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Pain-Free

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Since I've worked out my whole adult life, I've come through a lot of injuries and sickness.  I'm now gaining a much better understanding of why this has happened.  For me, it's happened due to a few main reasons:

1.  Trigger Points in the body resulting in muscle imbalances.
2.  Inadequate rest & recovery
3.  Improper nutrition to support my workouts.
4.  Improper form in performing some exercises.  But, this is usually caused by #1.

TRIGGER POINTS:
  • Search under this tag to find my resources on this, but a book I highly recommend is Clair Davies called The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook: Your Self-Treatment Guide for Pain Relief, Second Edition .  It's a self-help to get rid of trigger points in your own body and can be gotten at Amazon for under $20.  I cannot say enough good things about this book as it gives you pictures of where the pain is and the associating trigger point for the WHOLE body from head to toes.  It also goes on to explain how you could've derived at this pain and how you can personally, and inexpensively treat it yourself.
  • Search in YouTube for DrJonathanKuttner.  He has some great explanations on what trigger points are.
  • Search in YouTube for TPTherapy.  They have some great exercises to help release trigger points from various parts of your body.
  • I may make some short videos on the tools I use to help me get rid of trigger points.

REST & RECOVERY
  • This is the body's ability to repair and rebuild on the work you've done, which not only results in better performance, but a healthier individual.  What is that exact time really depends upon the health & fitness of the individual, as well as what is done to support rest & recovery.  
  • For example, getting good, deep, restful sleep and enough of it is one component.  When I do a hard spartacus workout, I need at least 8 hrs of good, solid sleep.
  • I've found often my spirit and mind are willing to do a whole lot more than my body's current ability to be able to do.  Especially when I'm seeing positive results, I tend to want to do more to get even FASTER results.  It doesn't work that way.
  • Some ways to tell you are not getting enough rest & recovery is the inability to sleep at night.  Not sure why this is, but when I'm working out too often and too much, I can't sleep even though I'm exhausted.
  • Greater frequency of getting sick.
  • Muscular pains (this is not soreness) that I would not normally have.  If I'm sore, this is a significantly different feeling than aching joints or muscles.  This means I still need more rest.
  • The inability to really push harder.  I measure the intensity and heartrates of each workout.  If I'm recovering & resting enough, I'm able to push much harder on repeated workouts, but my heartrates don't go as high.  This means I'm becoming more efficient in my workouts.
  • I don't actually feel better after my workouts physically.  This doesn't mean I don't feel tired after the workouts, but I feel bad physically instead of rejuvenated.
  • This is a really good article that summarizes what I wanted to say:  Importance of Rest & Recovery
NUTRITION & HYDRATION:
  • Proper hydration of water and things to restore the electrolytes in my body (this does not mean downing gatorade).  The body needs to be properly hydrated before, during and after the workouts, but in different quantities.  This also depends upon where you are working out, too.  If it's hot outside and you're doing your workout outside, then you'll need more water.
  • A good way to gauge whether you are personally drinking enough water or not, as I hate to count the number of ounces I'm drinking, is to gauge the color of your urine.  Each time you go, it should be nearly clear if you're drinking enough water.  If it isn't, drink more water.  If it is, then you're drinking enough.  Adjust throughout the day.  Most of us aren't quite robots.
  • My specific body doesn't like grains or starches at all, at least what I'm learning.  However, for years and many of the fitness sites say to eat healthy whole grains in moderation or small quantities.  My body does not like this at all.  Was it they were trying to deceive me?  I don't think so.  They just didn't know.  You will have to experiment to see what works for you, but one thing I think most of the really good "experts" and I agree are that whole foods, single ingredient foods are the best for you, that is, as long as they aren't filled with antibiotics, hormones, GMO stuff.
  • You body needs proteins, but the amount is debatable.  Listen to your body carefully what it says.  It will tell you what it needs (and it's not all that junky crap).  If you're getting a lot of constipation, you may have grain or dairy allergies.  There is a huge list of things here that I won't go into.  You can google, but what you can do is eliminate whole categories of food, keep a food journal and see what eliminating things does for your body physically.  If you feel better, then the foods you eliminated may have been causing some of your issues.
  • When I eliminated grains & starches and added a probiotic, I found I no longer was gassy and I eat plenty of fiber all the time.  Fiber does not make you gassy.  I think I've probably farted maybe less than a 1/2 dozen times in the past 3 months, whereas in the past, I would fart maybe a dozen times a day.
  • When I eat highly processed, pasteurized cheeses, too much of this or too much ice cream, I get diarrhea.  Since I have nixed ice cream, the bad kind and even good stuff right now, and rarely eat pasteurized cheeses, I rarely have diarrhea now.
  • If you have no energy in your workouts, then you need to make sure you eat about 1-1.5 hrs of protein and some carbs (I eat veggies).  I no longer subscribe to working out on an empty stomach.  This doesn't work for me.  I need food to make it through my hard workouts.
  • I have a tendency to be lazy and under eat, so this is something I am focusing on is getting my butt to go eat when I'm actually hungry.
  • I keep a gallon of water near my desk, so I don't have to keep getting up and getting water.  It helps so much.  
  • If you're workouts are very strenuous and involve heavy weights or high intensity stuff, you are majorly stressing out your body.  You need to make sure there is enough protein in your diet, which I can't say how much that is, but listen to your body.  My body will tell me subtly it needs more protein and which ones.  I will begin to crave red meat, or fish, or poultry.  So, I fulfill the cravings until they're gone.  I hate to makeup a rule, as it doesn't apply to everyone.  Listen to your body.
  • Also, sometimes your body will crave wrong foods.  That's because your body is out of balance.  I'm not qualified to address this for you, but I found that eliminating grains & starches, going low sugar eliminated ALL my bad food cravings.  I only get good food cravings now and never do I binge.  It's not a thing of willpower, rather I don't feel the need to binge.  I eat until I'm satisfied.
IMPROPER FORM:
  • This is where having a good trainer would be good, but if you can't, which that would be me right now, going to some sites like Holly Rigsby or Scott Colby or Funk Robert's or Flavia Del Monte or Kareem Samhouri are some people I totally respect.  They have lots of videos on YouTube to help you tell if you're doing something with good form or not.
  • Sometimes I will ask my children to let me know if my form is good or not.
  • A mirror helps.  No, you're not being vain.  You can look in a big mirror to see if you're doing the exercise correctly.
  • It would be good if you could videotape yourself.  I used to do this when I played racquetball to see where I was messing up and correct bad habits.
  • Working out with a friend or someone who will pay attention to your form as you perform the exercise.
  • Sometimes we have improper form because we're just being plain sloppy.  Stop it.  This can get you injured.
  • Sometimes we have improper form because we have trigger points that don't allow us the range of motion we are to have for the exercise.
  • Sometimes we have wrong form because of a combination of all of the above.





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