My Health Journey

I found that alternating between hard workouts and "negative exercise" reduces injuries and helps promote recovery. By "negative exercise", I mean yoga, stretching, foam rolling, massage, deep relaxation, or the like. Rather than having strength and muscle-building as the main focus, these negative workouts build flexibility and balance. Nowadays I do some form of physical activity daily.  I reserve hard workouts like runs longer than 2 miles and weight training to every other day.  I find that 10 min of basic yoga poses (neck and shoulder rolls, side bends, cat/cow, ...)  before  a weight training session helps reduce the soreness afterwards. A few hours after the hard workout, once I start feeling soreness, I follow up with a 20-min yoga session. The yoga poses help me survey my body, identify mis-alignments and soreness, and begin working sore spots for recovery. The next day, I follow up with a more comprehensive yoga and/or foam-rollin...

For the last two months, the unbearable humidity stopped me running. Instead, I focused on the corrective exercises in the book  Anatomy for Runners . Those exercises aimed at strengthening my glutes while stretching my hip flexors, letting me swing my legs back further than I did. In other words, they aim to take out a lifetime of sitting postures out of my gait. The nice weather this week afforded me to test my (partially) corrected body on a couple of runs. My shadow running. The stance of the legs has improved. As can be seen from the shadow picture above, my legs project equally front and back from my hips. My upper body posture needs some work, but the key is the leg stance. Previously, I would run largely by thrusting my legs forward, one at a time. My legs extend too far to the front, causing me to hit my heel more, probably contributing to my recurring plantar faschitis. Further, only one leg's muscles are used at any one time, and my center of gravity (cg) wobbles a...

Blank chart I use to fill out my workouts Record-keeping is key to successful weight training. Though I have always recorded my exercises, I was applying the records far too automatically in determining what weights to use on a particular day. Looking back, it appears I have been increasing weights too fast, and adhering too rigidly to the plan. That, perhaps, can explain the frequent injuries I was having. After a year-long hiatus from weight training, I wanted to ease in gradually. I am finding the need to revise my strategy for weight training. The main observation is that my form degrades as I continue an exercise for more reps . As muscles fatigue, others pitch in to fill their place. The hip starts to move to assist the bicep, or the lower back moves in to help. That's not good because it's recruiting muscles other than the ones in focus, for a job they're not meant to do in the first place. Another observation is that I'm not training for an event. Rather...

Apart from a few nice walks at sunset, the heat wave kept me indoors for most of the last ten days. I managed to do three weight sessions: Monday, Friday, and Labor Day Monday. I have been battling injuries on the left side of my body. Through yoga and foam rolling, as well as a couple of chiropractor adjustments, I managed to eliminate that pain by the beginning of the weekend. I had been using mostly 5 and 10 lb. dumbbells to reintroduce my body to weight training gradually.  Friday's session felt easy I decided to upgrade the weights to 12.5 lb. for the Monday session (keeping the left arm at 10 lb. for some exercises to give it more time to heal). In retrospect, that was a mistake, as I had spent an active and vigorous weekend with my girlfriend. We exercised both in and out of bed. She left me exhausted on Monday, and I should have rested instead of immediately doing weight training. By Tuesday morning, I woke up with serious pain on my entire right arm, from the ...

My bedroom workout setup. Injuries are a fact of an active life. Whether from accidents, poor posture, repetitive use, or exerting oneself too much, injuries get in the way of further exercise, leaving muscles weaker and withering away. Most of the last two years I have spent battling injuries. This led me to re-evaluate my approach. Rather than focus on running speed or weights lifted, I need to understand my body better and build around it. Something I am just realizing is that the workouts and routines you find in books are usually aimed at neutral people who are in reasonable shape and mechanically balanced. The same routines may not necessarily work for you if you are starting from a baseline of injury and imbalance. Instead, they need to be customized to fit your needs and your body, which requires first knowing your body. Last week I did a tour of my body with fairly light 15 lb. dumbbells. I felt much soreness in my neck, upper left arm, left hip and lower back, and right...

The heat wave halted my running to a standstill, so I resurrected the set of weights I have at home to resume weight training. Turns out the last time I had done any weights was last summer, when I decided to take it easy on my heels to alleviate the plantar fasciitis that had developed. Following the recommendation of my chiropractor, I decided to start with especially low weights the first few sessions and see how it goes.  Today was the third session. My first two sessions, starting with 15 lb. dumbbells, identified weak area of my body. Currently at the top of my list is my left shoulder / upper arm, which appears to have suffered an injury. For the last two weeks, I've been feeling pain there when I do dishes. Now I feel it with any type of press, flys, especially pullovers, and lateral raises, but surprisingly not front raises. My chiropractor adjusted it yesterday, but the pain was still there when I exercised today, suggesting it was ...