Every human being has a capacity for how much stress or “load” their system can endure in a given day before something bad (like injury or illness) happens.
Take out a piece of paper and draw a horizontal dotted line across the page about three quarters of the way up.
This is your capacity.
Starting at the bottom of the page, there are boxes of stress or “load” that we stack one on top of the other. These include things like:
Anatomical Dysfunction: Parts of your body that don’t work quite the way you’d like or need them to in a way that interferes with your physical activities.
Stress/Sleep/Diet: Things you can definitely control and improve with practice.
Functional Diagnosis: If you’re working with a coach who’s properly assessed how your body works, these could be movement limitations that he or she has identified. (For example, maybe you can’t squat to depth without pain, or it hurts to do lunges.)
Everyone has some level of the above, not to mention another box — sitting in a car and/or at a desk for 8-10 hours a day.
Finally, after all those boxes are stacked one on top of another, you get to your workout.
The goal each day should not be to feel crushed by your workout. It should be to feel awesome when you’ve finished your workout and still be below your capacity.
If you’ve ever been injured doing a workout, chances are it wasn’t that last deadlift or kettlebell swing that did it … it was everything leading up to it that pushed you over the edge.
Now, most of us can’t control how long we need to sit at a desk … but you can shrink that box a bit by getting up every 90 minutes or so and doing some walking or stretching.
For most of us, the three foundational boxes can all be reduced by about 50%, leaving us with way more room for error below our capacity line once we walk into the gym.
By working with a qualified coach, you can reduce anatomical dysfunction with corrective exercises targeting the trouble area.
By going to sleep an hour earlier, using healthy strategies to manage stress, and getting lean protein and colorful veggies with every meal, you can significantly reduce the size of that box, too.
And rather than “training through pain,” you can shrink the Functional Diagnosis box by executing the movements in your workout pain free. You can do this by limiting range of motion, using assistance (like a TRX or band) to move gently through a difficult position, or substituting an exercise that’s just as effective but not painful.
This way, by the time you walk into the gym for your workout, you have plenty of room beneath your dotted line so that you don’t go over capacity and hurt yourself.
Continue pushing yourself, using a “no pain, no gain” mentality or viewing your workout as punishment for your weekend eating binge will only lead to injury, illness and frustration.
Your innie friend and coach,
Paul F. Sweatt CPT PN1
Train Smart. Train Hard. Train Safe. Train to Sweatt
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