Have you ever met someone that absolutely loved exercise, maybe a little too much? Working out is always on their mind, they somehow bring it up in just about every conversation with you? Maybe they are training for races all the time and it seems a bit much?
Today’s blog is all about preventing injuries during exercise which can occur with people that are doing too much. All the points are either from what science tells us about preventing injuries, my personal experience, or a combination of the two. If you stick to the end I share a program I’m proud about with you.
#1 Know What Over Exercising Looks like
⠀Here at 10 warning signs you’re exercising too much. Check them out here.
When I was teaching fitness courses at Oregon State University, I fell into some of these categories. I learned something about myself. I am easily swayed by my environment. When I see others working out often in the community, it inspires me to do so also. Only I was teaching 4 hour long fitness classes twice a week for 8 hours total. I decided to add on an additional hour long run every morning before starting my day. I said I needed it for stress relief.
Over the course of the year I started losing a lot of weight and was getting lots of compliments on my physique from my then boyfriend and friends. I had gotten down to a size 2 in jeans. I’ve never been that small in my life. I weighed myself one day and did my BMI. I was about 5 lbs away from getting outside the “healthy weight” category. I also knew from what I was feeling that I wasn’t eating enough. I had $25/week for grocery money so it was a pretty tight time.
It finally took getting a foot injury for me to slow down. I spoke to my manager Ann about it. She said “you’re exercising a lot with your students, perhaps its an overuse injury. Is there anyway you can lead in stations and have the students exercise while you rest on the sideline?” I didn’t like the sound of it, but I knew it was what I needed to do for a while. After all, I was always tired. I decided I needed to cut back and make this change.
I’m so glad I did. Nowadays I exercise no more than 60 minutes in one day, unless I’m training for a marathon. Most of the time its about 30 minutes of vigorous exercise 5x/week or 45-60minutes of moderate exercise. I incorporate yoga and more meditation so I don’t feel required to exercise more to de-stress.
#2 Know How much is too much exercise. ⠀
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Warning signs of an exercise addict. Keep in mind this article is focused on men, but men and women can be addicted to exercise just the same. I appreciate how the article lays out what it might look like and treatment options as well.
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Check it out and comment below on your big takeaways..⠀
#3 When possible, stick to the recommendations for exercise:⠀
Check out this article for exercise recommendations. Keep in mind these are recommendations for the USA. Some countries recommendations are higher than this for their norm and some don’t have recommendations because their lifestyle incorporates more movement in their day to day.
If you are starting from 0 minutes of exercise daily average, then start small and increase incrementally. Just like you wouldn’t have a toddler driving a car, you wouldn’t run a marathon as a newbie to exercise.
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#4 Keep a journal of your exercise completion.⠀
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After all, what gets measured gets improved right? It also helps keep us from overdoing it 😁. ⠀
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What’s your favorite journal for tracking your workouts?⠀There are some great apps that you can track your workouts in as well as how many repetitions or minutes involved per exercise. Here is a list of the top 2019 workout apps.
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I’m old school and write it in my achievement planner…⠀
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However you track is better than no tracking!⠀
#5 The Move Happy Facilitator Program© Includes EXRX Recommendations So No Need To Worry About Overexercising.⠀
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I am super excited & proud to share my 16-week program with you! It is something I actually facilitated to my former patients in a psychiatric hospital.⠀We ran the program 4 days a week and each week included a topic like how I share with you every week! ⠀
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All weekly topics were related to happiness from what I researched. I created a psychological questionnaire to measure happiness (simple 1-pager) & a fitness questionnaire to measure fitness so you and your participants can track progress throughout.⠀
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My patients improved for the most part in both areas consistently and spread news about the group around the hospital 💜 ⠀
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Each day includes:⠀
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Journaling 📓 (pre-designed questions I created)⠀
Group Discussion of the daily topic (a subtopic of the weekly)⠀
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Workouts 🏋️♀️ With Minimal Equipment ⠀
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I recreated the workouts via video example (demo not full) so you don’t have to be a fitness expert to run the program.⠀
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I’m looking for program testers that are willing to give me a testimony to increase the trust factor (honest testimony of course). ⠀
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To the first ✌️ that email me a receipt of order, I’m sending you some swag once you’ve had a chance to try the program out and give me an honest review.⠀
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To order go here.
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Move Happy® Updates
The Move Happy® Podcast Is Doing Spectacular! We’ve reached over 200 downloads and shooting for 1000 by the end of September. If you haven’t checked them out yet, go here. Make sure to subscribe so you get notifications first!
The Move Happy® World Tour Begins soon! Date TBD. It is a combination of music, public speakers, medical trainings to improve the treatment of people with mental illness and complete life transformation. We’re renting out the Ryman Auditorium if all goes well. It costs $8,000 just to rent the space and an additional $4,000 approximately for renting lighting, sound equipment, and what not. Donate to help make this event possible here. Email me your business info and how much you’ve donated so I can recognize you at the event. All proceeds are going towards the benefit of mental health support.
So there you have it. Injury prevention during exercise is very important. We don’t want to exercise too often or too hard and not be able to return to our healthy habit. We want to be able to make healthy choices when it comes to the intensity of exercise, the total minutes of exercise, and keep it enjoyable. The best way to do that is to listen to our body, pay attention to recommendations, and remember to enjoy the experience.
Thanks for reading everyone!
PS: Don’t forget to tell someone you love them today…
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