Keeping Your Fitness Resolutions?

Excerpt from "11 Things You Must Know if You Made a New Year's Resolution to Get Fit" on Huffington Post

Did you proclaim 2014 your year to get fit? Here are a few things you should absolutely know if you are going to really make that resolution stick.

Stretch, Stretch, Stretch it Out!

I don't think we place as much importance on stretching as we should. Stretching in itself is not some tree-hugging "let me just sit here and breathe" type of activity. If you exercise intensely and regularly, stretching can be pretty painful. That should tell you that your muscles get tenser and tenser and need a release, however painful or boring it might seem.

Preventing Post-Exercise Soreness

For those who have recently started working out, the excitement of exercise is sometimes trumped by the muscle pain you feel the next morning. I have had several readers ask me the infamous question: "How do I get rid of post-workout muscle soreness?"

There are two types of muscle pain, and they should be treated differently. There is the pain you feel during or immediately after your workout. That pain is either your muscles telling you they have done some hard work, or your body telling you you might need to slow down. Then there is the more popular pain; the one that slaps you in the face when you wake up the next morning (or sometimes, even a couple of days later). This type of pain is called DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness).

DOMS is caused by tiny tears in your muscle fibers when you have really pushed your body hard, or when you do something new and different. As you keep doing the same exercises more, your body gets used to it and you start to notice less pain. However, if you switch up your exercise routines a lot, you don't give your body adequate time to get too used to anything. This is not a bad thing because to stay fit and lose weight, you usually need to switch up your exercise routine consistently. 

So it's a Catch-22, right? If you don't work hard, or if you do the same things over and over, you'll end up not getting sore. However, you need to work hard and switch your exercise up to reach your goals. So what do you do? The good news is that there are steps you can take to lessen or prevent the pain.

Warm Up: It sounds cliché, but warming up is really important to protect your muscles and joints, and to avoid getting too sore after your workout. What is the best way to warm up? Do something very similar to what you would be doing during your workout, but just do it slower and with less force for about 5 to 10 minutes. For example, if you'd be running, walk for a few minutes first. If you'd be kickboxing, start with very light punches and kicks. It is important to use the same muscles you'd be using so that the body gets used to the motion.

Cool down: This is the same theory as warming up. It gives your body a chance to slow down and get back into the regular motion. Also do it for about 5 to 10 minutes, possibly longer if you worked out for a couple of hours.

Stretch: You have heard this a lot, but stretching help reduce the pain as it is actually part of the cool down process, allowing your muscles to relax. It is like a mini-massage to ease muscle tension. When you workout, you put a lot of tension on your muscles, and so stretching just helps remove some of that tension. You've probably noticed some things called foam rollers at the gym. These are great to help relieve muscle tension. If you have the money and time to get a massage, go for that instead :)

Ease into a routine: Most folks that want to lose weight are tempted to just jump in and do as much as they could possibly do. However, it is important to give your muscles time to get used to activity, especially if you're been pretty sedentary. If you hurt yourself, you can't work out anyway, right? 

However, even with these, if your are experiencing pain that lasts longer than usual, the procedure is to ice it, and then call a doctor. Contrary to popular belief, indirect ice (frozen veggies, etc.) works better on muscle pain than heat.

Cheers Eights & Weights!

Photo credit: TheKoiExperience.com

Running Through Pain

There are mostly two kinds of people. Well, okay, there are three. There are the people who are afraid of discomfort and so won't try to work out or would try and then give up; there are the folks who set moderate targets and stay in the middle lane, just to make sure they are working out on a regular basis; and there are the folks who try to push their bodies hard every time. If you are Type 3, that's fantastic, but you see how that could turn out to be a problem.

Our bodies need some sort of balance. Pushing them hard makes us feel good in the end, but it could also hurt us. If you are a Type 3 person, you're probably ignoring pain as you run. And if you are a Type 2 (and maybe Type 1) person, the moment any sort of pain hits, you may decide to give up. So where's the balance?

Well, the big question you need to ask yourself is: what is the level of pain I am feeling? We like to talk of the runners' high, but we fail to mention that it takes a bit to get there. When you begin any run, you usually feel mild pain as your muscles are still a little tight and trying to get used to the motion. The mild pain is more like discomfort, and it should be nothing you can't easily keep your mind off. For me, it tends to either move around different spots of my body, or stay in the tightest areas. This kind of mild pain should usually be at the beginning of your run or when you start to increase your speed. It should slowly subside as you get into a groove.

The second type of pain is moderate. Moderate pain is pain that you can't really take your mind off, but you know you can finish through. It is mostly caused by runners trying to push themselves. It is not a bad thing, but it is your body's way of telling you that you are stressing it out a bit. We all know what kind of pain we feel on a regular basis, and so we should be able to tell when we are experiencing above normal pain. For me, I may start to feel this kind of pain towards the end of a run probably because I'm running a longer distance or a hillier terrain. When it is towards the end, you can decide whether to push through it or not.

The last type of pain is intense. It is usually difficult to focus on anything else with this type of pain, and it could even affect your running posture. Some Type 3 people push themselves through this pain because they don't want anything to interfere with their training. However, it is important to take a step back with intense pain and rest your muscles. It really is your body's way of saying "Okay, I'm done". If the pain persists beyond regular muscle soreness, you should probably ice your muscles and see a doctor.

What type of pain have you experienced during your runs?

Cheers Eights & Weights!

Photo credit: Coreperformance.com