Challenge Workouts

The average person need not worry about overtraining. In fact, the average person needs to worry about getting ENOUGH training. But you’re not average are you?

Given that you’re on my blog, my guess is that training is like breathing or eating…just a necessity of life.

And with this sort of attitude toward exercise and challenging workouts, you’re likely to have to deal with injury and the possibility of over training at some point in your athletic career.

I’ve been lucky in that my injuries have been few in my near half century of pushing my body to its limits. (Holy cow! I still can’t believe I’m almost 50 in a few years and I’m going as strong and hard as I did in my 20’s). In any case, I’ve been fortunate.

This is due in part to the nature of my training. I never played football or other high contact sports. I did take up women’s hockey a few years ago and loved it. My biggest injury there was a shot to the shin. Remarkably my shin guard didn’t cover that small area that the puck hit and the result was a grapefruit sized welt that was x-rayed, drained and iced for about 2 weeks (no fun). But I digress…

Regular workouts are supposed to increase your muscle mass and decrease your body fat, right? Well, yes, with some exceptions. Some of you ramp it up too much especially when they start a new training regimen. Overdoing your workouts can actually lead to diminished strength and increased body fat—your body’s way of begging for a break. While your body can handle a particularly tough workout, it also needs time to recover from the stress overload,

The best way to recover from that particularly tough workout is just a day or two of rest followed by a light bout of exercise. Sleep is also magical when it comes to recovery. Try to make a point to get at least eight hours of sleep a night which your body will need to repair those tiny muscle tears that occur during workouts and enable your body to build new muscle. Good nutrition goes without saying. It’s impossible to run a high performance car on potato chips and the same goes for your body. Think lean protein, whole grains and plenty of fruits and vegetables.

Here are a couple of things to watch out for to guard against overtraining:

1. Decreased performance. A drop in your workout performance is one of the earliest signs of over training. I highly recommend keeping a fitness/training journal to record your workouts. This way you don’t need to rely on ‘feel’, but your workouts are quantifiable. You’ll see right away when you’re meeting, beating or falling short of your goals.

2. Where’s the joy? When the ‘fun factor’ is missing, this can be a major sign of exercise burnout.

3. Mood swings. The same stress hormones you release when you’re emotionally stressed are also released when you’re physically overloaded. If you find you’re dealing with depression, anger, confusion, anxiety or irritability it may be a sign that your body is overstressed physically.

4. Longer recovery time. If muscle soreness persists for longer than usual and you’re dragging your sorry butt through your day, you’re may be over trained and definitely need more rest.

5. Increased resting heart rate. If you’re really tuned in and note your resting heart rate, an increase in your normal resting heart rate, could indicate that you’re placing excessive stress on your body.

6. Fatigue and insomnia. Sometimes we’re our own worst enemies. Where someone else would take a nap, we may go for a short workout to increase energy and alertness. This may wake you up temporarily but will take its toll in the long run. Then when it is time to sleep, you may be staring at the ceiling. These are absolute signs that over training is an issue for you.

8. No appetite. Just when your body needs fuel, you can’t eat a bite. Your appetite can be an indictor of metabolism. In an effort to force a slow down in workload (by not having any energy) you may notice no desire to eat. Your body is ingenious, here’s the cycle: no appetite=no food=no energy=less work=more rest=more recovery. It doesn’t work this way if you don’t listen to your body. Give your good food, less work (on occasion) and more recovery to avoid this.

9. ‘I’m getting fatter!’ You may lose weight but gain fat, probably not one of your goals. In an over stressed situation, your body releases more cortisol, a stress hormone which encourages fat storage. As well, stress inhibits hormones that help increase muscle. This is a lose-lose situation. You’ll weigh less, but your body will lose strength and be less efficient at fat burning.

10. ‘I’m getting sick.’ If you seem to be catching every cold and flu as if you were in kindergarten again, this is a sign that your body isn’t recovering from your workouts. A weakened immune system can result from over training. Don’t try to push through when you’re under the weather. Bottom line: Nurture your body and give it a much-deserved break when it needs to rest after that tough workout.

Here’s me and my good friend Rob King at our last big conference:

Rob has been in the fitness industry for many years and has a ton of knowledge in so many areas. I got him to share a bit of info with you about supplements. I want to remind you that we’ve provided links to products, but that I don’t benefit from your purchasing them. I know that you’d be asking where to purchase and this is just one way.

Take it away Rob:

I get asked a lot of questions in my business and the one I get asked the most is always about fat loss.

Everyone it seems wants to lose fat!  Everywhere you turn you are being bombarded with the latest and greatest fat burners on the market.

For the record there fat burners/metabolism enhancers that do work, however there is a catch to this. Once you stop using them your fat burning results will stop.

Products like these I consider to be more of a band aid solution to fat loss, and as well there are many other Supplements that can help fat loss AND improve your health & fitness.

The main three Supplements I recommend are Fish Oils, BCAA’s, & Green Tea Supplements.

Fish Oil has numerous benefits along with aiding in fat loss, such benefits include :

Anti Inflammation
Improved Skin
Improved Brain Function
Improved Blood Sugar Response
Fat Loss (Let’s not forget about that one!)

With Fish Oils I always recommend you get a QUALITY brand.  I know a lot of people love buying the lower cost Cost-Co brands etc, but I would personally caution to stay away from the lower cost ones.  I have ready too many bad things about them.

I highly recommend Nutra-Sea fish oil.

This is available through my online store by clicking -> www.Heavyweights.ca or you can check out their official page (www.AscentaHealth.com)

BCAA’s are one supplement I think everyone should take along with Fish Oils.  The benefits are just too many to pass up.

BCAA’s do the following and more

Improved Muscle Recovery
Improved Performance (Endurance & Weight lifting)
Reduction of DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness)
Helps build lean muscle (Which helps keep the metabolism revved up!)

One thing about BCAA’s is that you will hardly be sore again.  This makes training often much easier.

I am a big believer in the Philosophy “Train More, Eat More” and BCAA’s help you train more via improved recovery.

I recommend a product called “Xtend” from Scivation Supplements.

Xtend can be found by clicking here.

Finally the last product I think can really benefit you is green tea.

Green tea can be taken via the Tea itself or via Supplement, but I personally prefer drinking the tea.

Some of the benefits of Green Tea are :

– Improved Fat Loss
High Anti-Oxidants
Improved Brain Function
Reduce Blood Pressure

And much much more!

As you can see from above there are numerous health benefits with using Fish Oils, BCAA’s & Green Tea Supplements.

I suggest you add them into your “Grocery Budget” as I consider them essential, and once you start using them you will as well!

Shawna here again. Rob is a wealth of information. If you’re looking for a great nutrition/supplement book, you can check his out here.

Are you average? I doubt it. To me, that’s a bit of an insult…Who wants to be average? If you’re on this blog, it’s unlikely you aspire to be average.

I thought you’d be interested in knowing some ‘average’ facts to see where you stack up.

(Apologies to my non-American readers, it’s easiest to find stats for the good ole US of A).The average American man is 5 feet, 10.3″ tall, and weighs 187 Ibs.

• The average American man is 5 feet, 10.3″ tall and weighs 187 lbs.
• The average American women is 5 feet, 4.1″ tall, and weighs 134 Ibs.
• The average American male has 17.6% body fat.
• The average American female has 28% body fat.
• The average American male exercises 2.87 hours a week.
• The average American female exercises 1.34 hours a week.
• The average American male has 12.4 inch biceps, a 39.7 inch chest and a 34.6 inch waist.
• Wears a 36 B bra. This is an increase from 34 B bra size worn by the average American female in 1990.
• Watches television 6.16 hours a day.

• Average child watches 4.7 hours of television a day on weekdays, and 8.4 hours on weekends – about 40 hours a week.
• Spends 21.7 hours per day indoors.
• Belongs to a commercial gym, but uses it less then once a week.

• Spends $596 dollars on sporting goods equipment each year.
• Spends $874 on vitamins and food supplements.
• The average man can do three dips and the average woman does less than one dip.
• The average man bench presses 145 and squats 165 pounds.
• The average woman bench presses 60 and squats 105 pounds.

• The average man does 11 push ups and 17 sit ups.
• The average woman does four push-ups and nine sit ups.
• Can’t touch their toes without bending their legs.

• Goes on a diet 5.2 times annually. Only 17 percent of these women actually lose weight, but only one percent of them keep it off for more then five years.
• After the age of 25, gains one pound of weight per year.
• By the age of 65, will have gained over 40 pounds of weight.
• Will lose a half pound of lean muscle tissue each year after the age of 25.

• The average woman will gain 11.6 pounds that she won’t lose every time she has a child.
• Consumes approximately 32 teaspoons of sugar each day.
• Consumes thirty times (9500 milligrams) more sodium than the body requires.
• Consumes more calories (4236 calories daily) per person than any other group of people in the world.
• Has 30 billion fat cells, the average obese American has 80 billion fat cells.
• Learns 14 new words a year reads .58 books a year, and writes 7 pages a year.
• Will live to be 77 years old.

There you have it. How do you stack up?

There are some pretty scary facts here. Are you average?

As a workout warrior, there will be times when you feel a tweak here or there while training. It’s sort of a double edged sword where injury is concerned: if you train too much, your body will wear out and break down, conversely, if you don’t do anything, your body will deteriorate at an alarming rate. I choose to train and deal with a little wear and tear.

Your body is an amazing machine. It will take care of you if you take care of it. Many people experience a serious lack of common sense when they get injured. Here’s some practical advice to get you back in the saddle again:

1) (Obviously!) Stop doing any movements that cause pain.

This seems like a no-brainer, but so many people try to push past the pain in an effort to maintain their fitness regime. Your body is signaling pain for a reason. Pushing through a fresh injury and ignoring pain is the last thing you want to do. Your routine will need to be adjusted in order not to aggravte the problem. Many people feel that if they ‘lift lighter’ with the injured body part that they won’t cause further damage. If you’ve done this before, you know that you only cause further inflammation and pain in the end. Listen to your body. Rest the injury, but continue to train other body parts. Don’t let an elbow injury stop you from training lower body for example, just work around what’s hurt.

2) What happened?

Write down everything you can remember about what you were doing when you injured yourself or first felt the pain. Move carefully and slowly through the motions that cause the pain so you can pinpoint what movements are making it hurt. The more information you have the better. Your doctor or trusted professional can make a better diagnosis with more information. Memories get foggy over time and its best to write the information down while it’s fresh in your mind. At the very least, a date is helpful as to when you think the injury occurred.

For me? I have a detailed training log which chronicles each ache and pain so I know when something may have started or what movement may have caused it. It’s served me well over the years.

3) Ice is your friend.

Always apply ice for the first 48 hours. Even though heat may feel nice, using heat is not recommended for a new injury. Apply ice a few times daily for periods of 15-20 minutes.

4) Move it!

Recovery will be a faster process if you get some ‘active rest’. This means that you should move your body in ways that don’t aggravate your injury. With the increased blood flow to all areas of your body, you will feel better and it’s more likely that your injury will heal faster than if you stay sedentary. There’s almost always an exercise alternative to your regular routine and chances are the cross training will be good for you.

5) Find a qualified professional.

Common sense and the extent of your injury should dictate if and when you seek the advice of a professional. If the injured body part is not feeling better in a few days, you should seek medical attention. If you wait too long, you may cause more damage or your recovery will be delayed. You may seek the advice of a chiropractor, or physiotherapist as well as a sports doctor or family physician. (I’ve made the mistake of waiting too long to get things checked out, believe me, it’s sometimes easier to deliver advice than take your own!)

Unfortunately an occasional injury is to be expected at some point by anyone involved in an intense fitness regime. However, managing any injury is the key to long term fitness and health.

I’ve had a variety of careers that have led to this one. You may never have guessed that some of my most profound lessons were learned underwater.

Let me explain…

My first career started at the age of six. It would span twelve years and it involved

Green hair and a lotta water…

I took a liking to competitive swimming and apparently swimming liked me too. Now that I think back on it, I’m not sure what kind of kid enjoys the repetition of swimming back and forth for hours on end doing what seems to be the same thing day after day.

About a week or two into my young career, my mom had a near proud moment. The coach came up to her and commented on my natural ability. My mom, being a very shy woman, thanked him and puffed out her chest a little with pride. However, his next question surprised her.

He asked, “Is your daughter retarded or something? She keeps hitting her head on the wall on every turn…” Read the rest of this entry »