Too Much Cardio
When is enough, actually enough
There's nothing wrong with cardio. The problem is when it becomes a compulsive act.
The compulsivity is when someone uses cardio to relieve anxiety. Let's not confuse this with being stressed out and going on a run for clarity or relief.
I'm talking about someone using cardio to make themselves feel "okay" with what they ate or if they earned the day.
This can result from someone with body dysmorphia. Where even after a 60 minute lifting session, they will perform another hour of cardio.
They fear gaining fat so to them, more is better.
There's also the person who has to condition themselves to exhaustion and discomfort. IF they fail to reach this feeling then the workout wasn't "hard enough" or it was too short.
These are psychological problems that don't equal better health and fitness.
You dont have to shame yourself or destroy your body to be good enough, fit enough, or lean enough.
Youre chasing a feeling to produce your outcome. Not a training metic.
This is a problem because fatigue will set in and compound over time.
The real question is why must this be the feeling that is chased?
Surviving—and Thriving—in College Sports: The Truth About Injuries, Time Demands, and Education
Hi! I'm Augusta, I was a collegiate volleyball player for North Carolina Wesleyan College (formally changed to a university in 2023).
In college I played all around. I was a libero, defensive specialist, and an outside (sometimes middle) hitter.
I had a very fun athletic career at Wesleyan, but there are things I would have wanted to know before diving into college athletics.
Getting physically prepared for the season
Before going to college there were many things I was not aware of.
The demands of a college athlete take some mental toughness for sure.
It can feel overwhelming at first but you will start to learn to processes sooner than you think.
Training
Training was one of the most important things in my athletic career that was neglected before entering the college athletic lifestyle.
The training that is needed to be successful in college sports happens during your offseason. Which may be at home for some sports.
Once I was fully immersed into athletics at the next level, I started to experience major injuries, yearly.
Early Injuries
My body was covered with tendonitis in my shoulder, achilles, hamstring, large toe (also referred to as “turf toe”), and in my patellar tendons (knee cap).
This is just one example of how my body was going through wear and tear.
I hadn’t been strengthening the muscles around my joints in the previous years and It was showing. I wasn’t aware of the necessary preparation and maintenance needed to play season after season.
Your body is not used to the physical intensity required to compete in college practice and games. The wear and tear adds up. You may notice it during the season or right after.
This can all be managed though. If you’re properly conditioned, you will excel when others become tired, hurt, or burned out.
Becoming a great athlete
Good athletes know training is important, but great athletes know to take pride in actively maintaining bodily health when training.
In doing so, you can almost guarantee great results when competing.
In college athletics, training for your sport becomes your job.
The level of intensity is increased weekly. You have to balance lifting, practices, and fitness tests, while continuing to be a student.
Knowing this and being prepared to experience this are very important.
Being unprepared can lead to athletes becoming overwhelmed and disappointed based on the level of dedication needed to maintain this career.
You never know how any situation will play out, but having a general idea that hard work and dedication will be an expectation can slowly mentally prepare the athlete to work vigorously in the future.
With this being said, the process as a whole becomes more comfortable when you realize your peers have worked just as hard as you, and everyone is on a common path with the same goal in mind.
New realities
There's a few realities that have to be recognised when you go into a different level of competition.
Do not get comfortable.
Note that someone will always be better than you, if they are, do not let that become the standard. It is a race to see who will get those positions and it is all based on hard work.
Who is going to put the most time into making sure that their skill is constantly growing?
Are we getting extra reps in?
Staying after to correct mistakes?
These are important things to incorporate into your daily life as a college athlete.
These adjustments may sound intimidating but once you see all of the benefits, you will be okay with the challenges you come in contact with and soon see it as your “new normal”.
Don’t forget your education
“If you are good at your sport, you will not have to do as much school work” is false. This has been thrown around for years and leading students to being unprepared for academics in college.
Your academics in college are just as, or more important, than your sport. In reality, they are hand and hand once you reach this level of competition.
Understand that without school, there is no sport. In order to grow your athletic career, you have to maintain your academic career.
In college, playing a sport or not, you are forced to face a lot of new responsibilities on your own, and are expected to create your own structure.
When you add your specific sport into the equation this makes things more challenging, but if you embrace the challenge you can see how having this type of rigorous schedule can aid you in gaining autonomy in your life as you enter adulthood.
Again, eventually you will start to view your situation as your “new normal”.
Keeping these things in mind while in preparation for the next step in your athletic career can benefit you along the way.
Setting the tone of how you perform is essential, whether it's in the classroom or on the court, field, etc.
- Augusta Preston
There’s not enough time!
Why it’s hard to commit to yourself
“Having Time” has become a popular reason for people avoiding starting an exercise routine. Humans are conditioned to predict outcomes. When we feel unprepared we are less likely to take action. The modern busy American may be able to say their goals, hopes, and visualized outcomes, but still struggle to take the first step towards achieving those outcomes.
More is better, right?
If you have the impression that “more training drives more results,” then we want to apply some context to that belief. “More,” doesn’t have to mean 1-2 hour long sessions.
More means consistency. A 5 hour session will never be better than five, 1-hour sessions.
What is important is what takes place in each session and the level of intensity and focus placed on the session.
Let’s define intensity:
With the correct intensity, a beneficial training session can be 30-45 minutes for beginners to intermediates. This pertains to the individuals goals, respectively. If you want to run a marathon, you will have to commit to longer sessions because goal consists of a long physical activity.
For most people, understanding how to create ‘Mechanical Tension’ (solid muscle contraction) would be the best and fastest way to see physical changes.
What is Mechanical tension?
Simply put, if you can maximize the amount of MT you create, you Will develop lean muscle. When it comes to weight, see how intense you can make 15# feel before jumping to 30#. Going through the ROM without adequate tension won’t elicit as much physical changed as a focused set of reps. Once that weight, the 15#, no longer is a viable weight to create muscle fatigue, increase the load.
This creates better efficiency of time used x time of physical change. It will also assist in motor unit recruitment for beginners to intermediates who may have trouble connecting the “feel” aspect of training.
If you’re wondering about getting stronger, yes this can help you increase strength. After a few months, you will have developed a solid foundation of muscle endurance to support specific strength training. Which means you are more aware of the muscles being used, the weights you may want to try, and you will have an understanding of what kind of intensity is required.
With this knowledge and awareness you can manage your time in the gym better and truly maximize your sessions. If you can’t afford a trainer, there are online coaches who can program for you. If those coaches are out of your budget, there are cheaper group based programs.
If you use a good personal trainer, good meaning they teach you how to move, you will have eyes on your movement and will (should depending on the quality of the trainer) see fastest results. An online coach who programs specifically for you and your goals would be the next fastest means of seeing results.
All in all, I believe in a circular means of training mindset.
1. Consistency - show up every day you are supposed to
2. Persistence - Set a goal and keep that as the fore front of the training
3. Adherence - Find a program and fully commit to it.
With those 3, you will show up (consistency) even when you don’t want to because you have a goal you want to achieve (persistence) and you trust the person/company to help you reach your goal so you do what is expected (adherence).
Training with pain in CrossFit/Group Class
Working out with others can be really fun. The side convos, the jokes, pacing off of someone, and receiving support make it a worthwhile training environment.
Sometimes we use their support to push ourselves to levels we hadn’t achieved yet. It’s great until we feel something strange, odd, or alarming.
When we feel an injury or something related to an injury, we initially have a feeling of fear and dread.
Pain is subjective and relative to the individual. Some people tolerate pain better than others.
Injury is fairly objective. If you’re hurt and/or diagnosed with an injury, it’s hard to argue otherwise.
Injury Prevention:
Injuries happen, and some are not preventable. However, you can train your body in ways that create balance and move with proper technique to reduce the occurrence of injury.
Utilizing proper warm-ups, maintaining the right intensity, good sleep, nutrition, and hydration all help with reducing injury.
It is also important to have a movement assessment performed to help with knowing where you may be limited and progress you towards better movement independence.
Treatment:
Depending on the severity, a PT or Othro would diagnose you, if severe, you would do physical therapy or surgery.
If the severity is minor, we at Gameday Fitness would assess you and guide you through a recovery process with our one-on-one training.
Even after you finish your physical therapy, it’s important to continue to build resilience and having a coach guide you is the clearest way to go.
After a reassessment, you’ll know where you stand in terms of recovery. This brings about more confidence when you go to increase the intensity or load during your training pieces.
If you have any questions about getting out of pain, email us at info@gameday.fitness
How I Program
My History
I get asked a lot on how I program and why I think it’s better than paying someone else to do it.
First, if you have minimal experience with programming, coaching, and training, you should refer out to someone who can safely write prescribed workouts for your members.
I’ve been dabbling with program design since my early 20’s. That means I have over 10 years’ experience with programming as well as training.
The first 5-6 years weren’t very good.
I’ll admit that I didn’t really understand proper dosing and would crush myself with too much volume.
Along the way to refining myself, I invested more money and time to education. I was then able to couple my experience with knowledge, to better provide a service for my members. I committed to being a “Brute Strength Athlete” for the purpose of guided structure for my training, but also to see how a proper program is written.
I was able to speak with their two main coaches, Adrian Conway and Nick Fowler. After 3 years of that, I switched over to an individual coach through Training Think Tank and Adam Rogers.
I bought a fair amount of reference and training books. Of course, I haven’t read them all cover to cover, but I use them as a reference for coaching individuals, group, and specific populations. I’ve also went through the 2012 OPEX course, 2017 OPEX Course, Training Think Tanks courses, the Power Athlete Course, The ClinicalAthlete weightlifting cert, and a handful of other courses, certifications, and seminars.
Programming for Group
When programming for a group it’s important to ask, “How can/does this benefit their lives?” and “How well can they perform said movements under fatigue versus fresh?” and “What are the biggest movement discrepancies that need to be addressed?”
The reason I chose those 3 questions is because if you’re performing an exercise that has a low ROI, then why waste the energy or risk the potential injury?
When we as people are left to our own devices, we will do what we want to do and do that too much. I call it a dopamine effect where they do something because they like how it feels, but ultimately it leads to a recipe of overtraining and burnout.
It’s important to manage the weekly dose, especially for CrossFit. We don’t want to compromise the recovery of certain joints and muscle groups, movement patterns, and overdoing one energy system or training time domain.
I can look at my members in workouts, talk to them, take the feedback and alter programming the next day if I need too. You can’t do that paying for someone. It’s also important to program progressions for movements that require skill or develop strength.
That becomes a problem if the coach(es) can’t properly teach the lifts or movement. Crossfit is special because when you design a macrocycle of periodization for it, you’re going to have linear, undulating, and conjugate styles (exercise science jargon).
Most training cycles were dependent on the sports season or a competition. Crossfit is relatively new and it’s best to training a safer mindset than pushing yourself to the brink of failure and death every time you’re in the gym.
So, I program to improve movement quality over time which can lead to strength gains, skill acquisition, and better conditioning. I don’t program for quick fixes or instant gratification. The health and longevity of my members is my main objective and I wont compromise that for anything.
Misnomers in Programming
I recently had a coach say that if there’s an “8:00 metcon, I’ll just throw some strength in beforehand.” This is bad on quite a few ways.
An 8:00 Metcon* is going to be very intense in comparison to a 16:00 metcon. You need to warm up properly.
This means over 20 minutes. First, there needs to be some blood flow initiated.
Second, we focus on getting the large muscle groups and joints loose.
Third, we focus on the movements in the metcon and if they require weight, building that up.
Lastly, we run through a few lower volume cycles of the metcon to make sure the nervous system is primed and ready to go. After the metcon of that intensity, we need to provide a cool down so the nervous system can start to down regulate. Not a lot of time, “to throw some strength” in, is it?
*metcon = metabolic conditioning
Training Years and PRs
Don’t be Fooled by the guise of PRs. If someone has never trained or trained very little, the chances of them PR’ing regularly is very high.
Why?
Because their body is experiencing new stressors and are adapting to them. As the training years increase, the jumps in strength will wane because the load is now, or should be, trending towards their genetic physical potential.
Don’t fall in love with initial PRs, teach movement quality and integrity under load.
Conclusion
If you put the life function of your members first, TEACH them how to move, make them stronger, powerful, enduring, mobile, and healthy, you will find great value in your work.
This may also mean that you must explain to them why you do what you do or what the importance of what we’re doing is.
To be a professional coach means that your learning never stops, and your members will appreciate it. Lastly, more is not better. Don’t program more volume, program better volume.
-Joseph Freeman