Great Tip For Back Health, Part 1

Below is one of the best analogies I’ve ever heard about back pain and injuries.  Because oddly enough, for a topic and issue that is so widespread, people rarely seem to “get it” when it comes to the topic of back health – and more specifically, preventing problems.

You need to look at your back as a credit card being held in your hands.  When you bend it, the same thing happens to your back that happens to a credit card – not much.  It basically goes back into its original shape.

Unless you do it repeatedly.  Multiple times.  Over and over.  Day after day.  Week after week.  Year after year.

Eventually a little white stress line will appear.  Then maybe a small tear.  Then eventually, after repeated stress – it will tear significantly.  It’s the same way with both your credit card and your back.

And like bending a credit card, if you continually bend your back, you may get away with it for awhile – but eventually it will tear.  So that last time you tweaked it doing something relatively innocuous, it wasn’t that one move.  It just happened to be the culmination of thousands of bends.

This is EXTREMELY important if you exercise.  If you move incorrectly while exercising, you’re not only speeding up the injury process, but often you’re doing it with a load because you’re holding weights.  This obviously increases the risk exponentially.  So that lunge or squat that you’re doing that isn’t very good – you know the one with not too much hip movement but a lot of spinal movement? 

Real bad. 

It was that which set up your back for an injury, not the seemingly harmless playing with your kid, picking up a box, etc. that did it.  That was only the final straw.

More on part 2 next week, but for now:

View your back as a credit card:  You’ll be able to bend it a few times without incident – but keeping it up over time – especially through improper exercise – is a good way to get hurt.

Thanks to Mike Boyle for the analogy.

Have you asked this question?

Here’s another question that I get pretty often, so I figured it would be easier to explain in a blog post.

Did you ever think this, or ask yourself this before coming to the TR?

When people are considering coming into the TR but are curious about exactly what it will entail from an exercise standpoint, they often ask:

“What will I be doing?”  As in, exactly what exercises will be involved?

Imagine me with a blank stare.  I have no idea why you would ask that.  I mean…how can I possibly answer that?

This is what goes through my mind:

That’s like if you took your car in for service, and you said to the auto tech, “What are you going to do to my car?”

He would look at you with a blank stare, then pause to see if more information was coming, and then he would say (hopefully politely):  “Uh…it depends on what’s wrong with your car…?” with a quizzical look.  That’s if he were polite.  It’s more likely he would look at you like you were a dumbass.

But when I get asked that question, I’m pretty much in the same situation as that hypothetical auto tech:

I have no idea what you’ll be doing in the TR.  Not until I have an idea of what your goals are, what your exercise and injury history is, and what your movement strengths and limitations are.

Any trainer who would tell you what you will be doing without establishing those parameters first is a not very bright trainer.

At the Training Rim, EVERYONE goes through a Q&A about exercise, physical history and injury history, and a Functional Movement Screen.  Then – and only then – can I tell you what you’ll be doing.  And even after that we'll only go through the two week trial of personal training, then re-evaluate the program after those two weeks.

Otherwise, it’ll be the same as if you ask an auto tech to change your oil – when you have a flat tire. The answer won't match the problem.

We put the "personal" in personal training.  We administer the solution to YOUR problem.

I Love Exercise Science

It fascinates me on numerous levels.  Below may explain why to some degree, albeit quite randomly.

It keeps getting less and less expensive to exercise.  You can outfit your house with a pretty good gym for less than $1,000.  I charge less for personal training than I did in 2005.  Consider that.

There’s also more information available about exercise than ever before.  Books, videos, personal demonstrations and lessons can be attained quicker than the snap of a finger in some cases.

Yet orthopedic ailments continue to rise.  Obesity rates continue to rise.

Why is that? 

I’d be lying if I said I knew.  It’s definitely multi-factorial but I think it’s mostly because people believe what they want to believe.  The cognitive dissonance of learning that a personal long standing belief, even if based upon dogma, could be wrong – is just too much to handle for most of us.  We’d rather keep going down a road that doesn’t work rather than deal with it.

Of course that’s not to say any of us know what we’re talking about.  I was told once that we as humans know very little about how we move.  We’re sure that our brain sends messages to our muscles to move.  That’s really it.  I’ve found that not only is that sentiment accurate, but anyone who pretends they know more than that, is by and large, full of shit.

Which is another reason I love exercise science.  No one will ever have it figured out.

There are very smart people who are injured and/or can’t lose weight.  There are imbeciles that are ripped and healthy as horses.  This adds to the intrigue for me.

Another part of the problem, is there is no “normal”.  Everyone is different in an exponential number of ways.  That complicates matters somewhat, which creates even more interest – for me, anyway.

Exercise requires more than anything, patience and persistence.  Learning what works for you takes a lot of trial and error.  This is why hiring someone who’s done decades of trial and error on a large sample size can save you A LOT of time.

But ironically, fitness attracts the impatient.  This creates great people watching opportunities, and a great show.  Have you ever just watched people in the gym or at the park working out?  It’s like a slow motion train wreck.  You see how it’s going to end but you’re helpless to do anything for the poor bastards involved.

The cool thing is you can make decisions today that will make you a better version of you tomorrow and the day after and the day after, etc.  But people will still choose to try a one hour workout today that will somehow cathartically cleanse the decades’ worth of sloth and gluttony that preceded it.

Most people view exercise as a quick path fix to sexiness.

Smart people view it as an investment.

Every day you eat and exercise intelligently, it yields a small dividend.  Do this day after day and eventually all these small dividends add up to a pretty big return on your investment.

Exercise science gives a scary insight into human behavior.  I swear after 15 years of observing people try to get lean and healthy, I think I’m as much an expert in human behavior as I am in exercise science.

I know everyone has an opinion on how to get healthy and lean through exercise.  Almost all are biased, incomplete, uninformed or just plain idiotic.

But for an area that most of us know very little about, we sure do spend a lot of money and time in our area of ignorance.

*Thanks to Morgan Housel for the idea for this rambling piece.