Anatomy & Kinesiology

Cars, computers, money, politics, construction... chances are you have lot's of fields—whether its a hobby or related to your job—where you know how some gadget works inside and out. Both of my brothers know every cog and cylinder under the hood of a car. Me, I can dig around a computer, add and remove devices, troubleshoot and fix problems. Heck, I can built a new computer just from parts. For my Mom it's construction. She knows about painting and tiling and plumbing and carpeting because she manages property.

I'm sure you're the same way with lots of things.

So here's the big question: how much do you know about how your body works? True, it didn't come with an instruction manual (would that be nice!!) but you've been working with it (and on it) for many many years now. So how much do you know? How many of the 639 muscles in your body can you identify? Which are involved with which body movements? Which help support and augment others?

I hope this all doesn't sound dreadfully boring to you because it's really quite important, especially if "general health" or "recovery from and prevention of injury" were two of your exercise goals.

Let me give you a few examples why I think this is so important. A few years ago I was motivated to return to the gym, not because I wanted a totally buff body but I had some injuries I had to deal with. My "office grunt" lifestyle was beginning to cause some serious (and painful) health problems. First of all, my less-than-stellar posture had led to really bad lower-back pain. Additionally, the sheer number of hours spent at a computer was leading to a crippling case of tendonitis in my left arm from the wrist all the way up to the shoulder. I was getting to the point where I couldn't type for more than about 20 minutes before the pain was getting unbearable.

After dozens of trips to the physical therapist (or as my brother calls it: the "physical terrorist") and probably thousands of dollars of money that my poor health care provider had to shell out, I gave up. I'm sorry, but I hope other people have better experiences with their physical therapists. These people would wave the ultrasound wand along my elbow and wrist, connect "electrical stims" to my arms, make me do some silly dumbbell exercises, but all of it was scattered and nobody was paying attention to getting an effective regimen together. So I took myself to the gym.

Muscular Catch-22

Now I've learned something important about soft-tissue injuries: they are very very difficult to heal. There's this horrible catch-22 where inflamed soft-tissue (specifically, but I don't think exclusively muscles) won't heal unless it's left alone to heal. But if you leave it alone and don't exercise it regularly the tissue will instantly atrophy. I had a fraction of the normal strength in my right hand. If I used it I could (theoretically) keep from losing my strength, but the injury would just get worse. If I didn't use my hand then the muscles would atrophy and I'd lose muscle mass and strength. There seemed to be no winning solution!

I used a three-tiered solution to overcome my dilemma.

I worked religiously to reduce swelling/inflammation. Normally inflammation is a good and natural response to an injury, but in chronic cases it can actually contribute to tissue deterioration. Applying stress to inflamed tissues simply exacerbates the problem. I found a combination of anti-inflammatories (like Tylenol, etc.) and icing was able to help keep inflammation low.
I made sure I stretched any muscles I'd be working carefully. Macho "no pain no gain" stretching can be a really bad thing, but cautious and regular stretching can keep your tendons healthy.
When a particular muscle or tendon hurts when used, you can often learn to exercise it's nearby muscles. For example, your rotator cuff usually works in conjunction with your anterior and medial deltoids. If the rotator cuff is injured, maybe you can do exercises that isolate the deltoids. When they are strong they can help support the injured muscle and help it to "get back on its feet." Similarly, the abdominal muscles commonly support the lower back. If your lower back hurts too badly to exercise it, start working your abs!

I'm trying to be sneaky about making a point here. All three of the above strategies came from knowing something about the body, specifically anatomy (the parts) and kinesiology (the motions). When you get an exercise book, inevitably it will spend the first chapter or two talking about anatomy, showing pictures of the various muscles, etc. DON'T SKIP THIS SECTION! The author didn't just write this down because he wanted to show off his college education. Armed with this knowledge, you can plan the right routine to meet your goals, avoid injuries (or fix them) and determine the best way to get your greatest results with the least effort.

One last warning: if you work out some muscles and completely ignore others, you may start to cause some injuries. If neglected muscles are called upon to support some really strong and beefy muscles, the unexpected strain can injure them. No matter what your goals, if you are weightlifting you should endeavor to hit every major muscle group and physical motion. That will also give you that really kicken' body where every muscle is nicely defined. (Otherwise you could look like those silly men who only do bench presses. Their pecs are huge, the rest of the body is small and/or flabby and it looks like they have breasts! Geeessh!)

Nutrition

This falls under the general "how the body works" area, but it is so specific and important that I'll be discussing it in another section. Stay tuned!

Next section: Getting the Most from your Trainer

Page last modified 08/29/2003 17:59