Physical Conditioning For Adult Athletes Who Hate Injuries

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Welcome And Sponsor Thanks

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Welcome to there is a method to this magnet. My name is Ron Maxwell, and I'm an exercise physiology from personal connections. I am the other Maxwell's Fitness program and have been in business since 1994. The purpose of this podcast is to get to the real deal of what really worked and most importantly why things work. Hence the name, there is a method to the magnet. Before I get started today, let me thank Jonathan and Lynn Gilded of the Gilding Group ELT Pros. They are committed to providing the highest level of customer service in home sales. Why don't you give them a shout and figure out what your home is worth? 386-451-2412. Let's jump right into there is a method to the madness. I love to constantly repeat why I call the podcast this and why I named it my first book. Because it is so important to understand why we do things, what works, certain things maybe we shouldn't do, but hence there really is a method to the madness. You know, people throw terms around all the time, and it's well-meaning, and I believe that they think they know what they're talking about. And in some cases they do, and in a roundabout way they do. But I like to really get to the root of things so people can fully understand what they're doing or what they're attempting to do. So, for example, today I'm going to take a very common phrase

What Physical Conditioning Really Means

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that we use a lot, and it's physical conditioning. All right. So, conditioning, what does that mean when it when anybody says they want to get into condition or they're going to work on their physical conditioning? What are they talking about? Like, I think we get a general idea, but what does it mean to be physically conditioned? Before I jump right into the definition of that and then how we're going to approach it here, let me tell you a little bit more about why I'm talking about this. So if you ever get around any form of sports or physical training, you're going to hear conditioning, the word conditioning. So, football players oftentimes in the spring, and I used to help coach some football and I would run their physical conditioning programs. Essentially, what that means is we want to get them into shape, into good physical condition to actually play their sport. That's what conditioning is. So conditioning is rarely specific to the sport being played, it's a level of fitness. Now, I started playing in an over 50 men's softball league, and it is a lot of fun. And there are some dynamite players out there. I mean, my goodness, it's like some of the best softball players I've seen. And, you know, oftentimes I'll hear one of them say, I want to make sure I work on my conditioning so I don't get hurt. And a few of them know what I do, so they'll talk to me a little bit about that. But in any event, I hear it a lot because nobody wants to get a soft tissue injury, which is pretty darn common in that sport or any other sports, whether it be pickleball, tennis, golf, um, let's see, what are the other racket power sports? Um, volleyball, basketball, you know, any of those sports which require a lot of athleticism,

Athleticism Versus Conditioning Myth

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actually, which is different from conditioning. So that's what we're going to talk about today. These are two different things. You can be really, really, really athletic and not be in very good physical condition. And you can be very, very conditioned and not be very athletic. Now, I hate to break it to you, but athletic is oftentimes more born than made. And then the other aspect of being athletic is specifically trained in that sport. In other words, you have the skills to play that sport. But it's a big myth to assume that condition means athletic and athletic means conditioned. They don't. Now, when we get to high-level athletics, like pro athletes, whether it be major league baseball, NFL football, NBA basketball, NHL hockey, soccer, any like inter-collegiate sports, those are really high-level athletes. That is a lot of skill and a lot of athleticism. You do not get to that level without being highly skilled and highly athletic. But that doesn't always mean that they come into their sport in top condition. And when they don't, you could imagine they are more prone to injuries. And we see it a lot. And different sports leagues have different rules that they want players to maintain in the offseason. So when they essentially come to camp the next season, they're ready to play. Now, most sports leagues understand that they're probably not going to be, so they work on some conditioning before they jump into sport specific training. All right. So let's talk about this conditioning and why it is so important. First, let me just give you the old Google definition

Fitness Pieces That Prevent Injuries

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and see if that helps you. Physical conditioning is the systematic development of physical fitness through structured exercise. It involves the training of the body's various systems, such as cardiovascular system, the muscular skill, the muscular system, the skeletal system, to adapt and increasing the physical demands, making movements more efficient and reliant, will often associate with, well, often associated with athletes, general physical conditioning focuses on improving overall health, daily function, and injury prevention. All right, so this definition named a couple of the different components of exercise, which is it named the cardiovascular system and the musculoskeletal system. I'm also going to add flexibility, endurance, mobility. All right. So those are the areas that you want to remain in condition with so you do not get injured. And so you're also ready to play and play at your best. So one of the things that I think is pretty obvious to most, and I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it, is simply body composition. You know, some people want to lose weight, some people do not. Some people need to lose weight and they don't want to lose it or they do. So that's neither here nor there, and people are either going to do it or they're not going to do it. When it comes to athletics, if you are carrying more body fat than you need, it is going to affect your conditioning because the more extra weight you're carrying, that essentially is not muscle, is simply going to slow you down in your movement. It's going to put more stress on your joints, and it is going to impact your physical conditioning. It just is. Not in every sport and not for every person. It really, really depends. I love baseball. I believe it's my favorite sport. So I'm going to use some examples here. You take a guy who plays for the New York Yankees and he used to play for the Florida Marlins, and his name is Giancarlo Stanton. He is and he's in his 30s now. I'm not really sure exactly how tall he is, but I believe he's either 6'4 or 6'5, maybe even 6'6. But he weighs about 240 pounds, and he is solid muscle. Okay. So you think 240 pounds. Now I'm guessing when I think of my men's softball league, there is nobody on my team or in the league. Maybe that weighs that much, even some of the obese folks, because there is going to be some. All right. So 240 pounds essentially is a lot of weight. On Jean-Carlo Stanton, if you were to watch him on TV and not know this, you would just say, oh, he's a thin guy, because he is nothing but solid muscle. I mean, he's solid muscle. So in his case, he does not need to lose weight at all. It's not a problem. So we can't use just weight as the category, and naturally it depends on the sport. If Giancarlo Stanton were to call me, which, you know, that would be pretty awesome, and say, hey Rob, can you write me a program to make me the best 5K runner? Well, now we're going to have some issues because it's probably going to be difficult for him to run a very fast 5K at the weight of 240 pounds, whether it's fat or muscle. In his case, it's muscle. So it depends on the sport. In his sport, I doubt any coach has ever said to him you need to lose some weight. So it just depends on the sport, depends on the person. The main point I'm trying to make here is it's not really so much about the weight, it's more about what kind of weight it is and what sport you're playing. But that is one of the areas of physical conditioning. Now, another one is cardiovascular. Well, you know, where does cardiovascular conditioning come in? Cardiovascular conditioning, even for people that do not play different kinds of aerobic sports. So even people that play like anaerobic sports, like baseball, like volleyball, basketball is a little more cardio built into it. Football, all sprints. Even those sports, which are predominantly anaerobic sports, require or it helps to have a fit cardiovascular system. Why? Because it helps you recover. That's why if you're playing, like, say, a men's softball game and it's 90 minutes and you are spending your time sprinting back and forth trying to catch fly balls, even though they may not come to you very often, you want to recover quickly. If you're running around the bases, you want to recover quickly. So cardiovascular conditioning matters. I wouldn't say it's number one on the list of conditioning for anaerobic sports, but it is important. You know, a person looking for power may not want to overdo it because maybe they lose too much weight and lose their power. So there's always this balance people are trying to find. I haven't found that to be typically a big problem in amateur sports. So cardiovascular conditioning does help you perform on the field, and it is important, even if it is simply people or guys or gals or whatever running some laps before or after practice to warm up, working on that aspect of cardiovascular conditioning will really help them. And you'll see that in some of the higher levels when some of the guys have put on a little bit of extra weight and their coaches aren't happy about that. You will see them running laps in the outfield or whatever, working on that conditioning. And again, it's typically done for the most part in the off season because when you're playing, you really need to put your attention on playing your sport. All right. Now let's pick up on some of the other real important ones. Having a good level of muscular strength and muscular endurance really improves your conditioning, really helps your conditioning. Studies have shown over and over and over that not only a more pliable muscle, which I'm gonna spend some time on here in a second, is important for injury prevention, but so is having a good, strong muscle. Studies have shown over and over and over that the stronger the low back is, the less likely you are to get injured. So it's important to come into your sport or to work on this for your sport, having a good muscular skeletal system. So, in other words, being strong and having endurance. I don't mean one rep max strong like guys try to do early on in their football careers or maybe even baseball careers. To me, that's like really poor coaching and really poor training. And I'm not going to go on a diatribe on that because that's something that's really gets me fired up. For example, when I see the 225 lift in the pro days and things like that for these NFL guys, and they're getting ranked in their 225 bench press in the combines. I'm like, but who cares? That doesn't translate to anything. I mean, I'm a strength and conditioning coach, I'm a personal trainer, so there's not anything more important than musculoskeletal fitness or muscular strength and muscular endurance and hypertrophy to me, but it's got to be done right. You want your muscles to be balanced, you want them to be strong, you want to work in a rep range that's going to make them strong and conditioned, which is more in that 8 to 12 rep range. Very, very

Warm-Up Basics And Core Temperature

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important. So coming in condition with a good, strong musculoskeletal system is very, very important. Now, this is where the rubber meets the road, really. It is so important when you're playing a sport to work on your conditioning of mobility. I see so many people not properly warm up for whatever sports they're playing. I mean, it could be beach volleyball, it could be playing baseball, playing softball, but you need to keep that system primed. It is so, so important. We really want to work on a really good warm-up routine prior to playing or practicing, no matter what our sport is. And this is a 5K too, by the way. This works for runners or anybody. You should have a proper warm-up routine. Here's the great part. Here's like the double win right here. When you do this, when you take 10 or 15 minutes before you practice or play to effectively warm up, well, guess what? You're working on your conditioning, you're getting a mini workout, which it doesn't take more than that, really. You're getting a mini workout in before you even play. So not only are you getting warmed up and primed to play so you don't get injured, you're also working on that conditioning. So in the long run, you're gonna get adaptations so you don't get hurt. Now I'm talking 10 to 15 minutes for you know, us amateurs and you know, people like that. I mean, when we're talking major league baseball players, they'll warm up for 90 minutes or so before a game. It's not super intense, it's just a lot of mobility work. So the first thing you want to start with is you want to raise that core temperature. That's the first part of a warm-up. Warm-up is not stretching, and stretching is not a warm-up. You want to raise that core temperature. So typically

Dynamic Mobility Routine Walkthrough

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that's gonna be some light cardiovascular work, maybe five to seven minutes of jogging or power walking or just walking, but you're gonna want to start with a general warm-up that way. Then you're gonna want to do a routine of dynamic stretches, like these are so important because you don't want to get hurt. I see people all the time with soft tissue injuries. Now, soft tissue injuries aren't major, and what that means is that you're either you either strained the muscle, which is a muscle pole, or you strained the tendon, which can be tendonitis. So that's what we call a soft tissue injury. I'm not talking an ACL injury or um any kind of um lateral, crolateral ligament injuries or any of these things you'll see sometimes in the elbows. Those are like kind of like freak accidents that happen. I'm just talking about little things that can be avoided. And by the way, if we're better conditioned, we're probably a little bit better off with those accidental injuries that are more serious as well. But sometimes they can't be avoided. And we see the most conditioned athletes in the world hurting their ACL or MCL or LCL because they step in a hole or the cleat gets stuck. I mean, those things do happen. But if we properly do our dynamic stretches, which we call dynamic mobility, it's not the same thing as passive stretches, which I'm getting ready to explain. You're far less likely to get soft tissue injuries. So after we do our general warm-up, then we want to do what we call our dynamic stretching, our dynamics. And that means you take every joint that you're going to use in your sport and you run it through a range of motion. You typically start with your lower body and move to your upper body. So, for example, your hips have to move in any sport that you play, I'm guessing. You would do what we call forward and backward leg swings. Get as high as you can, you ease into it, each one gets a little further. Then you would do lateral leg swings. So to the side. Now, again, this is a podcast you're listening to. Probably hard to get the idea, but I'm telling you, and then you can look this stuff up. But the bottom line is with every joint that you're going to use, you move the bones, the muscles, through that range of motion. So with the hips forward, backward with each leg, roughly 10 reps. Doesn't have to be overly intense, just each one a little bit further than the last one. It's about getting a little bit further, opening up that range of motion. Then you go side to side, as I said, with your legs. Then you would do some toe raises. So get up off your heels, and now you're warming up your ankles. And then you would do some form of like a butt kick or slapping your heel back towards your rear end. So you're warming up your knee area and the muscles involved, such as your quad and hamstrings. Then you would do basic gold toe touchers, you know, the ones you used to do in PE class that they told you not to do. Well, you should do them. You should just do them dynamically. Reach down, touch the ground, come up, reach down, touch the ground, come up. Now you're warming up your lower back, you're warming up your hips, you're warming up your core, each time stretching a little bit further. Then you would do some side-to-side rotations so you can warm up your oblique. So as you see, you're kind of working your way up. So, like little rotations, you see people do it with broom handles, softball bat, or just your arms, but you rotate back and forth. Now, in most sports, you're going to be using your shoulder joints often too. So then you would do some big arm circles where you start kind of narrow and get wider as you go. Again, 10 in one direction, 10 in the other. Then you would break into some self-hugs where basically you put your arms out to your side, you hug yourself, and then you go back with your arms behind you. Again, that's warming up your shoulder joint, warming up your pec muscles, warming up your deltoid muscles. And then you're really dynamically warmed up. You're getting your muscles conditioned to play your sport. Another thing you'll see more advanced athletes doing is some body weight squats. Again, this isn't meant to build strength. This is meant to work on your range of motion and get every joint ready to play. So, again, you'll see maybe 10 squats. You might see some walking lunges. Those are, again, a little more advanced, but it just depends on how much warm-up you actually need. And you might even see some push-ups to warm up the shoulder joints a little bit more and the elbow joints, get everything fired and ready to play. Because the last thing you want to do, no matter what sport you've played, and you see people like in softball and baseball oftentimes will throw the ball. That's great. I mean, that's really, really important. But there should be that level of warm-up prior to that. Very important to do that prior to that. But the last thing you want to see is somebody go out to their sport, they go out in their outfield, they're waiting on a ball, they haven't warmed up, a ball gets hit, they sprint after it, they pull their quad because they're not warmed up. And too often we see that. That doesn't have to happen. So you don't want to go zero to 100, you want to slowly warm the body up. Now, after you've worked on the conditioning of the mobility of the dynamic

Static Stretching And Season Strategy

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stretches, as I just outlined, then you will do some static stretches now that they're nice and warmed up. So again, you would work your way back through the body from lower to upper, from larger to smaller. You would stretch your hamstring muscles in a static stretch for 10 seconds, each stretch, roughly. Again, not meant to be long. It's meant to be like all the way through your body. So you're covering your whole body. So you're not going to hold each stretch very long, maybe 10 seconds. But you'll start with your quads, then you'll do your hamstrings, then you'll do your calves, then you'll do your core and your lower back, then you'll stretch your pecks and your lats and your shoulders. And now it's time to go do your specific warm-ups for your particular sport. So if you played volleyball after you've done all that, now you might, I guess, say I don't play volleyball, but I think because my daughter played it, they'll bump the ball back and forth to each other, you know, off the elbows. They'll do that. So that you can warm up that way. Softball players, baseball players will throw the ball back and forth, getting longer and longer with each throw. Football players, I think, will do the same thing. If they're a quarterback, they'll throw the ball back and forth with somebody. I mean, so then you go into your specific, specific drills, all right? Specifically twice, you'll go into your drills. So that's how we start to get more conditioned. And this part takes a lot of discipline and it's really hard to do. After you play your practice, you're want you're going to want to do your static stretches again. Not the dynamic stretches, those are for warm-up. You're going to want to do your static stretches again. If you really, really, really make the time for it, it will really, really help you. That's when you go through and you hold each stretch for 10 seconds again, because that will help you recover for the next one. Because if you're running around doing a lot of different things, doing a lot of things ballistically quick, I mean, your muscles are going to be a little bit pulled and a little bit tired. And flexibility is one of the best ways to ease those types of things. All right. So that's how like we can do our best. We can do our part. I always or I like to talk about do what's in your control. If you want to have a successful sports season, whatever sport you play, number one, you're going to want to come into your season in condition. I already outlined what that means. In your best level of body composition and weight for your sport and for you, the best cardiovascular condition you can be in, meaning that you really feel good about the level of time you can play in the field. You don't get overly tired, you don't huff and puff. You're going to want to make sure that your muscles are nice and strong and have endurance. And then you're really going to want to make sure you have that mobility and you continue to work on that throughout the whole season before you practice, before you play, you do those mobility exercises. So as I said, it's really a great way to work on your fitness is to play a sport because then you're going to work on that mobility stuff. That doesn't mean you stop the other stuff during your season. I mean, us amateurs, it's really not that serious, right? We should always continue our strength training and our cardio. But the point is, if you're gonna play a sport and you're kind of new, I suggest you work on your physical conditioning prior to playing because you will enjoy your sport more. You will really decrease your risk of injury, and most likely you will play better, which I think everybody wants to do. All right. So until next time, I want

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