Full disclosure: I am not a trainer.
I am a yoga guy. So when asked to write something about training, I'm always a little
hesitant. I figure the folks around here probably know a thing or two more
about training then I do. But I have taught therapeutic yoga to a lot of
trainers, often on the down-low, and to a full range of people and conditions
including the neighborhood characters at my local senior center, marathon
runners, competition body-builders, dancers, and everyone else in between who
has got some pain that the MRI can't solve. The question is does working our bodies need to be intense
in order to be effective? To answer that, we first need be clear about what
effective means, which is inherently tied to a matter of purpose.
What are you hoping to accomplish in
your training? Are you training for a specific event or just overall fitness?
Do you have specific fitness goals you are trying to reach? If so, why? Most importantly,
is the training you do compromising your functional body health? If so, is
it worth it?
You see, if I want to run marathons or climb mountains then I am going to need
some serious no pain no gain in order to condition my body enough to meet those
kind of challenges. And will likely put myself at some risk of injury in the
process. But if what I'm after is functional body health, where I just want my
body to do what I need it to do for me in my life with as little pain as
possible, then the same techniques that are required for those other pursuits
are actually counter-productive. A lot of the extremely intense training that
people are doing to be healthy is actually working against their functional
body health. (Read more on our Top 5 Functional Training Mistakes)
Regardless of your purpose, if we want to maintain functional body health then
it behooves us to explore a range of
intensity in our work-outs. If we look at things from a therapeutic
orientation: on a day that someone is feeling well and in good health,
challenging limits to reach fuller potential is likely going to produce
benefits. But if on another day, when we are not feeling all that well for
whatever reason, we go ahead and train the same way we did when we were feeling
great, chances are we are not going to see those same benefits. In fact, that
is usually the day that you end up getting injured.
It's difficult to discern. We want
to push ourselves and be motivated. But if you do that too hard then you end up
inadvertently sabotaging your goals. So how do we know how much to work, and
when?
That is why I am into yoga practice. Yoga
practice is all about learning to discern for yourself how you are doing and
what you need, and having the discipline to provide only that to yourself and
nothing more. But the principles that I am working with certainly apply to
whatever sort of training you might do. Being
able to have a sense of whether or not the work you put in is leading to your
goals or just a bunch of wasted energy is probably a good thing to
consider. And if every workout you ever do is to maximum intensity then you
have no way of knowing whether a less intense workout would also be effective.
Maybe even more effective.
Honestly, I am an outlier in the yoga world too. Most people are pushing the
limits of intensity in yoga classes no differently than if they were doing
extreme sports. I was a power yoga teacher in my early years and didn't care a
lick about my functional body health. I wanted mastery of the forms and I
worked hard to accomplish that. But after accomplishing those goals, I still
had lots of pain and was miserable in my life nonetheless.
I have often debated with my trainer
and athlete friends about whether training needs to be intense in order to be
effective. Certainly, there is plenty of evidence to support the case that high
intensity training produces results. But those statistics generally don't
reflect all the people who crash and burn. Most informed trainers would likely
agree that being overly reckless or misguided with working your body in times
of youth or health easily leads to degenerative issues down the road. Whatever
immediate gains that might come from our efforts must be weighed against the
risk of injury and longer term outcomes.
As a general rule, the key to honoring your functional body health is making
sure to work within some limits, rather than always pushing them. For instance,
let's say you are in a warrior 2 pose. If you take your feet as wide apart as
possible, you will feel some intense sensation probably. People often want to
go for “the burn." But where do you feel it? Are you feeling it in your joints?
In a wide warrior 2 stance this is common. But if you are feeling it in your
joints then that likely means the joints are being strained rather than working
the big muscles of your legs. Often, when you are working best there is not
necessarily a big sensation.
It is sometimes counter-intuitive to work a pose without feeling big sensation.
When it comes to working our bodies, we associate sensation with progress. But
working back from the edge where there is still some room to explore offers
other sorts of benefit. Whenever I have an “advanced" practitioner come to my
class, I am always pulling them back. And usually when I do, there is a lot of
shaking. It's kind of like putting someone on a balance trainer. Working
simpler and more subtle often requires people to access small muscles that get
easily overlooked.
Beyond the technicalities of working within healthy limits, what makes a less
intense workout effective is that it allows the entirety of your training to be
more well rounded and holistic, When your efforts better fit with the
ebbs and flows of your health and body state, you can minimize unintended
backlashes and reach whatever your goals are more efficiently.
About the Author: J. Brown is a yoga teacher, writer and founder of Abhyasa Yoga Center in Brooklyn, NY. His writing has been featured in Yoga Therapy Today, the International Journal of Yoga Therapy, and across the yoga blogosphere. Visit his website at jbrownyoga.com
