CONSCIOUS VS OVERTHINKING

Personal trainers and health professionals must cue their clients. They must get them to understand, hold, and perfect proper form for their body. When this is achieved proper muscle mechanics lead to greater strength and conditioning gains and less chance of injury. However, many of my clients and even I myself get into trouble when we constantly cue and think of form outside of the gym.

Your body wants to work the least it can. It wants to be efficient and expend little to no energy. There are numerous systems in the body which allow this. Stretch reflex mechanism (think calf and Achilles’ tendon rubber band effect when running), fascia, tendons, and ligaments all working in complex systems so the muscle don’t have to work as hard.

When you’re in the gym we are purposely trying to work and strengthen the muscle. We may try to control range of motion or tempo in order to take the stretch reflex and other mechanisms out of the movement. If we take this approach out of the gym and constantly bring it to our everyday life there is a high risk of injury. When the goal is to fatigue the muscle in the gym the opposite is the goal outside of the gym. You don’t want your legs burning five minutes into a walk. You don’t want your arms so fatigued you can’t push your lawnmower. You want to be able to use your body the way it is designed. The over cuing and concentration on muscle contraction outside the gym can quickly fatigue your muscles therefore causing the body to move differently and probably causing a repetitive stress injury. Use the muscle strength increase from the gym to further help your body the way it naturally moves outside of the gym.

A year ago I had a physical therapist do a movement analysis on me. She laughed because I was the exact opposite of what she usually sees. All the common faulty movement patterns that she corrects I also help correct with my clients. Therefore in my own movement patterns I over corrected my movement patterns because I knew the common faults of the average person.

At the time I was doing some jogging and I realized during my run I wasn’t thinking about pace or breathing I was focused on knee alignment, upper body posture, and abdominal engagement. All of which is fine to a degree, but the more I thought about my abdominal engagement the more I was limiting my diaphragmatic breathing. My focus on knee alignment was preventing myself from getting a full gait cycle. I was holding posture to a point it was slowing my running down. When you run you actually want a slight lean forward. I was vertical or even leaning back. It changed my gait cycle and acted as if I was breaking with my heel. You can see everything I thought I was avoiding and correcting I was causing another issue because of my overthinking.

I encourage you to be conscious in your life. There is a fine line between being conscious and overthinking. Find your balance. Taking the time at the gym to be hyper-conscious in my opinion can be very beneficial. However, doing that 24/7 I found will cause more harm then good.

To Your Health,

Mark Radio

Mark Radio - BA in Exercise Science, certified personal trainer, and certified nutritional counselor. Mark’s ability to connect, motivate, and educate has made him one of the most sought after health and fitness professionals in the industry.