Muscles, On The Cheap.
Sunday, January 13, 2008 18:04Posted in category Gizmos
Seen today in the local sporting goods store:
A mere $60 for the “travel” version.
I’ve got a better idea - how about you do some honest-to-goodness, old-fashioned, non-accessorized pushups in your hotel room and save yourself $60?
Every year, hundreds of gizmos and gimmicks are invented to purportedly improve fitness and make exercises more effective - and most of them fall far short of expectations. One thing is certain: Good ol’-fashioned hard work on the basics works - no need for a money-back guarantee, either.
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Pablo (1 comments) says:
January 20th, 2008 at 9:43 am
But there is evidence that shows that people who continually do pushups will damage their tendons in their shoulder and harm their wrists. I know that the only cases are for those who do extreme amount of pushups - i.e. navy seals - but it’s still disconcerting knowing that you’re hurting yourself when you’re trying to grow stronger. What’re your thoughts on that? (I don’t own one nor am I endorsing it or anything).
etfwellness (5 comments) says:
January 23rd, 2008 at 1:42 am
Pablo,
An important concept to understand is the notion of Adaptation. Essentially, what you’re trying to do with exercise is to temporarily weaken your muscles (and their associated ligaments and tendons) in order to trigger an adaptive response from the body. In the case of resistance training, like doing a push-up, the body should respond by making the muscles and connective tissue of the upper body stronger, provided that:
1) The stimulus was big enough to trigger an adaptive response (i.e., you didn’t only do one push-up)
2) The stimulus was appropriate to the response you want (i.e., you don’t expect to get huge thighs from doing push-ups)
3) The stimulus is not so overwhelming that the body is unable to adapt sufficiently.
The third scenario describes the Navy Seal situation you described. Too many push-ups with insufficient recovery = overuse injuries, every time.
So long as one applies a sufficient stimulus (appropriate amounts of exercise) with ample recovery, and does so in accordance to muscle-joint function, the chances of getting injured through exercise are close to nil.