A Note on Enthusiasm
As someone who lives by “all in or nothing” and never one to turn down a challenge, I’ve also made some mistakes (with scars to remind me..) in doing such that I’ve tried my best to learn from and hope to share with others in this time.
In situations like we are all in now I’ve been working to try and shift my perspective and view them as a challenge and find opportunity. I think a lot of people will be doing the same, which is great – but where your body is concerned, some hesitance is often not a bad thing.
As all of our training takes a pretty drastic shift, acknowledging the change on the demands we’re imposing on our bodies and giving time to adapt is maybe not as prepared as your mind for such and acknowledging this and giving time to adapt is something I’m conscious of and trying hard to allow.
I used to be a runner – cross country, 6 days a week – and when COVID hit and the closure of gyms was inevitable I decided it’s a great opportunity to work on my running, stamina, sprints, calithsethics – handstands etc – and plyometrics.
BUT
My normal training incorporates 1-3 long runs a year (that means anything more than 400m in a workout) and I don’t do sprints much more than that. My feet, ankles, calves, knees, hips are not used to a large volume of running.
Equally, I do handstands, burpees, planks etc regularly, but my wrists are nowhere near trained enough to impose lots of wrist-demanding movement patterns daily.
There are a ton of awesome options on offer being provided for home workouts, a large portion of which include jumping or running movements. With the nice weather and 1 outdoor exercise session per day allotted, running is an attractive option for many.
The body takes time to adjust to changes in programming and although it may seem minor to go from 1 to 2-3 runs a week, for example, or burpees in a couple WODS a week to suddenly every day, or training in shoes all the time to suddenly in your front room training barefoot – that can be a shock and not a pleasant one to joints, ligaments, tendons, and bones.
A similar trend is followed with injuries; I’ve broken my foot in the past and now when it flares up I heavily bias upper body strength. The last time I did that I was a little too enthusiastic and ended up with an overuse injury on my shoulder that I’m still working on. I also over-physio’d the foot I broke and now my whole anterior and posterior chain on the right is stronger than the left…
I’m all for the enthusiasm but make sure to check in on your body, listen to the little niggles, and consider a slightly slower transition into a new way of training than you’d maybe like to.
Movements I’d be careful in volume increases in would be:
– anything jumping
– barefoot training (your feet have muscles!!)
– double unders
– running
– handstands
Core movements on the whole from my experience are harder to overdo – and now is also the perfect opportunity to (appropriately) work on any niggles, imbalances, etc that we all “never have time to do physio for”. No excuses now!
By Claire Wolfert