Boulder and its’ surrounding areas are well known for many things including the percentage of citizens who exercise. Some surveys have reported over 90% of people living in Boulder are active making it one of the fittest cities in the country. Granted this is self report, but it is hard not to look around during your favorite outdoor activity and see someone performing at a high level of fitness, often regardless of age. In my two decades working with this population I have been impressed and often inspired at their fitness and athletic feats. Despite the high participation rates in exercise and their dedication to training these are the three most common errors I see in our Boulder and Lafayette Physical Therapy clinics.
Diversification
It is not uncommon to see patients and clients meet or exceed national guidelines for minutes of exercise each week. Many in this population easily reach the 300 minutes of moderate exercise recommended by experts and researchers. The first error made by many in this group is the allocation of these minutes into appropriate exercise categories including cardiovascular training, strength training, mobility exercises, and balance training. Examples include:
- Runners who only run and perform minimal to no strength training
- Cyclists spending dozens of hours on the bike without cross training
- Hikers who maintain a low to moderate pace never achieving standards for vigorous exercise
- Participants choosing yoga classes in place of more effective cardiovascular and strength training exercises
- Climbers with underdeveloped antagonist muscles in their bodies leading to overuse injuries in the over utilized tissues
Diversification of exercise types is critical to improving long term success and reducing injury risk. This is no different than the diversification most use in their financial plans. Spreading resources over multiple areas reduces risk and improves consistency of returns.
Measurement Errors
Many exercise participants are unaware of the appropriate intensity required to optimize benefits from cardiovascular and strength training. In addition, researchers in this area have consistently shown participants over estimate the relative intensity of their exercise sessions. For example: cardiovascular training out of heart rate reserve zones for moderate and high intensity exercise or strength training sets of 10 repetitions with a weight that could be lifted for greater than 12 repetitions. When intensity is missed the participants duration of exercise each week is not allocated properly. More importantly, the benefits of exercise are not fully realized.
Utilization of wearable devices or pulse palpation can provide accurate heart rate measurements. Understanding your heart rate reserve can provide you accurate heart rate measurements for the targeted percentage of heart rate maximum. Many are surprised when they realize their high intensity or moderate training is actually a lower percentage of their heart rate reserve. During strength training, using repetitions in reserve can help ensure the weight you selected places you in within the correct repetition range.
Blind Spots
Active individuals are often surprised when they find themselves in our Physical Therapy clinics with an injury. “I exercise all the time, how can I have an injury or have impairments?” The answers are often easy to provide but weeks and months in the making. Most often it is due to doing too little for too long (ex. a lack of strength training) or too much too soon (ex. fast increase in running volume). Outside of training errors, as Aristotle stated we are what we repeatedly do. Cyclists who only cycle will often present with strong quadriceps, but underdeveloped lower back and hip musculature. Runners often are very strong in the forward plane including their quadriceps and core, but lack lateral core and hip musculature. Participants should aim to use diversification in their exercise programs to address current impairments, blind spots, and cross train.
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