Well, it’s 2018 and the Target Tendonitis website, as you can see, has been redone with a completely new look. The old site was getting kind of stale, and some of the back-end tech stuff was out of date, so I hired a guy to come in and overhaul the whole thing. The site is still being built out; I’m in the process of porting over all the old blog posts and stuff, but the main part is here and done. Hope you like it!
In the same spirit, I am going to release the fourth edition of Target Tendonitis soon. It will have links to even more videos, an expanded FAQ section, and some updated nutritional recommendations. If you order the 3rd edition now, don’t worry; if you want the updates I’ll be happy to send you the new version once I get it done. Just shoot me an email (the address is in the ebook) and I’ll put you down on the list.
Finally, I’ve decided to start posting about topics other than tendon pain. I’ll still keep on with the tendon information, but there’s only so much that can be said about tendons, and I want to expand the blog to encompass some other topics relating to general health and fitness (especially for us older folks, those on the far side of fifty). So I’ll be talking about exercise, and nutrition, and body maintenance not only as they relate to tendons specifically, but on more of a general level as well.
Best wishes to everyone for the coming year (and beyond!), and I hope that this blog will become even more useful as time goes on.
If you haven’t read How to Warm Up Correctly – Part One yet, you can find it here.
3. X-band sidewalks for the hips.
If you’ve never heard of this exercise, don’t worry. Not many people have. But it’s something that I incorporate whenever I train legs, and if you try it your hips will immediately feel looser and more functional.
I won’t try to describe the exercise. Just watch this video:
You can do this either with bent knees or straight, whichever you prefer. Give it a shot, ten steps one way and then ten the other, each step about a shoulder width, and I guarantee your hips will feel a decade younger.
4. Warm-up sets of three or fewer reps
Okay, so much for prep work. Now we go to the weights and start getting ready for the work sets.
Back in the 1970s, Joe Weider’s muscle magazines were in every gym and every gym rat’s home. And they advocated a pyramid type of warm-up. For a typical YMCA bench presser, the warm-up might have looked something like this:
135lbs x 10
155lbs x 10
175lbs x 8
195lbs x 4-5
WORK SETS at around 215-225lbs.
So what’s wrong with this? Well first, let me agree that yes, your joints will be warm when you get to your work sets. However, you’ll also be tired from all the effort you put in getting there – effort that not only wore you out, but did nothing to contribute to getting stronger (because it was performed at too low of an intensity). In other words, you’ve wasted some effort. That’s one thing wrong.
Since you did so much work getting to your “real” sets (again, the ones that will actually contribute to making you stronger), you won’t have as much energy to perform them. Thus, strength-gain progress won’t occur as quickly as it could otherwise. In other words, it’ll take you longer to get to your goals. That’s two.
Third–-and here’s the real problem in terms of tendon pain-–if you add up the number of reps in the warm up, you’ll see that the total comes to over 30. (And that’s not even counting the “bar only” warm-ups that a lot of people do before they start putting weight on.) 30 reps is way too much, and for someone who has had tendon pain (or might be susceptible to it in the future), it’s practically begging for an injury.
Now, take a look at this warm-up instead:
Joint mobility drills as described above
135 x 3, 3 (One set of 3, short rest, then another set of 3)
155 x 3, 2
175 x 2
195 x 1, 1
WORK SETS
15 total reps – less than half of the traditional method. Trust me, this will have your joints just as warm and ready as with the first method. And you will be light-years ahead in terms of how fresh you feel when you get to your work sets. Not to mention that with less than half the wear-and-tear on the connective tissues, your chances of (re)injuring yourself are far less.
By now you’re probably wondering where the stretching is. After all, any good warm-up involves stretching, right?
Wrong. Stretching should come after the workout. Not before.
There are some good reasons for this. One, there are plenty of studies that show that stretching five or ten minutes before a workout has a negative impact on maximal strength. That’s right, stretching just prior to lifting weights makes you weaker. Not too many people go to the gym to lose strength rather than build it, so that’s the first reason to leave stretching for after the weight work.
Two, if you stretch a muscle and then lift heavy weights, that muscle is going to lose the extra flexibility you just gave it anyway. Think about it: you stretch the muscle, then do your best to contract it. Kind of counter-productive, if you ask me. But if you stretch after your workout, the benefits last for several hours. In fact, Tomas Kurz (see Part 1 of this post) recommends active stretching first thing in the morning to “set” your flexibility level for the day. So the effects of a good stretch can last all day…as long as you don’t do something immediately afterward to ruin the effect.
I’m all for morning stretches, because research has shown that stretching a muscle a few hours before a workout (as opposed to five or ten minutes prior) will actually help to make you stronger when you lift. And stretching is great for longevity in any sport or athletic activity, so it should definitely be part of your program. So I’m not anti-stretching at all. Just be careful where you put it in your program.
Finally, there is a lot of evidence that stretching right before you lift will increase the likelihood of a muscle tear. So if you absolutely insist on stretching right before a set, make sure to do a couple of light concentric contractions before you do a work set. For example, some light push-ups against a wall after a pectoral stretch. This will help prevent injury.
If you’re a weight trainer and are still using the old-school, 1970s-type warm-up – meaning starting with ten or more reps of a light weight and pyramiding up – this will help you to do things in a better way.
Warming up is very important, especially for the older crowd. But endless sets of light weights, while effective for getting the joints and muscles “warm”, also are a prime suspect when it comes to tendon pain. Almost any kind of tendon pain can be classified as a repetitive stress injury, so excessive numbers of reps during a warm-up aren’t really recommended – even if they’re done with light weights.
Below I’m going to give you a better way to warm up. Not only will this save you time and energy, but it will be just as effective (if not more so) as a traditional warm-up. As an added benefit, it will cut down drastically on the wear-and-tear that you’re imposing on your connective tissues before you even get to your real workout.
Here are the steps, in order:
1. Foam rolling
There are two types of people in the world: those who have tried foam rolling and love it, and those who haven’t tried it at all.
Now, by “tried” I mean that this person has incorporated foam rolling into his or her routine for at least two weeks. In other words, it’s been given a fair shot. I know lots of people who tried foam rolling once or twice and gave up because, well, it hurts the first few times. A lot.
But people who have gritted their teeth and stayed with it for a couple of weeks suddenly realize that they’re starting to move and feel better. (This is especially true for older folks.) Their range of motion increases, their joints don’t have as much pain…and then often the pain goes away completely. Bad movement patterns start to improve, and their bodies go back to moving in ways that they did ten or even twenty years earlier. The list goes on.
Foam rolling, either using one of those blue cylinders that most gyms provide nowadays or else just by putting a tennis ball under a pressure point, is nothing short of miraculous when done right. There are lots of free videos out now showing how to foam roll, so I won’t go into a long explanation about how to do it here. But I’ll give you some tips on how to get the most out of it.
* The point that hurts the most is the one you want to spend the most time on.
* If you’re really tight and simply can’t take the pain the first few sessions, don’t put all of your bodyweight on that particular pressure point. Use your arms and legs to take some of the weight off (so that the pain is merely agonizing, not unbearable).
* Expect consistent but gradual improvement.
* Make a commitment to foam roll a minimum of three times a week for at least a month.
I encourage you to spend “enough” time on foam rolling, especially when you’re first starting out. Depending on how stiff your body is to begin with, it can take up to half an hour to adequately address all the areas that need help. So take your time. The long-term benefits are definitely worth it.
2. Joint rotations
Probably the best book I’ve ever read on flexibility is Tomas Kurz’ Stretching Scientifically. Not only can Kurz do Van Damme splits with just his ankles supported, he can do them with a woman sitting on each thigh – and he has taught dozens of other people to do them as well. If you’re interested in increasing your flexibility, I can’t recommend this book highly enough.
As the title suggests, his main focus is on developing stretching, but Kurz also includes a section on warming up before a workout. One of the key components is joint rotations.
The way to do this is simply to take the various joints in your body and rotate them about ten times in one direction and then another ten in the other. The idea is to start at the extremities and move toward the core. So with the legs you start from the toes and move to the ankles, then the knees, then the hips and finally the waist/lower back. With the upper body you start with the fingers and move “inward” to the wrists, elbows, shoulders and neck before ending up at the waist again.
You can do more than one joint at the same time if you like. I usually begin this part of the warm-up by rotating both wrists and one ankle simultaneously, then rotating the wrists in the other direction while doing the other ankle.
Joint rotations for the entire body shouldn’t take more than about five minutes total.
Stay tuned for How To Warm Up Correctly – Part Two.
