Tip of the day:

My client Joanne passed along a neat-o Jedi magic trick for defeating the night time leg cramps so prevalent in older folks (I’ve no doubt many of you out there over the age of 50 know what I’m talking about).

The Cure:

Press your thumb into the little divot under your nose (the infranasal depression) as hard as you can stand for about a minute or so.  Amazingly, this should bring you instant relief.

What’s the science behind it?  I’m afraid I’ll have to content you with an Eastern Medicine explanation.  There’s an acupressure point located right smack dab in the infranasal depression called “Ren Zhong“.  It’s used (not surprisingly) to relieve cramping, as well as treat shock and abdominal conditions.  According to a bibliography review on the Medical Acupuncture page, it’s the most widely used emergency point in acupuncture.

Hope this helps.  Post stories to comments.

edit 6/26: I just realized Ren Zhong means “person center” (your center).  Heh.

A client of mine remarked about NJ governor John Corzine’s speedy recovery from his horrific vehicular accident. She said,

“Well, if I did 4 hours of physical therapy a day, 7 days a week like he did, I’d get better just as quickly .”

No, she wouldn’t have. You can bet your bottom dollar that while the PT helped some, it was Corzine’s mental state, motivation, and overall insanity that brought him back to his duties so quickly (hey, he was CEO and chairman of Goldman Sachs in a former life).

If you’re like most exercisers, you spend a great deal of time researching what the best diet or nutrition is. You’re concerned with putting together the perfect exercise program. You read about meal timing, macronutrient ratios, undulating periodization, and myostatin. And yet, there’s likely one thing that would never cross your mind at all - rest.

Rest. It’s almost a forbidden word in American culture (at least in the non-stop town I work in, good ol’ New York City). In a training context, it’s assumed that like other things, more exercise is better - more reps, more sets, more workouts, more weight…

…well, more weight generally is better. But the other stuff deals with recovery issues; in other words, rest.

Understand this: Exercise is merely the stimulus for change. It is not the agent of change - your body is.

Example: Pick up a heavy dumbbell and begin to curl it. Curl it until you can no longer even lift it. Then set the dumbbell down.

Is your biceps muscle stronger now?

No - in fact, it’s weaker. Strength training is a systematic process of weakening (damaging) muscles, so that the body “fixes” them and ends up making them stronger afterwards. All you’re doing with the exercise is causing trauma to muscle tissue, which your body will repair and reinforce (if a strong wind knocked down your fence, wouldn’t you reinforce the fence posts so that it wouldn’t happen again?). Only after this repair process occurs are we actually stronger.

Most folks don’t give themselves enough time to allow this recovery process to occur. The scientific consensus is that 48 hours is a good time frame for muscle recovery from an intense work bout (after 48 hours, muscle glycogen is fully replenished - the fuel tanks are topped off). However, some newer research involving mRNA suggests that full recovery doesn’t occur until closer to 72 hours post-workout.

Whatever the actual case may be, allowing at least 48 hours between strength training bouts will ensure that your muscles are adequately recovered to receive their next bit of “gentle coaxing and persuasion” to become bigger and stronger.

Skip a day, get results faster - what a compelling concept.

Had to take the day off today, because I’m sick. Whilst staying home in wonderment of my body’s inability to respond to my CNS commands, I thought to myself that over the weekend I had repeatedly broken one of the Cardinal Rules of Strength Training.

Namely, “Don’t Work Out When You’re Sick.”

The reason, of course, is that exercise is a stressor. Exercise is not what causes adaptation to occur; in other words, what doesn’t happen is - you lift the dumbbell 10 times, volia, you get stronger right then and there. Conversely, your body is temporarily weakened by your efforts in the gym. An incredibly complicated series of events occurs where your body works to make itself stronger - first, to “fix the damage” from your workout, then to overcompensate for it.

It is analogous to someone living in Florida in the height of hurricane season. Hurricane 1 sweeps into Tampa, creating damage in your house - cracks, leaks, etc. Once the danger has passed, you assess the damage and patch up all the cracks. You fill up holes where the leaks come through. In your infinite wisdom, you decide to reinforce the walls and windows so that next time that hurricane passes over, the house will sustain minimum damage. So you end up with a stronger house than before (that is, until Hurricane 2 sweeps through with double the power of Hurricane 1). So you repatch the house again. And so forth.

To summarize: The workout doesn’t make you stronger/fitter/more conditioned. Your body’s recovery from the workout does.

It’s a small intellectual distinction, but it is an important mental shift to go through, because your outlook on exercise changes.

It also helps to prevent you from working yourself into illness, sometimes.

I did get my third stripe in Jiujitsu, though.

There’s no other reason for a post of this nature - you guessed it, I hurt myself.

The particular offender this time? Snowboarding.

Step 1. Determine the nature of the injury. Identify the anatomical structures involved, the circumstances surrounding the incident. Interview the hurt individual, if possible, to determine what other complications may be anticipated.

During late spring riding, snow turns to slush. It gets heavy, hard to work with. Heavy, slushy snow requires a tremendous amount of metabolic work to plow through (it has been compared to skiing/riding through cement). But even more insidiously, in terrain parks and other heavily trafficked areas, the snow melts, due to the heat of the sun’s rays and the friction created by hundreds of skiers and snowboarders passing through the same lines. In a terrain parks, this causes a buildup of “goo” in a puddle right in front of a kicker, unavoidable if one intends to hit the kicker. Aside from looking messy, this goo has the tendency to kill every last bit of speed one possesses as one travels over it (since the goo sticks to the snowboard/ski, increasing friction, etc.) . Not too good if you need X amount of speed to, say, clear a jump.

And so it was with my injury - last kicker of the last run (always happens on the last run!). There was a giant goo puddle in front of the kicker, which robbed me of much of my speed. I spun a quick (for me) 360 hoping to make it, and my front edge clipped the tabletop, tweaking my back somehow (I think I was in spinal extension and majorly rotated). I was able to scrape the rest of my board around, avoiding a fall, but the damage had already been done. I rode down to the base in extreme pain, with my legs getting weaker and weaker by the moment. Once down, I barely got my bindings undone and immediately lay down.

I have hurt my back before (an “undiagnosed” disc issue at about the level of L5-S1) and this particular injury presented the same symptoms as the previous injury to the same spot. I had intense radiating pain from the level of L5-S1, some pain radiating into and around my right quad/adductor region, and general weakness in both legs.

Step 2. Manage pain: place subject in neutral anatomical position, or a position that minimizes pain . Begin to bring down swelling by adminstering anti-inflammatories or icing the injured area.

I lay down on one of the tables at the base area. My brother-in-law was kind enough to get an ibuprofen tablet out of the first aid kit in my backpack (be prepared, kiddies) and I took it immediately. I didn’t really feel like lying down in the slush, but I suppose in lieu of an ice pack, it would have worked just fine.

Step 3. Rest. R-I-C-E. Rest some more. Seek professional assistance - a doctor for diagnosis, PT for rehab.

I didn’t really do so well on this step:)

I did rest. I did allow Sairalyn and our friends to do things for me (sometimes) while I allowed my back to rest. I did take off one whole day of work.

I didn’t see a doctor. I’m really dumb; don’t follow my example. See a doctor, take days off, let friends and family do things for you. Rest your injuries.

More to follow…

Day 7 of my return to Brazilian JiuJitsu training, and it appears that the effect of DOMS lingers on. I suppose it will subside soon enough.

DOMS = Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness. Just fancy physiologist talk for that unrelenting muscle ache one gets approximately 48-72 hours post-exercise.

No one’s been able to pinpoint what exactly causes muscle soreness, but here are a few theories that have been popped around:

1) Microscopic tearing of muscle fibers at the cellular level, AKA, “microtears.”

2) Overproduction of prostaglandins as a result of lactic acid accumulation and tissue swelling.

3) Overheating of the muscle tissue (Type III and IV nerve endings - the kind that transmit DOMS pain - are sensitive to high temperatures, like the kind that occur during intense muscular contraction).

4) Acute spasm of musculature resulting in reduced blood flow and motor unit impairment AKA “trigger points.”

5) Some mysterious magical properties of the muscle rebuilding process.

So much for science, eh? Here are some decidedly unscientific ways to reduce muscle soreness:

1) Get a massage.

2) Get a hold of some OTC painkillers.

3) “Hair of the Dog” - perform the same task that caused you the DOMS in the first place.

4) Do yoga.

5) Ignore it.

My weapon of choice? Always - #3. It is almost always the “cure” I recommend to clients. However, on occasion, I do recommend to others and employ for myself solution #1 - since a terrain park with kickers to huck off of isn’t always readily available.