Happy Friday everyone! If you have been following along with this three part series on relieving pain, welcome to the final installment. In case you missed that last two posts, please read them here and here to find out how you can work through a lot of pain that can build up from kettlebell and calisthenic workouts. Today, we will be discussing how resting, relaxing, and giving our bodies some tender love and care and lead to increased strength! First on the agenda here though is a discussion on how to avoid the injuries we mentioned this week altogether. So, let’s get down to business! 
To summarize everything we talked about this week, let me make a list of the top three things you must do to avoid a serious injury all together.
1. Train Intelligently. Truth be told, our bodies are not really meant to endure ultra long workouts multiple days in a row. In fact, doing so can really over tax our muscles to the point where they begin to work against us. The problem here lies with inflammation. If you exercise too hard and too often you can expect a massive BOOM in terms of your pain level. However, you can REDUCE the likelihood of pain and injury with exercise too! In fact, you can workout as little as 15 minutes a day and see a great increase in your metabolic rate and strength. It works! Train smart people. More is not always better when it comes to strength. Doing less is what actually leads to gains in physical power!
2. Always Complete Recovery Measures After Your Training Sessions. This brings me to the very first point we made at the beginning of this series: remaining patient. When we wrap up a workout it can be so easy to blow off our actual rest periods and cool downs because we feel pressed for time or what have you. Truth is, gaining strength doesn’t really have so much to do with our actual workouts as it has to do with RECOVERING from our workouts. Failing to take the time to cool down, stretch, and perform some release measures after your workout will lead to an increase in lactic acid build up which causes your muscles to knot up and apply pressure on your nerves. Always cool down and recover from your workouts. It’s worth it in the end!
3. Do Not Work Out When You’re In Pain. Period! I’m a competitive person. I love pushing myself to the limit but sometimes, it all goes overboard. I wouldn’t have even come up with this entire three part blog series had I not gone over my limits. Lesson learned though. Sometimes we find ourselves in a very humbling place when we get injured. That being said, I DID have some warning signs that my body was not recovering properly. If you’re feeling sore and finding it more difficult to complete your routines, do NOT push yourself through the pain. Take a day off or heck, take an entire WEEK off training and get yourself all leveled out before returning to your lifting routine. Use common sense. If it hurts, stop! You’re better off working on becoming incrementally stronger overtime instead of trying to push yourself to be superhuman all at once.
Now, having told you all what to do to avoid the injuries that can happen from your fitness routines, here’s the good news. When you’re patient and consistent with your recovery measures, you can expect nothing but exponential gains in your strength. Don’t believe me? Check out this video below!
This video was taken after I took one week off lifting and completed some major stretching sessions that were mentioned in my previous blog post. I had been working on the body weight elbow lever on the ground for MONTHS to no avail. When I was injured, I was ever more frustrated because I could not actively practice the lift at all. It killed my Burgher soul!. Once my chest and lat muscles settled down, I decided to see if all that rest and recovery would lead ot me finally nailing the lift. Yup! Resting and recovering would indeed lead to a new strength gain. This just goes to show you that rest and recovery work in your favor. In fact, you’ll be stronger for it! Guaranteed!
Thanks for following me along this three part blog series on getting out of pain and avoiding it all in the first place. I hope you all learned a lot from our discussion on recovery measures! If you have any questions about how to work through a particular injury or if you need help with training smarter to avoid injuries altogether, please feel free to email me at janelle@primalfitnesspittsburgh.com. Have a great weekend everybody!
Master you instincts!
Janelle Pica, RKC and PMF1 Instructor
