Five Golden Rules of Workout

1. Don’t overdo it

If you have been working hard at the gym with little success, yet you persist in pushing your body week after week, an injury is just waiting to happen. If you have learned how to put in maximum effort, then you should also learn the art of “backing off”. According to the iron guru Vince Gironda, “Over enthusiasm is the most dangerous virtue of an athlete.” Avoid overtraining, you should listen to your body and give it the time it needs for optimum rest.

2. Consistency is the key

I have met parents who tell me that they are sending their children to the gym because it’s summer holiday time and they need to be kept busy. But for the rest of the year, these kids are inactive as they just study, eat and sleep. Now will you expect your kid to do well in their exams if they study for just one month in a year? Same is the case with physical training. Just like other fields, physical training requires consistency. Likewise, all those would-be brides and grooms who think a 30 day package at a slimming centre is all they need to lose weight permanently, are deluding themselves. You can’t have breaks throughout the year and see progress, you have to train consistently.

3. Progressive overload

The primary principle of exercise physiology is progressive overload. If you embark on a journey of strength training and fitness, you should be improving consistently both in terms of muscle strength and endurance, depending on your goals. This can be in various ways such as increasing the number of reps or the amount of weight lifted or cutting down on rest between sets.

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4. Form comes first

Lifting weights is important, but lifting heavy barbells with poor form is equally dangerous. You do lifting exercises to improve your strength, not to impress the girl on the treadmill. In a gym, you will find two types of people—those who give no attention to their form and those who pay too much attention to it. For example, their form in some movements such as the deadlift is so poor that an injury is just bound to happen. On the other extreme, isolation movements like barbell drag curls are done with such strict form that people are stuck lifting the same weight for months, as they aren’t ready to compromise on form. I am not telling you to let your form deteriorate, but just to loosen up a little in the event that you are not improving. Loosening up your technique doesn’t mean using excessive momentum though. What you could do is in every four sets of barbell curls, try one or two sets of cheat curls and see if that makes any difference to how much you can lift.

5. Focus on the basics

Today, the market is flooded with new techniques and products which claim to make you leaner, more muscular and more athletic. Most of these claims are not only false but may even affect your performance negatively. Combining exercises from different sports like Crossfit does nothing to improve your performance but only brings you a step closer to injury. A traditional Crossfit workout combines Olympic lifts with plyometrics in a single session, a recipe for disaster. Any exercise can improve your heart rate and burn calories, but they may do nothing to improve your performance and could, in fact, impede it. So focus on the basics. If you want to develop strength in legs, first learn to squat before doing anything else. If you want strength in the upper body, first learn how to do bench press, parallel bar dips, pull-ups and rows before moving on to the more fancy stuff.

So the next time you are working out, keep these five golden rules in mind to ensure optimum results.

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The main challenge that I find in treating injuries within this ‘gym-going’ population is that it is not a uniform group of individuals. People of every age group—from teenagers to seniors—and of every body type—slim, athletic, overweight or morbidly obese—go to the gym for a variety of workouts. It is therefore important to classify these people into a few categories:

• Senior citizens
• Weight-loss aspirants and fitness enthusiasts
• Muscle-building aspirants
• Eager beavers wanting to achieve quick results

While there is a lot of overlap between these categories, the last category of people is found in abundance. They join a gym a few weeks before a wedding or some other important event with the aim to ‘look good’, and it is this faction that is most prone to getting injured.

Senior citizens

People above 60 usually go to the gym to maintain and improve their cardiac fitness. They mainly do exercises like walking on motorised treadmills, cycling or elliptical cross trainers.

Injuries in this group

Senior citizens have a lot of age-related wear and tear in their joints and spine that already creates a strain when they workout.

• Knee pain, back pain and shoulder impingement are the commonest problems seen in this group.
• Knee pain is usually aggravated knee arthritis and responds well to a treatment of Rest, Ice application, Compression and Elevation [commonly known as RICE]. However, if your knee pain is accompanied by swelling, it may be a sign of cartilage tear in the knee.
• Similarly, back pain is most often just an arthritic spine that has been aggravated due to strenuous activity and responds well to rest and ice fomentation. However, if it is accompanied by radiating leg pain and the RICE treatment doesn’t produce relief, consult a medical professional.
• Shoulder impingement is another common problem, especially amongst people who train with weights. Overhead elevation of the affected arm during exercise becomes painful with this condition. RICE therapy is the best way to treat this and your weight training should be suspended during the therapy. If there is weakness in the shoulder or you have severe pain, see your doctor immediately as it may be a sign of a torn tendon in the shoulder.
• Pain due to degenerative arthritis tends to improve with an increase in activity. However on rare occasions it can get aggravated.

Weight-loss aspirants and fitness enthusiasts

Weight-loss and fitness fanatics also tend to focus on cardio-centric workouts. Some of these people also do other routines like aerobics, Pilates and spinning.

Injuries in this group

Foot and ankle injuries are fairly common amongst gym enthusiasts. Ankle sprains, shin splints, Achilles tendonitis and plantar fasciitis are frequently seen injuries.

• Ankle sprain is due to a torn ankle ligament. Low grade sprains are treated by RICE therapy and taping the ankle. If you have severe swelling and an inability to bear weight on the injured leg, you should seek medical attention to rule out a fracture.
• Shin splints are pain in the shins, which occurs post workout. It is usually found in runners. To heal this type of injury, you need to have your running technique evaluated, as it might require modification along with a reduction in the intensity of your training.
• Achilles or heel pain is result of inflammation of the tendon due to repetitive workouts like running or skipping. Modification of training and reduction in intensity with proper rehab exercises usually works well for this type of injury.
• Knee injuries are common too. Usually Patello-femoral joint pain syndrome is the main culprit for knee pain. In this condition, the pain subsides after modification of your training and rehab exercises. Red flags to watch out for are: swelling in the knees and instability while walking, as these may indicate a torn cartilage and need surgery.

Muscle-building aspirants

People that fall into this category want to look like Sylvester Stallone, so they have long workout sessions.

Injuries in this group

Besides all the injuries mentioned above, people in this group are also prone to muscular strains of the thigh, calf, triceps and shoulder tendonitis.

• Unsurprisingly, foot fractures stemming from people accidentally dropping weights on their feet are one of the commonest injuries in this third group. This is because people continue to exercise despite being tired.
• Due to an aggressive regime, fitness buffs end up pulling different groups of muscles and experience severe pain. If the initial RICE therapy doesn’t improve symptoms, you should go to a doctor as most of these injuries need supervised rehabilitation.
• Also, rupturing of tendons like the Achilles tendon and high-grade muscle tears are seen in some people, especially the ones who abuse anabolic steroids to gain muscle mass. These are major injuries, which require immediate medical attention.

Eager beavers

Finally, the group of eager beavers are prone to all the injuries mentioned above. They also have the highest incidence of new injuries.

Injuries in this group

• Stress fracture to the legs and feet are common injuries in this group; these happen due to excessive running or skipping.
• Signs of a stress fracture are pain while applying pressure on the affected area and swelling. A stress fracture requires urgent medical intervention but it can be treated with extended rest and rehab. However, severe cases may need surgery.

How to stay injury-free

Staying injury-free is obviously the best way to make the most of your workout. You can prevent acute injuries by simply being safety conscious. Follow exercise progressions in a logical way and work with experienced trainers rather than attempting to exercise on your own—this will reduce injuries to a minimum. Other strategies are:

• Know how to appropriately use the mats, trampolines and other equipment, before embarking on your workout
• Do not goof around with the equipment
• Don’t workout when you are fatigued.

Injuries can happen in spite of precautions; but with the advances in sports medicine no injury can put a dent on your active life.

This was first published in the November 2014 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

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The term ‘aerobics’ has a very interesting history associated with it, which most people are unaware of. In the mid-1960s, a physician and now well-known author, Dr Kenneth Cooper gave the concept of aerobics to the world in his book The New Aerobics. The word wasn’t given a specific definition but just signified the presence of oxygen. Cooper linked the word aerobics to cardiovascular health, stating, “doing cardio would produce health benefits for the heart.” He also added, “aerobic and anaerobic are two separate systems,”—this separation is what most of us have come to believe and still do.

However, in the decades that followed, numerous research studies were done on this subject and almost all of them found the opposite to be the case. For example, in Body By Science, the authors Doug McGuff and John Little explained, “Aerobic machinery can only function through anaerobic pathways,” and that the two systems are not as separate as Dr Cooper believed them to be.

They also said that strength training, in fact, is the best way to train the heart, because it stimulates all the components of metabolism.

A very interesting point was put forward by Dr Al Sears from the Center of Health and Wellness in Florida, USA. He said that most people die from sudden heart attacks due to shock and not from a tired heart. So the best thing for most people would be to strengthen the heart in a way that it can withstand shocks, which is best done through resistance training. This is evident from the fact that all weightlifters, bodybuilders, throwers and sprinters have larger and stronger hearts compared to those of long-distance runners that are smaller and weaker. Now let’s have a look at the various reasons why aerobics doesn’t do what you always thought—and wanted—it to do.

That’s not fat you’re losing

Say, you burn 295 calories by doing an hour of cardio for seven days in a row. This would burn a total of 2065 calories in a week. Bravo, you feel good about yourself now, don’t you? Though how many calories does a pound [0.45 kilos] of fat have? Answer: over 3500 calories. So at the rate you were going, it would take you approximately 12 days to burn a pound of fat. The sad thing about this is that all those calories lost don’t just come from your stored fat, but from your muscles.

When you do cardio regularly, your body has two mechanisms which kick in…

One is a survival mechanism in which your body tries to deal with exercise stress by getting rid of all unwanted weight, which would allow it to go on for a longer time. And what does the body deem as ‘unwanted weight’? It’s your muscles. For proof, look at the body of a marathon runner and how it has adapted to the demands of his sport. While his body perceives muscle as dead weight and gets rid of it, it also stores all the body fat for future survival. This is the reason why marathon runners have a higher body fat percentage than a sprinter.

The second mechanism is the adaptation mechanism. This is the reason you stop getting results after a couple of weeks with the same amount of exercise as your body gets used to it and doesn’t burn as many calories as it once did.

Now, some might say that there are people who have lost weight from cardio but the question to ask is where was that weight lost from, body fat or muscles? This is why when an overweight person starts with excessive cardio, his fat starts hanging around his belly and arms as he loses the supporting muscle structure underneath. Competitive long distance runners are genetically gifted for such a sport and they practise that way because their sport requires it. If you want to compete in a marathon, please go ahead but just don’t take such an activity as the base for fitness.

Why muscle matters

So why shouldn’t you lose muscle mass and why is more of it better? The simple thing is that the more you have, the more effective your metabolism will be and the larger the number of calories burnt by the body at rest. And since, muscles are metabolically active, you might be glad to know that the body uses calories from your stored fat to maintain muscle mass. What this means is that you are burning fat even while you’re asleep!

The other good thing about training with weights is that you burn more calories after that kind of a workout than you would after doing cardio. So it’s not just about the calories you burn during the workout but about the calories you burn after it as well [the scientific term for this being Excess Post Exercise Oxygen Consumption or EPOC]. After your weightlifting session, your muscles break down and they get repaired by the body as you take in proper nutrition and rest. And it is while you rest that your body takes calories from fat to help rebuild your muscles.

The dangers of cardio

It isn’t just that cardio is ineffective; it is potentially harmful, what with the systematic stress it inflicts on the body. The human body is under more stress today than at any other time in history—be it from a polluted environment, erratic lifestyles or poor eating habits. This stress causes the formation of free radicals leading to inflammation, which has been proven as the major cause of all lifestyle diseases like type-2 diabetes, hypertension, heart ailments, arthritis, brain disorders, weakening of immune system, cancer etc. Excessive cardio is one of the leading causes of the rise in cortisol, a stress hormone, which promotes fat storage, protein catabolism and ageing. Cardio workouts are also one of the main reasons for overuse injuries. Strength training, on the other hand, improves muscle mass and bone density giving you strength and balance in the joints and, at the same time, increases your metabolism, which would otherwise slow down with age.

Women should lift too

If you go back in history, our grandmothers never went for a jog, nor did they do hundreds of crunches every day. However, they were still fit and active as a fiddle and ate their hearts out. The simple reason was that they were physically active the right way. By lifting buckets of water, washing clothes, carrying heavy bags for long distances, grinding wheat in a chakki [stonemill], fetching out water from wells, they were unwittingly performing heavy weight-bearing workouts.

However, women don’t have to go back in time or turn their backs on centuries of progress, they just have to visit their gym and lift weights! Remember that women have 15 – 20 times less testosterone than men, so they cannot build bulk or muscle shape even if they lift much heavier than any guy in the gym. What they are going to get with such a workout is pure fat burn, a toned body and glowing skin. Strengthened joints and a disease-free body are the other significant perks.

After reading this, it would seem like I completely hate cardio, but I don’t. All I am asking you to do is not engage in medium–intensity, long-distance cardio. High-intensity sprints or even moderate-intensity brisk walks are the best ways to target fat. If you want to jog or cycle for long distances, please do it if it makes you happy and if it opens you up to a healthy lifestyle. But just be informed that there are better—and safer—options.

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