Tag Archives: personal story

Take it Easy: Avoid Injury: Get Better Gains

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At the gym the other day I was doing some bench presses. I wasn’t doing anything too heavy and I was pretty confident I’d be fine. My routine was going to be ten reps and five sets at about 60% of my one rep max. I got about five or six reps into my fourth set and things started getting harder. I wanted to finish out the set, so I pushed myself through the grind and around the ninth rep, I felt my should pop out a bit. I had a spotter and had them reset the weight on the bench for me. I didn’t push anymore. I just packed up and went home. I hadn’t made it anywhere near my full time in the gym.

There was one thing I did right that day and one thing I did wrong. I’ll start with what I did wrong. I pushed myself hard enough to actually aggravate my shoulder. It ended up setting me back a bit because it was sore for three or so days afterward.  Because it was my shoulder, it kept me from doing most upper body workouts for those three days. You don’t need to hit that ‘grind’ every time to see gains. You can very easily see progress just going until your breathing or form change. Stop there and avoid injury.

I was talking with a guy at the gym a few months back and he was telling me about his bench pressing story. He is currently going to the gym to rehab an injury to his elbow. I guess he had been pushing about 400 pounds on his one rep max during his normal routine and was trying to push forward to 405 pounds. He hit the grind at 405 and tried to will himself through it. He ended up ripping the tendon in his elbow from the bone, which set him back significantly. He’s now doing 375 pounds on a bench press, more than three years later.

What I did right: I stopped as soon as I knew I had pushed too far. I didn’t keep going on benches or even any other exercises and that ultimately let me get back into the routine much quicker. I just bailed out, went home, and rested myself. By doing that I was able to stay on track and push my quest for fitness forward.

I’m not saying don’t push yourself. That’s not what this is all about. I’m saying don’t push yourself too hard. Know your body, and be patient. You can’t add five pounds to your one rep max every week. Eventually your gains will slow down or even plateau. Embrace that and be careful while you’re doing it. You could cause yourself a few days, or worse end up in the hospital, if you push too hard. This is about being healthy, not about how much weight you can life, so you can show off to your friends.

Have you ever injured yourself while working out? How bad was it? Did you recover? How long did it set you back? I want to hear your story.

Interview: Mike T Nelson

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Mike Nelson runs ExtremeHumanPerformance.com and has some great insights on metabolic flexibility and health in general. Here’s an interview I did with him:

Background

Mike is a PHD Candidate for Exercise Science and Kinesiology. His research topic is metabolic flexibility.

He was working for a BA of Natural Science and a BS in Mechanical Engineering from The College of St. Scholastica in Duluth, MN. He only got the BA of Natural Science before moving on to Michigan Tech, where he did two years of post graduate work in Mechanical Engineering. He later went to graduate school there and received a Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering after 8 years. Most of his classwork was in biomechanics engineering.

From college he went to work for a medical device company, which would pay for additional college courses after he was there a couple years. Mike took classes in exercise physiology because it was interesting to him (even his vacations). He ended up joining their PhD program about 6 years ago in bio-mechanical engineering.

Metabolic Flexibility

Your metabolism should be flexible. Certain people may be flexible or inflexible to certain nutrients like carbohydrates or fats.  When you’re flexible towards carbohydrates, you’re more likely to consume carbohydrates more easily as an energy source.  The same goes for fats. Outside of a lab, you can test your flexibility with carbohydrates by consuming large amounts of carbohydrates and seeing how you feel afterward.  You can do the same with fats.

Great Questions

Minimal Effective Amount: What is the minimal amount you can do to get the maximum effect?

If you’re really healthy, shouldn’t you be able to take more abuse in terms of foods, odors, and germs instead of the other way around?

Working with Pain

Make minor movements in the injured part of your body to where you feel resistance, but not pain.  Pay attention to your range of motion and gains over time. Your brain will learn again over time that moving in that way shouldn’t be painful, and it won’t be. When you start getting a larger range of motion back without pain, start adding speed and weight to the motion to increase the intensity of the movement.

Biofeedback

The most common way of biofeedback during exercise is the range of motion test where you reach for your knees and stop when you feel strain. I’ve done a post on that here. High quality movement will allow your body to move better. Doing exercises that improve your mobility, in general, will perform better and give you better gains.  You should test your range of motion between each exercise every day because your body changes every day.

Personal Records Every Day (#PREveryDay)

There are three metrics affected by exercise.  Those are: volume, density, and intensity. Volume is the total number of pounds you pushed during your workout. Density is just that volume divided by the amount of time you spent doing it. Intensity is the percentage of your one rep maximum. You should strive to set a personal record in your exercises every day.

Measuring Body Fat

The most accurate way to test your body fat is using a Bod Pod. There are other ways to measure your body fat like skin caliper readings, hydrostatic weight, waist/arm measurements, and taking pictures. Taking pictures and waist/arm are the most effective for people trying to casually lose weight or look better because those are more in line with their actual goals anyways.  You’d be surprised at the changes you’ll see in your physique when you actually document it.

Thank You

Thank you for reading or listening, or both. What did you think? If you enjoyed this interview, show your support by subscribing via email or RSS. You can leave a comment below as well.

Who is James Thompson?

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I am the author of this blog.  I’m a self-proclaimed geek from Morrisville, Vermont. I don’t have any medical or fitness training, but in my own quest to seek personal wellness, I’ve discovered some things along the way and wanted to share them with the world. I started posting my findings here, and the rest is history.

Background

I was born in Plattsburg, New York to Darwin and Ramona Thompson.  My father was in the military and I moved around a lot when I was a child.  I moved from Plattsburg to Omaha, Nebraska.  From there I did a stint in Panama City, Florida and then moved on to Chugiak, Alaska.  I lived in Alaska for ten years, where my parents divorced. I moved to Poquoson, Virgina in 6th grade, and my mother stayed in Alaska.  My father, originally from Vermont, moved back there a few years after he retired from the military in 1998.  I went to high school in Vermont and have been there ever since.  I graduated in 2002.

I went to college at Johnson State College of Vermont, and majored in business with concentrations in accounting, management, and marketing.  While I was still in college, I started Acute Technology, a business doing IT work for local companies.  The business flourished.  I bought out my partner in 2008, and have been developing the business ever since.

I married my lovely wife Michelle in 2005 and we’ve been happily married ever since.  She keeps me in line when I need to be and lets me pursue my ideas when the time is right.

Fitness and Me

My friends throughout high school and college always called me “Anorexia the Hungry” because I could eat intense amounts of food and stay thin as a rail.  That all changed shortly after high school. Sometime around when I was 18 I began to gain a noticeable amount of weight, and it didn’t stop until I decided to do something about it when I was 24.

The catalyst that made me realize I had a problem was when I was taking an exam for life insurance for my company and wasn’t in the highest bracket of health – which is where a 24 year old male should be. I bartered some of my computer expertise to a local gym and began to get back in shape.  I lost about 30 pounds over the course of 6 months and everything was going great – until the gym closed.

Shortly after the gym shut down, I fell back into my old habits – eating at McDonalds, chicken wing eating contests, and beer. Lots and lots of beer.  Before I knew it, I had gained the 30 pounds back and then some.  I weighed almost 240 pounds at my peak.  I’m 6’2″, so that isn’t horrible, but it also isn’t healthy.

In 2010 I started to research being fit again and started to get my fitness under control.  Posting here has been my motivation for staying on track.  I want to chronicle my journey and let people know what is and isn’t working. Because I’m a geek, I like to get into the science of why things do and don’t work.

I’m not an expert on diet, exercise, or fitness, so some of the things I say may or may not be 100% correct, but I’m calling it as I see it.  You have all of the permission in the world to call BS on anything I say.  I want to learn from this.

I look forward to connecting with you, because I truly care.  Please let me know about your journey.