Episode 6: The Wake-Up Call That Changed How I Train

A back injury while taking out the garbage became a powerful reminder that health and pain-free movement trump all other fitness metrics. When injury limits our capabilities, it doesn't matter how strong or fit we are on paper – prompting us to question what we're really training for and whether our exercise approach aligns with our true goals.

• Audit your current training to ensure it matches your desired outcomes
• Consider if you're training based on outdated methods from your past
• Question whether chasing numbers or aesthetics is worth potential injury risk
• Focus on training movement patterns rather than isolated muscles
• Build usable strength that translates to real-life activities
• Prioritize mobility, stability and control within your range of motion
• Design programs that meet you where you are now rather than where you were

If this resonates with you, please share with a friend. For a quick action step, audit your training to make sure it's correct, and if you need help, that's what we're here for at Spirali Fitness – a coaching-based gym where each client works with a coach to ensure exercises are performed safely and correctly with programs designed for your specific goals.

Transcript

Back Injury Wake-Up Call

Speaker 1 0:00

Welcome to another episode of the 1% Better Podcast with your host, josh Williams. I want to share an experience that I had this past week. And so the past week I was taking out the garbage and a couple days earlier I had done something that tweaked my back. So typically when my back goes out or I tweak it, it feels like a muscle tightness in my glutes and so common times it can be like, oh, I strained a glute. But now, doing it so many times over the years, I kind of expect now, okay, tomorrow my back's probably not going to feel good and correct enough. Over that day, as I was sitting, I started to tighten up, kind of started feeling it throughout the back, and you know fortunately, I know what to do with that. I've gone to physical therapy, I have exercises to do to fix it.

What Are You Training For?

Speaker 1 0:53

You know the downside now is it takes longer to come back from that. You know it doesn't take a day or two Now. It typically takes about a full week of doing my exercises, getting everything back aligned to feeling good, and of course, the simplistic answer is just to keep doing my exercises. That I need to do to keep my body in line, but pain is a wonderful motivator. All that to being said is I was taking out the garbage and I was lifting it up and it just felt really limiting. I felt weak to do that because of this back injury I mean, you call it back or whatever postural but because of this, and I was like man. I'm strong, I can run marathons, I can do all these physical things, but if I'm not healthy, it doesn't matter that. I have the potential to do these things, like my muscles are strong enough to do these things, I have the cardiovascular ability to do these things. But if I'm getting pain signals or the nervous system is in response, they're fine, right, I can't do anything that I want to do. And there was this moment of like man, how important it is to be healthy, be strong, be all these things, but move well and do not have pain. That stops us, because it can take away all that. And it gave me an appreciation in that moment. And then the question of you know, what am I training for? And does my exercise align with those current goals? To keep me as healthy as possible, to keep me the right amount of strength, right amount of mobility for what I need.

Speaker 1 2:37

And so you know, oftentimes we are training and so if you've trained in the past, we might have started training again and we're doing the same thing we did 20 years ago which might've been fine when our bodies built up to that, or just more resilient, able to recover from suboptimal training and we started doing that again because that's the way we've always trained. But we never understood the methodology behind that training or what the purpose of it was, and so we keep doing it. We might get some results and then we get injured and we wonder why. Or you might be brand new to training and just not know where to start, and we see this quite often where people will come in and they might not be able to do daily things well, so maybe I get out of breath going up the stairs or getting up and down and all this and that, and so the training has to match the outcome. We also have to take into consideration the injuries to make sure we're doing it safely, correctly. Now, if I come in and get back to the gym, I start doing the old things that I used to do, you know, doing heavy bench presses and squats and all these other movements. They're not wrong, but we have to say is it the best movement or the load or the way I'm doing it for my current goals now, where I want to get to you know how I feel my current injuries and state, where I want to get to how I feel my current injuries and state.

Training That Matches Your Goals

Speaker 1 4:13

And so the big question to ask is is the training that I'm doing actually matching the outcome that I want? Are we just chasing numbers? Am I just chasing to get stronger? To get stronger, there is a point in strength training where there's a diminishing return To get stronger in one area. There is a decrease someplace else. To increase strength, I might increase relative stiffness someplace else, which could be good or not, and so we have to look at this area is improving, what area might be subtracting? And typically, by improving one area, we're bringing up in a positive direction, because that's where we need to get to.

Speaker 1 4:51

Are we focused too much on aesthetics? A lot of times to get certain aesthetics, it may not leave the body feeling as good as you might want it, but typically a lot of soreness can be led through training that's purely on aesthetics. And again, none of these are wrong. Chasing numbers, aesthetics, all these are wrong. It's to paint the question am I chasing these things? But my true goal is actually to be strong enough and to live a healthy life and not be injured, because injury will take away all that, and you know, or are we training for something that's more day-to-day like to life playing with kids, you know, being able to hike, explore, adventure, have energy to do the things that you love to do, you know stack wood?

Speaker 1 5:37

So, again, it's just about is the training getting me the result that I want, and do I really want that result? And when you get injured or something happens or you're currently working on an injury, it takes away freedom, and we do everything we can to get back to that freedom, and so are you willing to live with the risk? So a couple of things just to do with this is, first off, audit your training. What you're doing. Is it getting you where you want to get to, leaving you feeling more capable and stronger? So for us, typically we want to see increased strength, increased work capacity, decreased stiffness and soreness. So overall, we're feeling better.

Audit Your Training Approach

Speaker 1 6:20

Now there is a point where pushing to higher levels now you will start feeling an increase in stiffness, increase in soreness and maybe not as great recovery rate, and so, again, that's why we're working with a coach Audit your training Training movement over muscles. Typically when we're new to lifting, we will train muscle patterns. When we don't work with a coach or haven't read up on literature, maybe we'll use a lot of machines which typically look at training muscles over movement, and we want to make sure that we're training movement Because what that does is one it gets the muscles stronger, but also gets them stronger in the application that you'll be using them in day-to-day life, increases range of motion, often known as flexibility, and increases stability, often known, as you know, flexibility, and increases stability. Now, because I'm not using a fixed object to increase strength, it will help me, when done correctly, to increase stability. So, again, training movement over muscles is going to allow for better long-term results in achieving the goal of living a long, prosperous life, and then, you know, building usable strength. So what does this mean?

Speaker 1 7:36

I can be really strong. So, like when my back wasn't feeling great, I couldn't do a lot of lower body movements, but what I could still do is a back supported bench press and still move a lot of weight. So I was strong on paper still, but you get me up walking. I have to go lift up 20 pounds like, oh, that hurts. So where's that usable strength?

Speaker 1 7:58

And so, understanding that we want to build strength that is usable and part of that is going to keep us strong and healthy. So we want to do things that's increasing mobility keep us strong and healthy. So we want to do things that's increasing mobility, increasing stability and control in that range of motion is going to keep us healthy. And then, within there, then adding on that strength and that's going to allow us to use it. So real life strength typically involves bending, rotating, lifting heavy, awkward objects and learning to control that. In your base of support, versus in the gym, we can build very segmented strength for particular muscle groups or area, which can be beneficial, but in this case we do want strength that's going to translate over to real life.

Building Usable Real-Life Strength

Speaker 1 8:41

So again, the big question is kind of going back to my story picking something up, realizing that I had the capability but I was unable to do that with an injury to your goal, and auditing and making sure that you're doing things that are actually proven to get you to where you're going, instead of based off of, maybe, ways that you've done it in the past, the ways you've enjoyed doing it in the past or worked for you. We want to design a program that is best for you currently, now and where you're trying to get to so again. Hopefully that was helpful. I appreciate you all tuning in for that. If this resounds to you, please share with a friend.

Speaker 1 9:39

Or for a quick action step again, audit your training, making sure it's correct, if you need help with that. That's what we're here for at Spirali Fitness. We are a coaching-based gym where each client is working with a coach to make sure that we are doing each exercise safely and correctly and that program is designed for your goals and to meet you where you are at to accomplish those, whether that is stacking some weights or that's being able to still stack some wood and feel great day to day. Again, thank you all. I'm out. Have a wonderful day.