Last week I read this post by Jason Feruggia ( „5 Things about Training That I Had to Learn The Hard Way“ click HERE) and I decided that it was a great idea for a topic. I am sure that no matter what you are doing, if you do it long enough and then you turn back, you will discover a lot of lessons, that you were stubbornly refusing to learn, until fate “slapped” you and forced you to learn, what you’ve been taught!
I bet that there is no need to mention, that there are way too many lessons, that I was forced to learn the hard way, if we keep in mind the fact that back in the days I was a real example for “stupid but stubborn”.
That’s why today I decided to share 5 lessons about training, that I had to learn the hard way.
1.Don’t skip core, stabilizing movements
I am not gonna lie to you! I hate planks, L-sits and every core movement out there. I find them to be boring and annoying. So back in the days, I often left them behind. Every time I promised myself that I will do them during my next training session. There is no need to say that when the next workout came, I promised the same thing for the next time. Thus, as a typical, contemporary representative of the human race, who used to have weak posterior chain and weak core muscles, I was just “working” hard on avoiding my weaknesses and thus making them bigger. So the imbalance I had, assisted by my anteriorly tilted posture, just made my lower back pain stronger. Until the day, when the pain was so strong, that I hardly managed to get in my car and go to the therapist. Then I decided that I should perform all movements, no matter how annoying they were, in order to fix the imbalance and improve my posture.
The lesson I learned is that there is no room for favorite movements in the gym. When you walk in the gym, you should emphasize on exercises which make you stronger and which help you keep your body healthy!
2. A strong posterior chain is the key to a healthy body
With some exceptions, one of the basic problems of most people is the dead butt syndrome and weak hamstrings. Too much sitting and the lack of physical activity, contribute to the “dementia” of these muscles. The only thing they know how to do, is to remind about their weakness by causing too much pain in the lower back.
As Jason Feruggia wrote in one of his articles “If you wake up one day in some Game of Thrones type world and have to fight a guy to the death in order to have your life spared choose someone with no hamstrings and a pancake ass. If his feet are pointing out to the side like Donald Duck, instead of straight ahead, that’s a pretty good sign that he’ll be easy to bring down.”Unfortunately this is a description of the way most people look like nowadays!
As a matter of fact, your ass can never become too strong, so give your best to wake your sleeping glutes and hammies. Before you are able to do at least 5-6 pistols, do not dare to tell me you are strong!
You can not even imagine how many issues with your posture will be solved, when you strengthen your posterior chain. You can’t imagine how great is the feeling of your glutes functioning and how these muscles can keep your body aligned!
Read here:
Your Ass Is A Non Weight Bearing Surface a.k.a That’s Why Your Back Hurts
One More Exercise for Your Posterior Chain That You Hardly Ever Do
The Secret to Get a Nice, Sexy, Strong Butt and Look Stunning
One of The Best Exercises to Make Your Glutes Strong and Sexy
Ladies: The One Exercise You Always Avoid, But It Has the Power to Help You Get Fit
3.More doesn’t always mean better
Ok, I know that this is one of the most lame things, you’ve heard. Unfortunately most people know it, but few realize it. Most stubbornly keep on doing more, with the hope that this will contribute for faster and better results. But there is a particular “dose” of physical activity, that when you overstep it, every additional effort will have more of a negative effect on your body and health, than a positive result!
Tell you the truth, back in the days, there were periods of time when in the continuum of a couple years, I did not have a single rest day. Yes, you read it right! Even when I started swimming, our workouts were 6 times a week and on four of them we had two training sessions a day. So I used the Sundays to go to the gym and lift weights, instead of rest. I was constantly tired and the results I was working so hard for, never seemed to come my way.
After a sequence of injuries from overtraining, and after a one year battle with iron deficiency anemia, I realized that this is not the way to live.
Nowadays nothing has the power to make me train when I feel exhausted.
Nothing could make me do something, just because I’ve previously planned it like this, when in reality my body is screaming to give it a rest.
4.The foam roller and the tennis ball are my best friends.
And they are the kind of friends that you need to see every single day! I’ve never been the kind of person who cared too much about my health. In a sense that I’ve never been one of those people that take preventive measures to stay healthy. Back in the days I was more of a person who always “squeezed” the maximum out of my body, until I reached the moment where even my strong will couldn’t handle it. I always injured myself pretty bad, which took me an eternity to recover after that. And all of this, just because I never took the time to take care of my body, even when I required so much out of it. But if we look on the human body, as a machine, which needs to be asserted, this would mean that you can not assume, that you will rely on “the machine” forever and expect it to work at its best, without making even the smallest effort to assert it. This is what happens with our body, when we punish it with too much physical activity ( or not enough physical activity).
For me, soft tissue massage with a foam roller and a tennis ball is something like brushing your teeth every morning and every night before you go to bed. It is absurd to skip it! No matter how tired I feel or how in a hurry I am, I always take 5-10 minutes in the morning and then in the evening to massage my muscles. Something like an act of gratefulness to my body, for being so accommodating.
Here I wrote more about the foam roller (“The Best Investment I Made” HERE).
5.Learn to perform all exercises keeping your body tight
Repeat it on each rep. Especially when you do pushing movements. Even the best exercise, carries a huge risk, when you allow yourself to let your hips drop, to let your belly or butt go loose.
Nothing cause so much lower back pain, as performing a movement with heavier weights than you can handle, and thus trying to compensate for the lack of strength, by twisting and letting your body stay loose.
KEEP YOUR BODY TIGHT! I don’t care if this would mean to drop the big bumpers and perform the movements with the “naked” bar! Just make your tight posture a priority!
P.S. If you liked this post, please take a minute and share it with your friends! I’d greatly appreciate it!
