When it comes to exercise, most people either do too much or too little. I think this applies beyond exercise, but let’s stick with that for the moment.

Those of us in the fitness and nutrition fields write a lot about those who do too little, in the hopes of helping fight the growing obesity epidemic. Today, however, I am going to talk about the other end of spectrum: too much exercise.

We laud those around us who maintain a healthy lifestyle, and are motivated by, and impressed at their the feats of strength and dedication. I recently read about a man who has run everyday for the past 40 years. I’m sure most of us who read that were inspired, and impressed. But is that actually a good idea? In his case, he seems to be enjoying a great and long life, which is all we can really ask for. But is it because of his excessive dedication to running, or in spite of it?

Many of my clients are referred to me by their health care professional. They are runners; cyclists; soccer, hockey, tennis and ultimate players. Or at least they were, and hope to be again. But they fell victim to overuse injuries of one variety or another, and instead of enjoying their sport, they have spent months getting to know their physical therapists and chiropractors and orthotists and massage therapists and athletic therapists and osteopaths all too well. They make fantastic clients because they are incredibly motivated to get back to the athletic pursuits they used to love; and most do get back.

But they all have the same story. The individual details are different, but the fabric is identical:

One day, while enjoying [insert sport], I felt a slight pain in my [insert body part]. It felt odd, but I was able to keep enjoying [insert sport]. Over the next few weeks, the discomfort grew, but I kept playing. Weeks turned to months, and the discomfort that initially only occurred during the first or last few steps of [insert sport], now occurs constantly, and in sometimes keeps me from sleeping.

At this point, they make a visit to their health care professional of choice, but often continue to play in pain. What is it that makes us ignore the very clear signals our body provides? I talk about this without judgment, as I have been there. I know what it’s like to include “vitamin I” as part of my daily nutrition (in fact for me it evolved to Celebrex). But most of these long term injuries are completely preventable. If we listen to, and respect, the pain signals our body gives, we can avoid months (sometimes years) of pain and medical expenses. The irony of course is that our effort to not miss a few days or weeks of our beloved sport leads to missing weeks, months or even years of our beloved sport.

So I ask: are you strong enough to take a break when something feels off?

I didn’t used to be, but I am now. Years of regular hip pain, followed by surgery and significant loss of cartilage in my hip is what it took for the message to get through my thick skull. I am finally strong enough and smart enough to listen when my body talks.

And it started to talk a couple of weeks ago. I have been working on getting stronger in my split squats and deadlifts. I love lifting heavy weights; particularly deadlifting. It just feels incredible. And I have become part of an incredible group of women spread across the globe who all lift heavier weights than is typical for women. Watching the feats that these other incredible women do in the weight room motivates me to want to keep pushing myself to more lifting personal bests. But I started to get a small twinge of pain in my hip. I’m not sure what caused it, and it isn’t overly painful. But it is not normal. And I know that I don’t want to go back to being an Advil junkie; or to spending another several years and thousands of dollars on athletic therapy sessions. So I chose to listen.

It was weird initially. I started to rationalize, trying to convince myself that it was just a one time fluke, and that I should hold off on the deadlifts, but I can surely keep doing the split squats without harm. I’m either getting smarter or my rationalizing skills are waning, but this time it didn’t work, and I have taken deadlifts and all variety of squats out of my training for a while. I’m not talking about eternity in purgatory; just a short hiatus from the big lifts. Here’s the cool thing though: there are still ways to get a really great workout. And for those who feel that they need to exercise to keep the weight off: IT IS POSSIBLE TO CUT BACK ON EXERCISE AND NOT GAIN WEIGHT. For serious. Really really. I kid you not.

My new plan? It involves a bit more time rolling, stretching, and doing corrective exercises than usual, as well as a few visits to my massage therapist. The rest of the workout is full of fun strength training exercises (Yes, I refer to strength training as fun. What?). Here’s an example of a “I’m taking it easy” strength circuit from last week:
3 circuits of:
Chinups (max effort)

Single leg shoulder elevated hip lifts (10 ea with 70# added – killer!)

Half-kneeling cable chops (10 ea with 100#. Rotational core strength = optimal power transfer between upper and lower body. If you are not strong here, you are not strong. Period.)

Half-kneeling cable lifts (10 ea with 60#).

If you look at the videos, I think you’ll agree that they are not easy, and that I’m getting my butt kicked. There are always options that will allow you to build strength and work hard without pain. Often it can be done while helping you improve your movement quality. Take these opportunities if you need them!

What do you do you when your body says “Hey, so, if it’s all the same to you, I’d like to avoid this activity for a while”? And what’s your workout plan so that you can stay sane while your body stays healthy?

Elsbeth Vaino trains athletes in Ottawa, Canada.

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This article is part of my blog-series: My Favourite Training Tools (For my American readers, please excuse the ‘u’ in favourite. It’s a Canadian thing). There are probably thousands of tools out there for fitness. Some are ridiculous fly-by-night items, others have been mainstays for hundreds of years, and now and then there is a new kid on the block that is clearly here to stay. Through this blog-series, I’ll share with you the tools that I think are worth including in your home or commercial gym.

Number six on my list of favourite training tools is the chin up bar. As I write this, I wonder how it only made it to number six. If this was a “top 10 exercises that make me feel awesome” list, pull ups (palms away) and chin ups (palms toward you) would probably rank number one. But in reality, most people can’t do them (yet!), so we need other tools to be build up our strength so you can do them. This is where things like free weights (#1 on my list) and the TRX (#5 on my list) come in handy. I use them for building overall strength and stability first, and then I also use them to help clients progress to pullups. Here are a couple of how to exercise videos showing the pull up progressions that I use to get clients to be able to do pull ups:
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For your sake, I really hope it’s better than mine was a couple of months ago. Before that, I had fallen into the “the cobbler’s children have no shoes” category with workout planning. Each workout was scribbled onto a piece of paper and then shoved into the front pocket of my program folder. Some on post-its; some on scraps. Most do have a date and in theory there was probably some semblance of a plan from day to day, although not much more than that. It almost became a joke. Probably I should not have included “almost” in that last sentence.
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If you’ve read my stuff before, then you know that I am, well, a big geek. I think I probably took fitness geek to a whole new level with my bench press assessment article, talking about the work value of a bench press based on arm span. I think this article will further raise the bar on geek in the fitness industry.

This article is about what typical problem areas I see based on the Functional Movement Screen (FMS for those who like to keep things short) assessments that I perform. Not familiar with the FMS? Check out functionalmovement.com, or read on for a brief overview. Then follow the article to see an overview of the results I’ve seen in terms of what functional movements tend to cause the most problems, and how the results are different based on gender and whether someone is an athlete.

Lastly, I’ll share my take on what this should mean for your training (or programming for trainers) if you do not have access to the FMS or other assessment options to help guide you.
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I just got back to San Diego (I say that like I live here! maybe that’s a sign) after 3 amazing days in Long Beach, attending the Perform Better summit. Wow is all I can say. I mean that about the overall experience. The summit itself did not wow me as much as the last 2 that I attended in Providence did. But maybe that’s because I know a bit more now, and because I’ve already experienced how awesome they are, so my perspective is different. Don’t get me wrong – I saw some amazing presentations. And I learned a lot. And I got inspired. I think my favourite presentations were those by Brett Jones on the push press and squat, Charles Staley on Olympic lifting for regular folks, Diane Vives on functional training for female athletes, and Rachel Cosgrove on training women. But as I write that, I realize that I want to include Mark Verstegen coaching a barefoot training dynamimc warmup, Dan John coaching (and then taking the time to engage me about lifting norms for women athletes outside of class), Todd Durkin showing me how to be a phenomenally impressive speaker and how to motivate people, Sue Falsone about the head and neck, and John Berardi on coaching to help your clients meet their nutrition goals. In other words – it was all pretty amazing. Seriously – how lucky am I that I got to see all of that in one conference? And by the way – that meant skipping presentations by Martin Rooney, Michael Boyle, Gray Cook, Lee Burton, Alwyn Cosgrove, Todd Wright, Dr. Ed Thomas (so curious about club swings) and more. Seriously – what a conference.
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“Living in San Diego does not suck” is something my brother is fond of saying. I’m sitting in his backyard in San Diego as I write this, and I have to agree. I could get used to this. I’m here for a little family time before heading up to Long Beach for the Perform Better Summit this coming weekend. That’s my candy store, and today I’m sitting here reading the bios and presentation descriptions for all of the presenters. If that doesn’t adequately demonstrate my high geek quotient (the new GQ), then consider that I just created a table in Excel to highlight the sessions I’ll attend and those where I’m still undecided (click here to download it for anyone who will be attending and wants to be able to do the same). Ya, my GQ is high. And it gets worse: During each session of the summit I will sit in one of the first few rows, take notes and ask questions. I’ll probably even go ask the speakers additional questions at the end. Then I’ll continue to discuss nuances with other high GQ attendees in the hall. At last year’s event in Providence I chuckled to myself at one point as I realized that the 2011 version of me would be keener bingo’d by the 1990s-engineering-student-sitting-in-the-back-of-the-class version of me. Read more…

Organic foods have become very popular as a result of a trend toward wanting cleaner, healthier foods that have less of an environmental footprint. But does the organic label necessarily mean it is healthy? I tend to think so. But my peanut butter experience this morning taught me a valuable lesson: even though the food is organic, it is not necessarily a quality product.
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I am a food lover. I truly love the taste of food. I suspect I am not alone in my food-love, or in the challenges this presents in terms of maintaining a healthy weight. Or maybe it is that you are very busy and don’t have time to keep great food habits. Or you don’t know the reason, but for some reason, you just have a hard time with food. The reality is that for many of us, it can be tough to adhere to a nutrition plan. Food is hard for most people.

Many years ago, a friend made me realize that I was not alone in my food challenges. He had spent the past several months at a Buddhist monastery in England where they basically ate one meal a day of rice and vegetables. That’s tough! But it wasn’t just the food that was hard. He had hours a day of meditation, chores, and for one week he took a vow of silence. At the end of his vow of silence, he describes having gone down to “the big bacon hut” near the monastery and was shocked to see two of the senior monks devouring big bacon sandwiches. When he asked about it, they said that they still found food the most challenging of all of the hardships they have. Read more…

I have an online client who mentioned that he was not feeling great with the front squats in his program, but he was pretty confident he was doing them well since he is an experienced lifter. He is smart and self-aware, so I tended to think he was probably right. But I asked him to get someone to video his front squat because I have a pretty good eye for small details (I’m a ski instructor – if you can find small faults as someone launches past you on a ski hill, standing still on flat land is a piece of cake) and I just wanted to see what was up. Partly I just wanted to be sure that it was good form, because that would impact what exercises I would give to him.

He did, and before I even got the link he noted that he could see one major flaw in his front squat and that he was confident that I’d be able to help with it. I saw the video, which his son uploaded to youtube, and he is correct! The front view of the squat looks great – shoulders look great, the knees don’t cave in, and no lateral (side) shift. This is the view that you would have if trying to watch your own form at the gym if you had a mirror in front of you. Then came the side view, which lets face it, we don’t get to see. When you’re deep into a squat with weight on your back, you really don’t want to be turning your head to the side to check form. It could lead to bad things for your neck or back. But in fact, the side view showed the big flaw in his squat: his knees move way too forward as he comes down and his heels rise up slightly.
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Bench press is a great exercise, but for anyone with a shoulder issue, it may not be ideal. How do you know if you should bench? Well for starters, if it hurts to bench, you probably shouldn’t bench. What if it doesn’t hurt during the bench, but it hurts later, you ask? Same answer. I suspect you knew that but were hoping for a different answer. Sorry.

If the bench press is painful for you, you should probably be seeing a manual therapist (athletic therapist, chiro, massage therapist, osteopath, physio…) to help get you to pain free state. But once you reach that point, then what?

Ideally you would switch to other exercises, at least for a while. I want my clients to be able to do at least 10 proper bodyweight pushups (Click here for an article all about pushups) before I will have them bench press, and then I get them to do the Bottom Up Kettle bell (KB) bench press before moving to “normal” bench pressing.

I love it because it requires a lot of stabilizing to be able to do it, which means my clients literally will not be able to do it if they lack strength or stability in their shoulders. If they can’t do the bottom up KB bench press, they are not ready to bench press. Period.
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