Busy women in a rush to get things done could make some serious mistakes in their workouts. Two common signs of this mistake show up in low back pain and keen pain.
Women tend to push themselves too much and too fast ignoring most minor pains and even injuries.
Most of the female clients I have had over the years tend to discount pain as part of life. They often resist my instructions to workout in a pain-free zone. It is hard for them to believe that pain-free is not only effective but also healthy.
In this article, I’ll share the first mistake busy women make.
Women Exercise Mistake #1: Just Move It
A top athletic brand popularized the idea that just doing it is enough. A female body has very specific biological, physiological and anatomical makeup. It has taken eons for it to evolve and it has very specific set of criteria build into it.
For example, women tend to be quadriceps dominant. They use their thighs in motions including squatting and jumping more than their glutes.
Women’s wider hip creates more of side tension on the muscle that connects to the kneecap. Stronger quads and continuous use create muscular tensions that pull the kneecap to the side. That alone contributes to knee pain.
Inactive glutes allow the internal rotation of the leg. Knees in with feet wide may make a cute picture of a little girl. When knee collapse in during a squat or a jump, it is called knee valgus and over time damages the knee joint.
Most of these painful and sometimes debilitating consequences could be avoided with a carefully designed exercise program. However, just moving without an understanding of how the correct form is, will not end well.
Let’s look at an example.
Many use jumping jacks or similar polymeric exercise to warm up. Body weight, muscle to fat ratio, muscle strength, joint and soft-tissue health, previous training adaptations, hydration, and nutrition is often ignored.
A 200-pound woman at 5’3” coping with cardiovascular disease who just started to workout may be risking more than knees with a jumping jack.
For even the fittest people joints need time to change their internal composition from resting not active. The initial jumps stress the knee joint until the internal change is complete and the joint can cushion the pressure.
Doing jumping jacks or similar exercises as warm up day after day and each day causes knee joint damage every time for part of the exercise.
When you consider that 68.3% of the population is either obese or overweight according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and 81,000,000 Americans with cardiovascular disease, you would know that you need to plan the motions carefully to get results without taking unnecessary risks.
Before you decide just to move, make a list. List your known strengths and weaknesses. The value of an experienced personal trainer is not what they teach you about motion, but how to recognize your weaknesses and strength and move to shore up your weaknesses and take advantage of your strength.
If you are planning to workout at home, you need to plan around your time constraints, emotional needs and family obligations as much or even more than your exercise routine sequences.
Just moving without a clear understanding of motion and its consequences are perhaps the biggest of exercise routine error a busy woman can make.
