He is giving me lots of ideas for my fitness column in TGO magazine! One of the things he covers is aging and the effect on your body and fitness. He explains that there is evidence that:
Exercise - particularly running - does not seem to lead to joint damage as you get older. He writes about it here. However, if you pick up an injury then you can end up with more pain and aches in the joints than if you had never trained. The science here is that while the statistics look like sports lead to dodgy knees, that risk is accounted for by the incidence of knee injuries - i.e. it isn't the sports that lead to bad knees, but the injuries that happen as part of the sports. There is a big difference
If you exercise but do not get injured then you are golden. You get the benefits.
So exercise but do it safely. This has made me think yet again about keeping safe as I train especially as I get older. There is no point in risking injury. My recreational activities may involve some risk, but my exercise never should.
In 2008 I had a post up: Primum non nocere in which I was getting at the same idea,
Primum non nocere is a Latin phrase that means "First, do no harm." The phrase is sometimes recorded as primum nil nocere.
It is one of the principal precepts all medical students are taught in medical school. It reminds a physician that he or she must consider the possible harm that any intervention might do.
In particular, as John Sifferman has pointed out , we need to avoid stupid ego driven training. In response to the video below he noted:
I have a friend who owns a CrossFit gym and he told me new CrossFitters have about a 2 year training career before they have to quit due to injury.
What is the point in that?
So to the painful video. This is not exercise. This is not safe. This is stupid. As John says:
- Dropping barbell on head – check
- Filing down teeth from excessive gritting – check
- Knees bowing inward/outward during jerk catch phase of the lift – check
- Breaking spinal alignment – really check!
- Hyper-extending neck – check
- Nearly being crushed by barbell – check
- Trying to do something again that you clearly couldn’t do the first time – check
- Not paying attention while barbell falls to the floor – check
- Bent elbows during the clean portion of the lift – check
- Lifting weights that are clearly too heavy for you – double-check
- Nearly killing oneself in the pursuit of better health – check
Comments
So how do they deserve it? With being there, being consistent and very slowly increasing intensity. And than, and only than, they can try to lift heavy weights, without injuring themselves. It's a sensitive issue and many people don't get it.
I concur about injuries keeping one from exercise, but in the 2 1/2 years I've been doing crossfit, I've only heard of 2 people having injuries. I'm just stronger and fitter from it.
I went to a crossfit affiliate for 3 or 4 months. I enjoyed the metcon stuff especialy because to start with the training took place outside in the local parks fitness trail. Once we moved to some premises though we began olympic lift training. Problem was it was taught by someone who had only done it on a 2 day cert using a broomstick. I left at this point, never regretted it.
The intention, seems to be, to do a clean; but they are starting off with a deadlift type grip.
Bless them.
Axle clean & press is a common movement in strongman competitions. Better example:
http://train.elitefts.com/exercises-by-body-part/delts-exercises-by-body-part/axel-clean/