PROTECT YOUR JOINTS (450 words)

Weight training is no doubt aimed at the fibrous portions of the body, but joints are vital & are often ignored. The ligaments & tendons also attain size over periods of training (increase in girth at wrists & the shins is an easily seen proof), they too must have the proportionate strength to support increased power moves.

Joints are almost always taken for granted. Agreed that any bodily movement, especially the ones with weights, progressively wears out the joints, but it can be reduced and injuries prevented. The following are the most common situations of unnecessary joints’ stress.

• Never lift with your joints: It’s not easy to understand this. Let me illustrate: heavy suitcases are lifted by the shoulder joints, handbags are often carried with the strength of the elbows, heavy door (or someone too heavy) is pushed from the ball & socket joint (the shoulder) and the elbows (just observe your hyper extended arms).

It’s always the muscles that must be the generators of strength, and only in extremes (like dangling from a cliff for dear life) should all the other sources be employed. Heavy objects when carried by the arm, should effect a slight bend at the elbow (this will bring in the biceps & the brachialis) and slightly lift the carrying shoulder (towards the ear), to utilize the trapezius & the deltoids.

• Avoid hyper extensions & joint lock outs: Almost all exercises (& certainly all press outs) have in their full range of motion, a phase of hyperextension-a position where the weight is completely on the joints. These are the positions when an athlete stands with knees locked during a squat, has his elbows locked out during a bench press, has the knees locked out to support the weights during an inclined leg press and so on. These are the most comfortable moments as they rest the fatigued muscles but simply the most deadly passages of time that tell on your later stages of life.

Such positions must either be completely avoided but if this brings in a feeling of imcompleteness to the exercise then consciously keep such phases controlled and to a few fractions of a second.

• No jerks you jerk!: No power lifting or bodybuilding movement is designed to take a jerk.

It’s only the weight lifters with their dedication to the ever improving precision techniques of force multiplication who are entitled to the showy art of jerks & lockouts. Needless to say, even their body and that all others-be it an athlete or otherwise, takes a beating. We all degenerate to end our span…

But the ligaments & joints can particularly be protected with calcium & glucose amine supplements.