Beginner Fitness: Daily Simple Questions Thread - April 16, 2021

---

• Daily Simple Questions Thread - April 16, 2021
• "Just Walk it Off" A Discussion on Modern Pain and Injury Literature, RICE, and the Power of Expectation Regarding Pain and Injuries.
• Physique Phriday

Daily Simple Questions Thread - April 16, 2021 Posted: 16 Apr 2021 02:00 AM PDT Welcome to the /r/Fitness Daily Simple Questions Thread - Our daily thread to ask about all things fitness. Post your questions here related to your diet and nutrition or your training routine and exercises. Anyone can post a question and the community as a whole is invited and encouraged to provide an answer. As always, be sure to read the wiki first. Like, all of it. Rule #0 still applies in this thread. Also, there's a handy search function to your right, and if you didn't know, you can also use Google to search r/Fitness by using the limiter "site:reddit.com/r/fitness" after your search topic. Other good resources to check first are Exrx.net for exercise-related topics and Examine.com for nutrition and supplement science. If you are posting a routine critique request, make sure you follow the guidelines for including enough detail. (Please note: This is not a place for general small talk, chit-chat, jokes, memes, "Dear Diary" type comments, shitposting, or non-fitness questions. It is for fitness questions only, and only those that are serious.) submitted by /u/AutoModerator [link] [comments]

"Just Walk it Off" A Discussion on Modern Pain and Injury Literature, RICE, and the Power of Expectation Regarding Pain and Injuries. Posted: 15 Apr 2021 01:15 PM PDT TLDR; RICE method is probably out dated. Your pain doesn't inherently mean that you're injured. Intro Hello all, The purpose of this post is to prompt a discussion, and hopefully can cultivate interest in you, an athlete, coach, PT, enthusiast, or whatever - on some on the modern scientific literature when it comes to pain. I'm keeping Rule 5 in Mind - this is not meant to be Medical Advice. This is not even meant to be advice. People have very strong opinions on pain and pain management. This is simply to spark some discussion and my personal viewpoints. I'm just a gym meathead who has dealt with a lot of injuries and pain through Rugby and powerlifting. I'm actually dealing with an ankle injury now that I'm in PT for. What prompted this is when I watched Alan Thrall's 'I HURT MY BACK' video. It sort of opened my eyes in injury and pain management, and how much of it is truly just in our heads. I can't tell you how many times I really felt in pain during a Rugby match, but just "walking it off" helped tremendously. Meanwhile I had team mates who would get hurt, and it felt like the moment they decided they were injured, they truly were. But where is the line between being able to walk it off, and actually being injured and requiring significant rest? What is the truth? ​ 1. The Power of Expectation | Pain is an Alarm - Not Harm It has been well documented that the psychology and how we perceive pain are closely related. Take a child receiving a shot. When they know it's happening, they are in tears. They might even coddle their arm after the shot. But, when distracted, they don't even know anything happened at all. No tears, etc. Similarly, my dad would always tell me in Rugby, "Don't let them know you're hurt" - meaning it can boost the opposing team's morale knowing that they hurt you. I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to take a knee, sub out, but jumped right back up and pretended I was ok. And just acting like I was toughening it out, I was. One or two rucks later and I was back at 100%. But, if I had subbed out, next thing I know I would be icing myself on the sideline, with people saying, "man, you really got hurt". And before you'd know it, I would be hurt, skipping practices, telling myself I was injured. There similarly is a movement I've seen on Social Media against PTs, Chiros, even doctors that tell you to "protect your spine", that the spine is "fragile". Take this story, sound familiar? You get a pain in your back. Maybe from deadlifts. You go to a Chiro. They tell you "Oh yeah, your spine is way out of alignment, no wonder you're in pain". They then tell you how much you need to protect the spine, and worry about "Spinal degeneration". Now you're being told back someone in power that you're in pain, and it just feels like you're in a perpetual cycle of pain. Always feeling like your spine is fragile, too afraid to lift heavy anymore. Always paying for back cracking every week for some minimal relief of pain. You've come to a professional with the expectation that they're going to tell you something is wrong (and they often will, for their own financial gain), only furthering your pain. But here's the thing. It's mostly bullcrap. Pain is not something to tell you how damaged or injured you are. It's meant to protect you. Take the "Nail Through Boot" case study. In 1995, the British Medical Journal reported on a 29-year-old construction worker who'd suffered an accident: after jumping onto a plank, a 7-inch nail pierced his boot clear through to the other side (Fisher et al, 1995). In terrible pain, he was carted off to the ER and sedated with opioids. When the doctors removed his boot, they discovered a miracle: the nail had passed between his toes without penetrating his skin! There was zero damage to his foot: no blood, no puncture wound, not even a scratch. But make no mistake: despite the absence of injury, his pain was real. The point here isn't to suggest that we shouldn't treat acute pain and injuries, but it's also equally important not to trick yourself that you have an injury. Aaron Kubal is a Chiro who argues that we see the same thing with back pain. He says that 95% of back pain cases are not even from tissue damage. (He is great on TikTok, and you should go down the rabbit hole of why "cracky-backy" chiros are BS"). He cites a study where twins with completely different lifestyles (one was sedentary, the other was very active) showed the same amount of "spinal degeneration" and that there was no studies that show any significant amount pain from "spinal degeneration". It's just something we experience as we get older but has no correlation to pain. There is a whole rabbit hole here of myths that he busts with clear evidence. He also advocates why we should be cognizant of modern pain science. Some studies even show that just the act of showing someone modern pain science reduces their pain in 40% of people. ​ The gist of what I'm trying to say is if you get some random sprain/tweak in the gym, there is a lot of potential benefit to finding some minimum way of performing the movement, instead of immediately saying "I'm injured" and resting it without really self reflecting. Don't nocebo yourself into thinking you have injury. Be a good judge of your body. Which brings me to my next topic: 2. R.I.C.E Is outdated. Introducing...METH. This is sort of continuing the conversation years ago, here. Maybe you've heard a few times that RICE is outdated, but I still often see it by coaches and athletes as their number 1 go-to method when dealing with pain. If you're not familiar with RICE, it stands for: Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation. There is probably some benefit to occasionally resting something that is hurt, compression, and elevation, but... What I'm really going to focus on is ICE. A hill I'm willing to die on: Stop Icing the majority of your injuries. The man, Gabe Mirkin, who coined the term "RICE", recanted his research specifically on ice. https://www.drmirkin.com/fitness/why-ice-delays-recovery.html Give it a read. But plainly put- at best, it's no more effective than a muscle rub, and at worst, slows down recovery. **"**But what about acute injuries?" I'm not pretending to be a Doctor. If your doctor says to ice something, ice it. I really doubt this research applies to a neurologist who would tell you to ice your head to prevent brain swelling. Edit: Some in the comments have said that icing acute injuries is still used and shown to be beneficial. So, take that with what you will. It probably isn't good to ice something for months on end. Here is what reddit user said u/notcolinfirth said in this post Recent research (most notably by Susan Saliba et al. at the university of Virginia) suggests that ice doesn't significantly prevent hypoxic damage. It is more of a local analgesic. Compression actually does the most to prevent hypoxic injury as it creates a physical external pressure to limit the amount of inflammation to an injured area. Additionally, as a topical analgesic, ice does a lot to remove the perception of soreness. ​ So, what is METH? METH is term that is gaining popularity among many PTs, Chiros, coaches, etc, in favor of RICE. It stands for: Movement Elevation Traction Heat Instead of linking tons of articles that can be done with a quick google search, I'll summarize a bit. This guys claims to have coined "METH", but whether he did or not, explains it well. You can read about it more in depth here. He claims not to use compression, but I'll leave that up to y'all to take with a grain of salt or not. No rest and no compression, use movement with traction instead. According to Dr. Tim McKnight (2010) Why traction is important with movement: ...movement with traction reduces pain, enhances lymphatic removal of inflammation, improves flexibility, and restores normal joint alignment. Some others have tried to coin "MOVE" but it seems that "METH" is mentioned more often than not. I like this article a bit more, though. Basically, when you rest something, you risk some atrophy. Movement is more beneficial, and this has been documented for a long time. movement also directly stimulates tissue healing was clarified by Dr. Khan (Editor of the British Journal of Sports Medicine) and Dr. Scott (Director of Vancouver Hospital's Tendon Laboratory) (5). Called mechanotransduction, the actual physical deformation of tissue by mechanical load of movement leads to release of chemical growth factors from cells. These enhance synthesis of protein and structural scaffolds, which maintain, repair and strengthen bone, cartilage, tendon and muscle. Even Dr. Gabe Mirkin, who coined the acronym RICE, now agrees rest may delay healing (6). Concerning heat, if you do that google search, there is tons of modern research the promotes the notion that heating helps inflammation, and no healing can happen without inflammation. Ice bad. Heat good. Final Thoughts I think, similar to point number 1 - that there is some mental benefit to challenging yourself and seeing what you body can do, versus what your body can't do. By moving an injury in a safe way, you're convincing yourself, and giving yourself confidence, that you can recover and get over the pain. But when you rest and then return to activity with pain, you end up resting even longer. I saw a suggestion from Aaron Kubal, who I mentioned earlier, that the ultimate healer of pain is time. Whether you use RICE, METH, MOVE, or just ignore the pain, it more often than not goes away after a few months. So, in essence, be patient with pain, it will probably go away with time. Challenge yourself, there is a psychological factor at play when it comes to pain - and be a good judge of your own body. This does not mean to mindlessly push through pain to make a PR. Big time injuries can definitely happen when you ignore pain. There is a time and a place to rest, but don't nocebo yourself into thinking that you're injured. Don't let anecdotal experiences determine how you deal with a slight back tweak. If a Medical professional gives you a treatment plan, don't be like "But u/Rock_Prop said to just walk it off!" Don't let the hyperbolic title of the post dictate your decisions. Cheers y'all, thanks if you read the whole thing. Edit: Updated some things to try and get my point across more clearly and less opinionated. This post is subject to edits to help me get my point across or fix typos that I see. Thanks! submitted by /u/Rock_Prop [link] [comments]

Physique Phriday Posted: 16 Apr 2021 02:00 AM PDT Welcome to the Physique Phriday thread What's the point of having people guess your body fat? Nevermind that it's the most inaccurate method available, (read: most likely way wrong - see here) you're still just putting an arbitrary number to the body you have. Despite people's claim that they are shooting for a number, they're really shooting for look - like a six pack. So let's stopping mucking around with trivialities and get to the heart of the matter. This thread shall serve two purposes: Physique critiques. Post some pics and ask about muscles or body parts you need to work on. Or specifically ask about a lagging body part and what exercises worked for others. An outlet for people that want to show off their efforts that would otherwise be removed due to Rule 4, and Let's keep things civil, don't be a creep, and adhere to Rule 1. This isn't a thread to announce what you find attractive in a mate. Please use the report function for any comments that are out of line. So phittit, what's your physique pheel like this phriday? submitted by /u/AutoModerator [link] [comments]

You are subscribed to email updates from Fitness. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States