Train smarter not harder

The verdict is in, movement and exercise are essential to human health and wellbeing. For purpose of this article we will make the terms ‘movement’ and ‘exercise’ synonymous.

Human beings thrive on movement, however, like most things it’s the amount of movement that is important. Move too much and you end up with an overuse injury. Not enough movement and your health and body will suffer by becoming less resilient, less flexible, less functional, and weaker. Countless studies over the past few decades have definitivelyproven this. Now there is also evidence for the therapeutic effects of movement for mental illness and even cancer.

Dr Skinner an oncology researcher from the University of Queensland published a study in 2017 (Skinner et al. 2017) that show a correlation between exercise and cancer remission rate.1 Dr Skinner said in a podcast “If we had these types of benefits from a drug intervention, it would have been front page news of every newspaper in the world”. Unfortunately, it wasn’t front page news because ‘exercise’ cannot be patented like a drug, and people actually have to work out to get fit. Some researchers believe that this is part of the reason exercise is effective, because you have to put in to get out. When we do that, we don’t just benefit from the chemical changes that occur within the body, we benefit from the psychological effects to our brains. One of Dr Skinner’s studies from 2018 concluded: “Exercise interventions for patients with advanced cancer appear to be effective in improving physical function, quality of life, fatigue, body composition, psychosocial function, and sleep quality deteriorations.” (1)

Now, I know what you are going to ask: “What type of exercise should I do.” The answer is always: “it depends.” It depends on your weight, age, sex, level of fitness, sporting experience. But most of all it depends on what you like to do. If you love dancing, then sign up to a dance class, if you like basketball, then join a basketball club. Research has shown that people are much more successful at keeping up with an exercise or activity that they enjoy. So, don’t take up running just because you read in a magazine that it’s healthy for you, but you hate running. That would just be foolish and set you up for failure. Remember when you were a kid and playing and movement was fun? Try to do something that brings that little kid out again. 

Caution, there is a common mistake that many people make when exercising, and that is how much exercise they should do, and how soon to progress. Many people make this mistake, and it can result in pain and/or an overuse injury. In order to avoid this mistake, here is what I recommend you do. If you haven’t participated in any form of exercise or sport for a long time (months or years) start with something simple like going for a regular walk. If you are relatively fit, you might consider running, swimming or biking. But don’t go from doing nothing to running or biking five times per week. You will end up with DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscular Soreness), we’ve all experience this at least once in our lives. It’s when you wake up the day after a lot of exercise and you are sore as hell and you move like the tinman from the wizard of Oz. Not a pleasant experience for anybody. 

Let’s use running as an example. A smart approach would be to start running once or twice a week for a short duration (5-10 mins). Slowly increase the duration of your run by 1-2 minutes per training session, so at the end of four weeks (if running 2x per week) you are running 8-16 minutes longer then you started. At the 4-week point, you would then add another training day. So, after 4 weeks of training you are now running up to 26 minutes 3 times per week. This is what we call a graded progression approach, and it is a smart way to train because it allows the body time to adapt to the physiological demands the exercise is placing on the bodywithout a high risk for injury. The same can be done for any sport or activity. 

Enjoy getting and staying fit. Train smarter, not harder.

Your Back to Function Team

References

1. Efficacy of exercise interventions in patients with advanced cancer: A systematic review. R Heywood, AL McCarthy, TL Skinner - Archives of physical medicine and rehabilitation, 2018