Pushing Too Hard at the Gym?

Do more of what you like, at as high a level of intensity you can handle, but at the same time listen to your body’s signals. Err on the side of caution at first and after a while you’ll get enough experience to know whether you’re uncomfortable because you’re pushing into your lactate threshold, and therefore feel like you’re going to die (even though you’re not) or whether you’re actually pushing too hard and courting injury. I’ve seen far more reports of problems from chronic overuse injury and spot weaknesses in one-sport athletes like runners who neglect strength training in favor of more miles than anything else. Raw beginners are naturally prone to underestimate what they can do, and not push enough. Lapsed athletes are the ones most likely to injure themselves in the first couple of weeks of training because they think they know where the limits are, but are gravely mistaken about how badly out of shape they are.

Everyone gets sore. I’m in pretty darn good shape, and I still find things that will make me sore if I haven’t done something like them for a while. That’s usually a sign that I have a weakness to shore up. Sometimes you need to take a couple of days off to recover. No big deal. I’ve made myself so sore that I almost can’t walk for a few days. That usually doesn’t happen unless I’ve been lax for too long, but anyone can overdo training from time to time. That’s different from tearing something from lack of flexibility or overloading it. Believe me, if that happens, you know the instant it does; there’s no “oh, I didn’t realize I was overdoing it” the next day hangover.

As long as you’re staying mostly within the limits of your flexibility, and not lifting heavy weights with shitty form, the worst you’re likely to do at first is make yourself sore. “Overtraining” isn’t generally a problem for beginners since it’s a chronic condition, which means it takes time to develop. On the other hand, new enthusiasm can lead you to take on more volume than you really should at a low level of conditioning. Especially if you’re “dieting” (performing some kind of calorie restriction) you could make having an actual life pretty hard due to lack of energy and feeling damn miserable. Working out should not feel like a huge chore. Moderately unpleasant while you’re doing it, yes. Draining fatigue and lingering aches that take more than a few days to resolve, no.

The important thing is that you do it and keep doing it consistently, whatever “it” is. If I were your trainer, I’d reassess your workout schedule based on this development, and find ways to supplement while making BodyCombat the core activity. You’re much more likely to keep doing something if you like doing it. A good trainer would recognize that and support your enthusiasm, while providing for things that BodyCombat doesn’t cover. The good news is that most of the soreness goes away after 2–3 weeks of consistent workouts. After that, you should only occasionally have some limited soreness unless you’re doing something way out of the norm on that day.

Personally, I’d say that BodyCombat counts as cardio. The long, slow, distance model of cardio is a crock, IMNSHO. I’d cut your weight lifting days to 2 on a non-BodyCombat day preferably, with a small set of multi-joint movements and reasonable weight progression. I’d cut the “cardio” either completely, or down to a 30 minute moderate-to-high intensity session on an off day. Even pseudo-kickboxing is basically doing HIIT training. If you were doing steady-state training (the so-called “fat burning” 60–80% of max heart rate) you don’t get much bang for your buck in doing more than 30 minutes. The sweet spot of effort-to-benefit is 20–30 minutes at a good pace that just lets you finish that without being either exhausted or too ready for another go-round.

You don’t need much supplemental work if you’re doing stuff hard, fast, and repeatedly. My normal training runs are 400 m repeats and calisthenics between rounds. Very occasionally I’ll do 800 m repeats. I normally don’t run more than 2–3 km at a time, but I have done some 5 k and 10 k runs. My 5 k time is about 21–22 minutes, which is not race-winning, but not bad for a guy in his late 30s who only gets to train for an hour about 2–3 times a week, and who mostly does weight lifting and sprints with virtually no distance work. I did a 10 k with no prep other than my regular workouts a couple of years ago (no runs over 3 k planned in the month before the race, actually) and finished under 50 minutes, beating people literally half my age. That’s not to brag, just to show you that I’m not full of shit when I say that you can run longer without much of a problem if you normally run hard at shorter distances. Only dedicated racers benefit much from running long, and even then there’s often a bigger bang for your buck in running faster over shorter distances rather than running farther or for more time.

Who said “comically easy?” She should follow her trainer’s program, which is weights x 3, cardio x2. I tend to be wary of gym kickboxing because I have seen no evidence that they teach proper form for punching and kicking. rotator cuff and ACL injuries are real and common.

The OP’s post suggested she’s in a big rush (I’ll just get this over with!") rather than looking at the long term. In the long term, rushing yourself into an intensive program will result in an inability to train at all. That’s all I was saying with my comment. Not that her workout program should consist entirely of lifting doughnuts or going for nice, soothing walkies. Again, her trainer had set her a program and I presume it is for a reason. She should follow it. If she thinks it should be changed, she should speak with the trainer about it.

Whenever I have had a long break from training I try to follow the same pattern. I do my work out for that day. I do not artificially set a day to come back again. I wait till the soreness goes away from the parts I worked and then go back again. It usually takes about 2 weeks until I can work back up to my usual 3 days on 1 day off routine. Recovery is important.

As for the trainer, I will not go into some of the problems I have with them. But you need to look at if your trainer is teaching you how to train yourself or just teaching you to rely on him. Its in his best interest for you to see him for as long as possible. It is in your best interest to learn how to do for yourself and maintain a healthy lifestyle longterm.

I’d agree with this. I’ve overdone it at times, when I first started, and there would be nights where I couldn’t sleep because of muscle soreness.

Be sure to properly stretch before and after your activities, but the periods of soreness and recovery should decrease as your body gets more used to the exercise.

Do 30 minutes of each class 3x/week and skip the trainer. The classes get you into the BEST shape, period. Do 30 minutes 3x a week and take a hot bath at home or steam or take a superhot shower and streeeeeeetch it out when the muscles are hot. Ramp up your class time from there.

Have hubby rub the calves with IcyHot or TigerBalm. Also, hang your heels off the back of a step for 30 seconds 3-4 times a day to stretch your clves.

Another vote for “the cute guy with the curls is right, take it easy, that’s what you’ve got a personal trainer for”. Speak with the trainer (don’t wait until your next session with him) about trading something else for some of those heavy workouts you enjoyed, but right now he’s working on giving you a good base - the risk of hurting yourself if you try to bounce too high too fast is very high.

I’ve known too many professional sportpeople who hurt themselves badly because they couldn’t be arsed with proper form or building a good base until after that torn ligament, thrown back or three months in bed with their ankle hanging from the ceiling. Please don’t make that mistake.

Just to clarify - I am not brand new to exercise, prior to this I exercised 2-3x per week, just not at this intensity (and with nowhere near the same results.) Also, if it matters, I am 28 years old.

I went in for my conditioning workout today and spoke to my trainer. She said that the soreness is normal, particularly after taking that specific class, but that I should continue if I am enjoying it. She recommended modifying the movements and giving myself plenty of recovery time, but otherwise didn’t think I needed to wait.

Hello Again, I would share your concerns about proper form but I do have some martial arts background. I know how to throw a punch. That makes me feel a little more confident about using the proper form.

Filmore, post#11. Actual quote was “almost comically easy”, so slight hyperbole on my part.

Oh, whoops. Well, it’s not what I meant anyhow. But I gotcha.

No worries.

It seems like olivesmarch4th’s trainer consulted Sleel!

Sleel, a bit of a digression, and I am a big fan of HIIT myself, but it does seem that the studies all start off with subjects who already have been doing steady state as a base (trained cyclists, soccer players, etc.). One has to wonder if to some degree the benefit is to some degree that they are adding a different modality; perhaps those who do exclusively HIIT would show similar improvements if they added a period or some sessions of steady state cardio?

olivesmarch4, for another thread about the importance (or lack of importance) of cool down after exercise I found this article that also happens to be of some relevance to what happened to you. In order to test whether or not warm up or cool down had any impact on DOMS (what you had) they choose a sort of exercise most likely to cause it:

(“Eccentric exercise” does not mean odd, it refers to slowing down the elongation phase.) Starting out certainly counts as unaccustomed, and the controlled landing phase of that bouncing off your feet is very much eccentric exercise; pretty much designed to cause DOMS.

FWIW they found that warm up helped a little to prevent DOMS and cool down did nothing. DOMS from eccentric activity will occur until that sort of activity is no longer an unaccustomed one. Have you done another class yet? If so, how did it feel the next day the next time?

Not yet. I decided to stick to once a week for now with that class… sort of a compromise to tone it down a little. I’ll be going on Sunday.

Someone told me you can prevent DOMS by drinking a lot of water. Is that true?

No. DOMS is the result of your body repairing damage to muscle tissue. Water’s not going to help at all.

There is however some suggestion that cold water immersion immediately afterwards might help prevent it. Personally I’d rather introduce the activity gradually enough to minimize if not completely prevent it than dunk myself in cold water. (I did a shorter bout of jump rope just now, after a more accustomed other work out, trying to do just that.) YMMV.

Let us know how it goes next week!

Uh, yeah cold water therapy is super unpleasant.

Tiger balm and IcyHot also work wonders, OP.

(I wrote “choose” when I should have written “chose” in an above post didn’t I? I hate that mistake!)

Sadly, nothing else works as well.

The Cochrane Review I got that from found no superiority to cold water over active recovery - lighter exercise that does not hurt much. And again, becoming accustomed to the activty works like nothing else, ideally gradually enough that DOMS is avoided completely in the first place, but no serious lasting harm if the mark is missed once or twice. It just slows you down for a few days.

I haven’t read anything all that recently on the subject, but one article I’ve cited before is: Six sessions of sprint interval training increases muscle oxidative potential and cycle endurance capacity in humans, and a quick search on the same kind of terms came up with The effects of sprint interval training on aerobic fitness in untrained individuals: a systematic review which is a meta-study on studies published up to last year on the effects of sprint training.

Steady-state training isn’t without value, but I would recommend a focus on higher-intensity, lower-volume training for anyone who is physically capable of handling it without injury. Someone who is very overweight probably should not do any weight-bearing exercise at high levels of intensity, but could do some sprint sessions on a stationary bike, for example. The value is the much lower volume for similar results.

If you’re looking to go out and run a half-marathon or something similar, yeah, you probably should do some long runs at long-term sustainable paces. Not only is it appropriate to your training goals, but you need experience in pacing for long events. For people who are just looking to be healthy and perform well at short to moderate distances, I just don’t see much need for more than very occasional runs at longer distances.

I could make like a hamster on a treadmill for 30–40 minutes while checking my pulse every couple of minutes, or I could do a set of all-out sprints that takes me 15 minutes, including rest time between rounds. For some of my workouts, the warm up and cool down takes longer than the core training session. The results from training that way are superior in some ways. My goals are all-around fitness and ability. I want to be able to lift heavy and run fast. For body composition (more muscle, lower body fat) short, hard, and fast works better than steady-state training too. Compare what sprinters and distance runners look like and how they perform. They’re doing the same exact activity, and have close to the same body fat levels when in training (endurance athletes tend to gain fat more readily when training volume decreases) but sprinters have far more muscle mass and explosive strength. Well-adapted distance runners are so optimized for endurance that they often have so little ability to perform a vertical leap that they can’t run up stairs.

I know that’s an extreme adaptation, but to me that trade-off in types of performance isn’t worth it, and the processes that lead to that adaptation probably start earlier than you think. One reason HIIT is popular in the bodybuilding community is that aerobic activity is known to be catabolic, and they are trying to do everything they can to build muscle and keep it.

The needs of regular people are somewhere in between those two extremes. I’ve got no problem with people who want to run for an hour or more. The problem I have is that it’s sold as a virtue to go long. I’ve seen advice hundreds of times stating that people “should” be doing more aerobics to lose fat, that they “should” be running a minimum of 30–40 minutes. The truth is that an effective workout can be done much more efficiently, with vastly less volume, and produce equal or superior results.

You don’t have to do anything as structured as wind-sprints, or 400 m or 800 m repeats, or HIIT intervals, if you don’t like timing yourself or doing sets. You can do fartlek during a run, or activities that naturally feature varied levels of intensity like fight training, many team sports, or even just playing. One of the things that I think gets overlooked a lot of the time is that playing like a kid is fun, challenging, and naturally results in a lot of varied activity. Chase your kid around the yard. Climb some trees. Play with a dog. Have a game of Calvinball. You’ll have fun, and believe me, you’ll be getting fit.

Some approaches to human movement acknowledge the link between play and fitness, like parkour and MoveNat (both of which have their roots in Hebert’s method naturale). They both impose some structure by explicit instruction in efficient ways to move, but sessions are far more like play than a workout. There’s some acknowledgement in the bodyweight culture of fitness and some of the other neo-primitive fitness movements, like clubbell, that play, work, and fighting all blend into each other. In many remaining traditional cultures, and certainly in our common hunter-gatherer history this was true. Going back to making exercise look like play makes it a lot more fun for people.

[sheepishly]Yeah, I guess I could have done more than just wonder and actually, y’know, tried to do a little lit searching about it …[/sheepishly]

Trying to look a bit more I only find articles similar to the ones you linked to. I am stuck with having only the fact that I enjoy my occasional long runs as justification!