What Is Overtraining?
The fear of overtraining comes from outdated/under-researched ideas of the limit of how much volume humans can lift. Average (or above average) exercisers generally do not have to worry about overtraining. Pushing too hard, too fast can lead to injury, but intentional, slow development from a well designed workout plan allows for people to safely train hard.
How Beginner Lifters Mess Up Their 1RM Attempts
Testing your one rep maxes (1RM) is a way to measure strength progress, but there are a lot of wrong ways to go about them. Attempting maxes too frequently or too soon, wasting your energy during a warm up, or not tapering/peaking beforehand, can all lead to 1RM that aren’t representative of your strength. It’s extremely important to take proper precautions when doing 1RM because the heavier the weight, the more likely it is it’ll cause a serious injury if something goes wrong. Remember that there are many other ways to measure strength and progress, and not meeting your goal on a 1RM is not the end of the world, nor proof that your training isn’t working.
The Squat Isn't For Everyone
Squats are generally seen as the must-do exercise for lower body development, and it’s often ignored by fitness professionals that some people do not enjoy or cannot perform them. Spine, hip, knee, and calve conditions/injuries commonly effect someone’s ability to squat. There are plenty of other exercises that develop the lower body that work better for these situations. Workout programs need to be built on exercises the individual wants to do and is safely capable of doing, even if it means that a popular or effective exercise like the squat isn’t included.
Training For The Hypermobile
Hypermobility is a condition where joints are unusually loose or unstable and often presents itself in people as excessively flexible bodies with poor proprioception (the sense of knowing what space your body is taking up and what it’s doing). The risk of injury that comes with hypermobility means that clients should focus on stability rather than flexibility, avoid extreme ranges of motion, be careful with controlling movement and form, and be aware that their strength will grow slowly. Personal trainers should familiarize themselves with common conditions like hypermobility in order to best support the wide range of individualization their clientele will need.
Should You Train To Failure?
Training to failure is sometimes heralded as a secret technique for gaining mass and strength, and sometimes demonized as being uniquely likely to cause injury. Here’s what the science says, and how you can effectively implement training to failure in your own training.