Some Thoughts on Overtraining

If you were watching the ShopRite LPGA Classic on Saturday, you may have caught parts of a discussion about overtraining. I think it was spawned by all the therapy tape Michelle Wie was wearing on one leg -- she was wearing some during Friday's round, but Saturday it looked like a one-legged leotard -- and by Suzann Pettersen's back problems earlier this year.

Of route, injuries to Tiger Woods and other gamers were delivered up as well.

There are a few severe questions being raised about the quantity of exercising a golfer genuinely desires for peak performance. The problems are not new; I read that former NFL train and TV commentator John Madden as soon as claimed that weight work was responsible for an boom in accidents among soccer players. I agree with that turned into again inside the Seventies, so that is a long-strolling debate.

With the range of health centers round the sector, in addition to the quantity of mail order exercise applications and system you may order, it is well worth understanding what all the fuss is ready. You don't want to grow to be injuring your self and ending your golf season early!

The debate isn't just about the intensity or number of workouts -- clearly, you can overdo anything and create overuse injuries -- but about the nature of the workouts. Madden singled out weight work because it isolates specific muscle groups, particularly when done with machines rather than free weights. What's the difference?

You can strap someone into a weight machine (Nautilus machines are one instance) and with a view to permit them to work a selected muscle (or muscular tissues) in an green motion. However, there are a number of smaller support muscle tissues and tendons that help the joints remain strong in the course of use, and the machines don't give the ones small muscles the same exercise. As a end result, you create muscle imbalances at some point of your workout.

In effect, the joints, tendons, and muscles self-destruct while stressed on the playing discipline.

Free weights at the least require you to stabilize the barbell or dumbbells as you lift them, so the smaller muscle tissues do get a few greater use. But once more, the movement might not strain the ones smaller muscle mass and tendons quite the way they may be stressed at the gambling area, in order that they nevertheless grow to be being weaker.

Add the compulsion to overwork that some players have, and you may recognize why this has end up this type of warm button subject matter. (I heard Tiger say he used to run 30 miles every week. There are music experts who don't do that tons!) Are those injuries being caused by the styles of sports we do, the depth and quantity of exercises, or some mixture of the 2? Or may want to there be a few different contributing component that we haven't recognized yet?

There are some easy matters you could do to lessen the hazard of hurting your self while you boom your electricity and patience.

• Diversify your workouts. By that I mean to mix different kinds of exercise into your overall program. (Crosstraining was a popular buzzword for this at one time.) Mix cardio work with strength work. When you do strength work, mix weights or machines with bodyweight exercises like pushups, pullups, and squats. (Bodyweight exercises use your body in ways that work all those small muscles.)
• Vary the intensity of your workouts. You don't have to do the same amount of work at each workout. Some days you can do longer workouts, and other days you can do shorter ones. Do strength workouts on different days from cardio workouts, or schedule strength workouts across two days. (Bodybuilders frequently do this by working their upper bodies on one day and their lower bodies on a different day. And cardio workouts rarely need to be done more than 3 or 4 times a week to be effective.)
• Schedule off-days. When you first start your workouts and aren't pushing very hard, you can do something everyday if you want. But as the workouts get tougher, you should do them less often. For example, you might schedule this way (and this isn't the only way you could do it):

1. Monday: Upper body workout
2. Tuesday: Lower body workout & light cardio
3. Wednesday: off
4. Thursday: Upper body workout & light cardio
5. Friday: Lower body workout & light cardio
6. Saturday: off
7. Sunday: medium cardio

If you're trying to improve at some sport, the off days become good days for your sport.

Use good judgment and be flexible. Some days just aren't good days to work out -- perhaps you're ill, or maybe there's a schedule conflict. You can work out on a different day and, if you're sick, you can skip a day or two. Just remember to ease back into the workouts if you miss time due to sickness; otherwise you might hurt yourself.

Overtraining might be an occupational hazard for the pros but it doesn't have to be for us weekend warriors. Think about that when you see your favorite pros wrapped like mummies in therapy tape. You will gradually learn how much work it takes to keep you in shape if you just shelve your ego and use some common sense.

Remember: You don't have to train like an Olympic athlete to be in shape.