Training with Injury or Disability

My personal training career actually started in a physical therapy setting. Since then, I have learned a tremendous amount about the human body, health and fitness, and wanted to relate it back to my past experiences.

Movement is truly the expression of life and without it our bodies can quickly fall into a state of dysfunction, depression, and sickness. The body is made to move, and move a lot, so the first thing to understand is that the more you move, the better. This can be any movement, from swimming to stretching to working on machines to using a handrail to help take a few steps. When we move, our muscles are required to contract, which requires our nervous system to wake up and our brain to start transmitting messages. Our blood begins to flow and our heart rate elevates, increasing the oxygen usage in the body. All of this means that toxins are more readily removed, nutrients are delivered to our cells and our brain, and our nervous system is forced to figure out how to coordinate our movement, creating energy and adaptation within the body. This process is what the body thrives on! No matter what our limitation, movement is the answer.

Obviously injury and disability are different topics, but they both deal with limitations, so I wanted to talk about them in the same piece. With injury, the focus is to let the area heal while still engaging the rest of the body, and as soon as possible, to restore movement to the injury area. Let’s take a leg injury for example. It would be important to do whatever necessary to reduce inflammation and support healing, but during the rest and recovery period, training the healthy leg will be key. There is energy, neuromuscular connections and strength that will transfer over from the training of the healthy leg, and as mentioned before, the increased blood flow from any activity will help keep the time of recovery to a minimum. I would also like to add that it is always important to determine why there was an injury in the first place, because often, injury is more a result of poor movement patterns or asymmetries in the body than a blunt force or random occurrence. This will be important to discuss with a physical therapist or trainer, but you want to make sure that you are not cleared as recovered just because there is no more pain.

When it comes to training with disabilities, there are two goals to keep in mind. First we must work around the disability and then we must try to work through it. While those with disabilities may never fully gain movement, there has been promising work done by Emilie Conrad who has used her philosophy of continuum movement in working with spinal cord injury patients. The patients can have little to no movement at all, but by working slowly and consistently, she helps them gain back some of their movement by focusing on the smallest of movement and working up from there. So in terms of working around the disability, this would involve doing whatever movements your body will allow. If you’re recovering from a stroke and your left leg and arm do not work, use your right side to actively engage in as much movement as possible. For working through the disability, it is all about working every day to develop movement. I remember working with a stroke patient that could barely walk, but we used parallel bars so that he could balance himself with his right side and then work every day to keep his left side active. We would work on the small movements, but over time, those movements got bigger. It was slow, but that is what the body needs.

For those of you with injuries or disabilities, I hope that you have a good support system and knowledgeable therapists to give you the guidance you need. If you are interested in more specifically what you should do for exercise, please check out my other posts on exercise and modify them to your situation. There are obviously many different situations that people are in, but in the end, movement is always a good thing. Good luck and keep moving!

Colin

The Key to Longevity

When looking at the various aspects of the health and fitness industry, one topic that they can all really be linked to is longevity: living a long, but more importantly, health and happy life. This article and video have uncovered some of the most basic need that humans have. While we may all know innately that these things are good for us, it is interesting to see them all together and looked at as a group. I hope you all can take something from the video, I think it ties in nicely with my last post, expanding on what it really means to be healthy and happy. Enjoy!

http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/26/buettner.long.life/index.html?hpt=Sbin

Only One Body

I received an e-mail this morning from one of the top strength coaches in the industry, Mike Boyle. He sent this out to all the members of his website, strengthcoach.com, and I thought it was a wonderful analogy to help people start thinking in a different way about their health and fitness. Here is a copy of the e-mail, I hope you take as much from this as I did.

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Imagine you are sixteen years old and your parents give you your first car. They also give you simple instructions. There is one small hitch, you only get one car, you can never get another. Never. No trade-ins, no trade-ups. Nothing

Ask yourself how would you maintain that car? My guess is you would be meticulous. Frequent oil changes, proper fuel, etc. Now imagine if your parents also told you that none of the replacement parts for this car would ever work as well as the original parts. Not only that, the replacement parts would be expensive to install and cause you to have decreased use of your car for the rest of the cars useful life? In other words, the car would continue to run but, not at the same speed and with the efficiency you were used to.

Wow, now would we ever put a lot of time and effort into maintenance if that were the case.

After reading the above example, ask yourself another question. Why is the human body different? Why do we act as if we don’t care about the one body we were given. Same deal. You only get one body. No returns or trade-ins. Sure, we can replace parts but boy it’s a lot of work and it hurts. Besides, the stuff they put in never works as well as the original “factory” parts. The replacement knee or hip doesn’t give you the same feel and performance as the original part.

Think about it. One body. You determine the mileage? You set the maintenance plan?

No refunds, no warranties, no do-overs?

How about this perspective? One of my clients is a very successful businessman. He often is asked to speak to various groups. One thing he tells every group is that you are going to spend time and money on your health. The truth is the process can be a proactive one or a reactive one. Money spent on your health can take the form of a personal trainer, massage therapist and a gym membership or, it can be money spent on cardiologists, anesthesiologists, and plastic surgeons. Either way, you will spend money.

Same goes for time. You can go to the gym or, to the doctor’s office. It’s up to you. Either way, you will spend time. Some people say things like “I hate to work out”. Try sitting in the emergency room for a few hours and then get back to me. Working out may not seem so bad. Much like a car, a little preventative maintenance can go a long way. However, in so many ways the body is better than a car. With some good hard work you can turn back the odometer on the body. I wrote an article a while back (Strength Training- The Fountain of Youth) that discussed a study done by McMaster University which showed that muscle tissue of older subjects actually changed at the cellular level and looked more like the younger control subjects after strength training.

Do me a favor, spend some time on preventative maintenance, it beats the heck out of the alternative. Just remember, you will spend both time and money.

Mike Boyle