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Protect your Body
By john | September 21, 2007
When I was much younger, I pushed my body very hard trying to improve my physical performance for sports. I’d lift too much weight, not get enough sleep, eat whatever I wanted, use bad form, etc. I ended up hurting myself a few times lifting weights, and I achieved a much lower level of performance than what I could have achieved. Given my experiences, one of the key tenets that I have come to live by is this: “protect your body”. This means that whatever you do, keeping your body healthy trumps all other goals. It’s always better to give up a little bit of absolute performance if you can guarantee long-term performance. It’s hard to continually improve yourself if you can’t train and compete.
Here are some tips to use to protect your body at all times:
- Always use perfect form in whatever activity you do, whether lifting weights, running, standing up, etc. You’ll save yourself a lot of potential pain later
- Understand generally how the body works. You can make much better performance, fitness, and nutrition decisions if you understand how the inputs affect your outputs
- When lifting weights, stay well below the maximum weight you think you can do. Always better to be safe, and you really don’t need to use maximum weight to improve yourself
- Never run on concrete, as it destroys the knees and hips. Make sure you run on soft ground, always
- Always warm up well, and then stretch before physical activity. You significantly reduce your chances of hurting yourself if you do this.
- Eat 5-6 smaller meals a day, and don’t skip meals. Helps greatly with keeping your energy level up all day, and keep you from putting on weight
- Don’t put trash food into your body. I have found the saying “you are what you eat
to absolutely be true. If you eat trash, you’ll feel like trash and perform like trash. Always be cognizant of the value of the food that you’re eating
These are just some of the things I have learned throughout my athletic career. I’ll post more as they come to mind.
Topics: training |