By Ms. Shalini Bhargava
Director at JG’S Fitness Centre
While repeatedly doing heavy work out to get that toned fit body, one is ignorant of the fact that these exercises may not be joint friendly. The pain that accompanies while doing these exercises- on your knees, hips, elbows or shoulders may be passed over until it becomes unbearable. There are two negatives if your reach this point. Firstly, you are entering the gang of arthritis, tendonitis, bursitis etc. and secondly, with a bad experience you may give up on exercises. Clearly, you don’t want to encounter both and want to continue staying fit. Let’s explore a few ways in which these very workouts can be done in a way that they don’t have a side effect on your joints.
1) Warm up before you start your workout: While this is a standard warning always, it’s more than a warning as the benefits are many. Warm up loosens the tissues and muscles in the joints that improve in flexibility. It also increases the blood flow in that area and activates the muscles that you will be using in your heavy workout.
2) Do your exercises smoothly without any jerks: Have controlled body movements while exercising as this will ensure the easy tolerance of heavier weights on the body. For instance if you are exercising with jerks, the additional weights will only aggravate the situation and impact your ligaments and joints. Instead, working smoothly and gradually increasing the weights will mitigate the risk of any injury.
3) Use Free Weights: When you are starting out, you may use weights for doing about exercise movements, but weights permit in working in a single direction only thereby not giving the joints much freedom. Using dumbbells, barbell or cables will allow you that freedom and the joints will be stress free.
4) Don’t lock your Joints: When you perform multi-joint chest exercise and leg exercises, the burden shifts to your joints. Joints is where you have maximum surface contact and so putting joints on tension will result in pain.
5) Don’t focus on training to failure: Training to failure constantly brings along mild breakdowns and if not done using proper technique, there is bound to be some joint issue.
Mentioned below are some of the ways in which you can do joint friendly power exercises.
- Sled Power Row: When you are working out on heavy exercises like the barbell rows, there is every chance that there is a lower back problem because of concentrated stress in this area. The full-body move- sled power row puts you in upright position and distributes the weight across the back, hamstrings and glutes.
- Plyo Pushup: When you throw weights on a bench press, your shoulder- especially the joints which is the ball and socket of the shoulder gets affected badly. By doing the plyo pushup instead, the torso is elevated and hence less stress is put on the joints.
- Medicine Ball Rotational Throw: This method trains the body to work as a unit and not be separate entities. In this, the rear leg movement produces power that reaches the upper limbs and core resulting in using power from different body portions and work as one entity.
- Dumbbell Snatch: In this, you use your entire body to lift the weight from the hips to your head. Using a dumbbell in a single arm is a lighter and easier option as you can easily manage the weight.
- Landmine Jerk: The overhead position in a usual push press and jerk power exercise can lead to pain in the joints once the weights are loaded. This can be avoided by using the landmine where in the load is transferred to the front of the body. By this method, you will be angled on the weight rather than the opposite happening.
Finally, always remember that while it is very common for people to consume painkillers before workouts to keep the joint pain at bay, little do people know that one may not realize the damage that is being done in the backend even when these medicines are suppressing the pain. Additionally, over dose of painkillers can have a ghastly impact on your liver. Say No to Painkillers and instead focus on joint friendly power exercises which will give you better results.