Miguel’s Musings & Things to Read – 8.25.14

This past weekend I had the opportunity to jump on a bus and go to Beantown. It was totally spur of the moment and I felt like I had a great time connecting with all of my Bostonian friends while I was up there. Many thanks to all who I had the chance to spend time with.

My buddy Angel and I take a serious picture while Greg Robins talks about powerlifting!

With this said, here are some things to read to start off your week:

There are many different “camps” of nutritional diets to follow, and John does a great job of detailing the differences and similarities between many of the “fad” diets prevalent today.

Spot reduction is the idea that if you perform a dedicated exercise, you will be able to reduce the fat that is visible in that muscle group. I think Jordan goes over the details in a very conversational tone that will allow anyone to understand the ideas surrounding this myth, so give it a quick read for that info.

This is a great post that details many sentiments that come along with strength training for women. If you or anyone you know has any issues with “getting too muscular”, this is definitely worth the read. As always,

Keep it funky.

MAsymbollogo

MA

Guidelines for Training With an Injury

When you have an injury, it is useful to do several things:

  1. Mentally and emotionally accept where you are along the continuum of that injury.
  2. Understand and learn as much of the injury’s diagnosis as much as possible.
  3. Accept that you can still perform some type of action despite the injury.

Understanding GRIT along with understanding your own ability to persevere in the face of great obstacles is a valuable tool that is also widely misunderstood. Many times, athletes come back “stronger” despite their previous injuries. Is it because they are truly getting stronger, or are they playing smarter, increasing movement quality, or utilizing different approaches that they would not have used if not for the past injury?


If you can mentally accept where you are, and aim to learn as much as you can about your specific injury as possible, then it will be useful to understand the following guidelines for training with an injury.

With this in mind, whenever an athlete comes in with an injury, it is understood that, barring severe injuries, there is still something that can be performed: movement quality maintenance, soft tissue maintenance around the affected area, breathing quality to reduce sympathetic drive and promote parasympathetic drive to help them sleep, relax, and avoid the anxiety involved with having an injury, or at the very least have someone to talk with about what they can do despite the injury.

While going over every single injury and the possible exercises that you can regress to in the face of immediate injury is beyond the scope of this article, I did outline several guidelines in two articles.

Tips for Working Out

and most recently

Tips for Working Out

These two articles go over a few guidelines necessary towards achieving a training effect despite soft tissue injuries. Check them out if you or someone you know can benefit from reading and following these guidelines.

As always,

Keep it funky.

-MA