“Bodybuilding Sins” That Cause Back Pain and Missed Workouts: Part 5

“Bodybuilding Sins” That Cause Back Pain and Missed Workouts: Part 5
By Steve Hefferon and Jesse Cannone
Welcome to article number five in our 5-part series “Bodybuilding Sins That Cause Back Pain and Missed Workouts”. In this article we are going to cover some basic, yet powerful training principles that are often overlooked and are responsible for nearly all bodybuilding injuries…

If you missed any of the previous articles, you can view them using the links below.

Here’s a breakdown of the articles to look for:

1. Article no.1 - Choosing The WRONG Exercises
2. Article no.2 - Training Variations for Pain Relief and Maximum Results
3. Article no.3 - Targeted Stretching
4. Article no.4 - Targeted Exercises
5. Article no.5 - Rest, Recovery, and Injury Prevention

Article no.5 - Rest, Recovery and Injury Prevention

Many of the injuries that bodybuilders suffer from could be easily prevented just by allowing the body enough time to rest…

While most bodybuilders dread hearing the word “rest”, many fail to realize that there is far more to rest than just avoiding overtraining. When you perform a tough workout you not only stress that muscle or muscle group, you also place stress on the cardiovascular, neuromuscular and components of the immune system…

For example, many bodybuilders will train their chest 2-3 times a week and spend an hour or more performing dozens of exercises just for the pecs…

While this may sound ok to some, when you add in the stress of other workouts it can quickly add up to too much stress in one or more ways. I hear bodybuilders all the time say “I let my body rest by splitting up my workouts” and “I worked chest yesterday so today I’ll train my back”… that’s NOT rest!

When you train your back, your chest still gets worked, stressed and it also slows down your bodies ability to recover from stress and repair damage from previous workouts…

So don’t kid yourself and think that you can train this way over the long term… it may take years or just a few weeks, but sooner or later your body will break down!

Let me give you a real life example from my experience…

I, like nearly every single bodybuilder out there, created muscle imbalance unknowingly by following the workouts recommended in all the books, magazines, etc…

I trained 4,5 and sometimes even 6 days a week and thought that I was resting enough by splitting my workouts… to make a long story short, after just a few years I had tendonitis in both triceps because I worked chest, tri’s and shoulder too often, too intensely and didn’t balance out my training…

I also had lower and middle back pain, knee problems and IT band tendonitis because my lower body workouts weren’t balanced… I spent too much time doing heavy squatting, too often and neglected important muscles…

These injuries stayed with me for months, years and I still can have an occasional flare up if I don’t stay consistent with a balanced training program. I was able to create all this damage by the age of 22… I am now 28 and will have to spend the rest of my life trying to prevent these old injuries from coming back and causing more pain and problems…

Don’t do what I did! And if you already have, you better act fast and take a serious look at your training and your goals