“Bodybuilding Sins” That Cause Back Pain and Missed Workouts: Part 5
Welcome to article number five in our 5-part series
“Bodybuilding Sins That Cause Back Pain and Missed Workouts”. In
this article we are going to cover some basic, yet powerful
training principles that are often overlooked and are
responsible for nearly all bodybuilding injuries… If you missed
any of the previous articles, you can view them using the links
below. Here’s a breakdown of the articles to look for: 1.
Article #1 – Choosing The WRONG Exercises 2. Article #2 -
Training Variations for Pain Relief and Maximum Results 3.
Article #3 – Targeted Stretching 4. Article #4 – Targeted
Exercises 5. Article #5 – Rest, Recovery, and Injury Prevention
Article #5 – Rest, Recovery and Injury Prevention Many of the
injuries that bodybuilders suffer from could be easily prevented
just by allowing the body enough time to rest… While most
bodybuilders dread hearing the word “rest”, many fail to realize
that there is far more to rest than just avoiding overtraining.
When you perform a tough workout you not only stress that muscle
or muscle group, you also place stress on the cardiovascular,
neuromuscular and components of the immune system… For example,
many bodybuilders will train their chest 2-3 times a week and
spend an hour or more performing dozens of exercises just for
the pecs… While this may sound ok to some, when you add in the
stress of other workouts it can quickly add up to too much
stress in one or more ways. I hear bodybuilders all the time say
“I let my body rest by splitting up my workouts” and “I worked
chest yesterday so today I’ll train my back”… that’s NOT rest!
When you train your back, your chest still gets worked, stressed
and it also slows down your bodies ability to recover from
stress and repair damage from previous workouts… So don’t kid
yourself and think that you can train this way over the long
term… it may take years or just a few weeks, but sooner or later
your body will break down! Let me give you a real life example
from my experience… I, like nearly every single bodybuilder out
there, created muscle imbalance unknowingly by following the
workouts recommended in all the books, magazines, etc… I trained
4,5 and sometimes even 6 days a week and thought that I was
resting enough by splitting my workouts… to make a long story
short, after just a few years I had tendonitis in both triceps
because I worked chest, tri’s and shoulder too often, too
intensely and didn’t balance out my training… I also had lower
and middle back pain, knee problems and IT band tendonitis
because my lower body workouts weren’t balanced… I spent too
much time doing heavy squatting, too often and neglected
important muscles… These injuries stayed with me for months,
years and I still can have an occasional flare up if I don’t
stay consistent with a balanced training program. I was able to
create all this damage by the age of 22… I am now 28 and will
have to spend the rest of my life trying to prevent these old
injuries from coming back and causing more pain and problems…
Don’t do what I did! And if you already have, you better act
fast and take a serious look at your training and your goals
because if you don’t, you will spend the rest of your life in
pain and frustrated by all the injuries, big and small. So
here’s my… 5-Step Formula for Quickly Eliminating and Preventing
Aches, Pains and Injuries Step 1. Rest and Recovery The first
thing you need to do is REST! And no, I don’t mean take a day or
two off… I mean no workouts for at least a week or more… you
need to give your body a chance to reduce the inflammation
before you can begin work on eliminating or correcting the cause
of the problem. You may also want to use things like a heating
pad, hot tub or massage to help reduce the inflammation and
speed up the healing and recovery… Step 2. Identify Muscle
Imbalances The next thing you need to do is find out which
muscle imbalances have created your injury or are causing your
pain and work towards correcting them… you can do this quickly
and easily by performing physical assessments in which you are
looking for strength and flexibility imbalances in all opposing
muscle groups. You can do these assessments yourself and they
are covered in our Lose the Back Pain Video
http://www.losethebackpain.com Step 3. Increase Flexibility in
Tight Muscles with Targeted Stretching In order to correct a
muscle imbalance, you need to increase the flexibility and range
of motion in the muscles that are too tight and causing a
problem. As we discussed in the previous articles, you have got
to know what muscles NEED to be stretched before you start
stretching. General stretching may or may not help… it may even
make things worse! You have got to target the right areas and
the only way to ensure that you are, is to do assessments and
find out. Step 4. Strengthen Weak Muscles with Targeted Strength
Exercises The other major step in correcting muscle imbalances
is to strength the weak muscles that are being overpowered by
the strong and tight opposing muscle(s). The same is also true
for strengthening… you have to make sure that you choose the
right exercises and the only way to know for sure is thru
assessments… don’t use guesswork when choosing exercises! Step
5. Monitor and Modify Your Program The key to long term pain
relief and injury prevention is to consistently monitor your
progress and adjust your program… for example, as you work on
correcting and preventing muscle imbalances the strength and
flexibility of your muscles will change and therefore, you must
then re-assess and change your program and workouts accordingly.
You will typically see changes in your strength, flexibility and
bio-mechanics in as little as 2-4 weeks so I recommend that you
re-assess yourself at least every 4-6 weeks. So there you have
it… 5 simple steps that you can take right now to work on
eliminating any pain or injuries you currently have AND make
sure you never create any new ones to deal with in the future.
Following these steps will not only help you eliminate aches,
pains and injuries and it will also allow you to train more
intensely and productively to get you the results you want. Hope
you enjoyed and benefited from this article series and we look
forward to hearing of your success.
