, repair, and recover.
A carefully designed program must include adequate recovery time, during which your muscles build strength, heal minor tissue damage, synthesize proteins, and refuel. The length of time required is determined by the type and intensity of your workout and your individual fitness level. This is the central reason why strength training is done on non-consecutive days; the body needs about 48 hours to rest and repair before you challenge it again.
Signs & Symptoms
So how do you know if you’re overtraining?
Continue reading “Overtraining: Too Much of a Good Thing” »
May 18, 2009
Q: What is lactic acid? Why does it cause that “burn”?
A: The simplest answer is that lactic acid is a byproduct of anaerobic ATP production. But let’s backtrack a little and review some exercise physiology to put that definition into context…
A cell can produce energy in one of two ways: with or without the presence of oxygen. If there is an adequate supply of oxygen to your cells (regardless of your activity – sleeping, typing, walking, running, etc), then your cells are involved in aerobic energy production. Your cells are actively utilizing fat stores, sugar stores, and oxygen to produce ATP (short for the molecule adenosine triphosphate). Think of ATP as your cells’ battery power.
Example: You are attempting to lift a dumbbell into a bicep curl. First, your body needs fat, sugar, and oxygen in order to produce ATP molecules. The new ATP is used to drive the muscle contraction in the bicep muscle, allowing you to curl the weight. Realistically, this occurs on a much grander scale, but you get the idea…
 In aerobic energy systems, water and carbon dioxide are the byproducts of the chemical reaction that creates ATP. Both compounds are easy for the body to utilize or eliminate, thus aerobic energy production does not lead to muscle fatigue.
On the other hand, sometimes your body is unable to extract enough oxygen from the blood to continue the high demand for ATP production. Now you begin to exercise anaerobically, or without oxygen. This is often the case during vigorous workouts, sprints, heavy weight lifting – basically whenever the intensity at which you are exercising exceeds the available oxygen. This upper limit of sustainable aerobic exercise usually corresponds with a heart rate elevated above 50-85% of maximum heart rate, and is referred to as the anaerobic threshold (sometimes called the lactate threshold).
Continue reading “A Burning Question About Lactic Acid” »
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