11 Training Principles that Will Save Your Joints
What do you view the gym as?
For some it is a place to push your boundaries, others a place to “keep fit” or even a place to “keep healthy”, build muscle, gain confidence, grow or perhaps even a sports arena to compete against others and illustrate your strength.
At the Body Engineers we see the gym primarily as a place to OPTIMIZE. It is a place to re-build, re-balance, develop strength and gain confidence.
As a by-product you will reduce pain, improve performance and increase the size and strength of your physique.
It is a place to optimize what you have, strengthen weak areas and understand yourself internally (more on this in a minute).
You could say it is a place to push yourself, in a controlled environment, without compromising your joints and ultimately your health.
This is a delicate balance that is often, unfortunately, not respected; frequently we push ourselves in the gym without control and awareness of what we are actually doing which is far from healthy. There is a time and a place for that, of course, but the gym is not one of them!
You could say the gym is generally associated with external things such as how your muscles look, the number of reps you achieved or the amount of weight you lifted.
However, the gym should primarily be about internals; where you feel it, how does it feel, developing mind-muscle connection and strengthening weak areas - which requires a lot of mindfulness.
This allows you to expand your ability to perform everyday tasks, play sport or do whatever you want outside of the gym whilst increasing your confidence and body image. And that is the goal isn’t it?
It allows you to do the things you love to do for as long as possible, whether that be playing with your grandchildren pain free, being a great role model for your kids, being able to play the sport you love until you are 60 or 70 years old or being able to weight train and keep in great shape into your 90s.
Life is too short to not take care of your body.
The Top 7 Principles
At the Body Engineers we see the gym in a similar way to taking your car in for a service. It ensures that you don’t break down on the road and enhances your longevity.
As mentioned earlier, the gym is unfortunately often used as a racetrack rather than an “body service centre” or “optimization lab”.
When we are racing, all we care about is the finish line, reaching a certain weight or hitting a certain number of reps. And we will do that at all costs and for the sacrifice of our body?! Yet the gym should be place tune your body so that it can last and outperform when it really matters!
Our bodies require regular servicing because we use it all the time.
In order to optimize all the individual parts of your body, so that you can look, perform and most importantly feel, as best as possible, you need to train with mindfulness.
In order to achieve this, the Body Engineers, follows a defined set of training principles, which are outlined below:
Know your limits and train within them
Understand that we are all built differently and therefore we all have different ranges of motion. In order to train safely, you must understand your range of motion and train within it. Respect what you have and realise that your brain knows more about what is going on inside your joints than you consciously do. If you move within what you currently have available, it will open up on its own accord, if it can.
Warm-up
Warmup by performing the exercise you are about to perform. If you are about to bench press, you don’t need to warm up on the running machine, you need to warm up on the bench press! You need to allow your body to adjust its current settings to the specific task (i.e. muscle recruitment for the activity, range of motion, etc.).
Always train within the realm of control
This is one of the most important aspects when it comes to remaining injury free. If you are always in control of the weight (i.e. not wobbling around with the dumbbells in your hands, not bouncing the weight off your chest, etc.) you will enhance your strength, results and reduce your chance of future problems. If you can’t control the weight, reduce the skill level of the exercise or the weight so that you can.
Focus on muscle activation
You need to have idea of what you are targeting and to focus on feeling it. If you can’t feel it spend time, with lighter weights, to improve muscle activation.
Optimize muscle output
This means do everything you can to use the muscles you are trying to use and avoid using the muscles you are not trying to target. Minimize inertia and use as much support as possible. If you are focusing on balancing whilst performing the exercise, you will always be lifting less weight and that leads to reduced strength potential.
Don’t Multi-task
Don’t try to target too many muscles at once because you won’t be stimulating each muscle enough to illicit any significant change.
Watches the gauges not the finish line
Avoid any joint “stuff” at all times (i.e. avoid clicking, joint pain or anything that doesn’t feel like muscle contraction at all times!). If you get any of these issues the set is immediately over, regardless of how many reps have been completed.
Nothing should be pre-determined
Everything is based on the current status of the internals. Don’t mindlessly follow a pre-determined set of reps, if you can do more reps, do more reps (as long as you follow all the principles).
Minimize wear patterns
Regularly change the force direction and avoid doing the same exercises. This will avoid wearing out a specific area of your joint (think of a trodden grass path).
Micro-progression
Progress slowly and don’t try to lift too much too quickly.
Progressive overload
The exercise needs to bechallenging enough to elicit a response. You have to push yourself as hard as you can whilst following the above principles. This is very hard but will produce incredible results.
We understand that for most it is difficult to understand or follow these principles, which is why it is always best to hire a coach who can teach and demonstrate these principles.
If you have any questions leave a comment below or contact me directly!
Remember, BE Your Best You!
John