Gain and pain, results and injury. How do we stay in shape and remain injury free? I found the answer in a book on finance, go figure.

I recently read “What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars” by Jim Paul. The author provides numerous contradictory examples of how famous investors make money in the market. As you can imagine this is very confusing. Upon further examination, Jim discovers all great investors have a strategy for loss mitigation. The goal in investing is to not lose money.
This applies perfectly to training. There are thousands of ways to get stronger, leaner, faster, etc. Many of the methods are contradictory to each other but will work for the right individual. This causes a lot of confusion among newbies and seasoned trainers alike. The result is a phenomenon I call routine jumping. This can be explained as a trainee jumping from routine to routine every week because he is not seeing the results he expects. The bottom line is be consistent, stick with a routine for a minimum of 6-8 weeks. During that time, monitor progress and results. Take a few days off, tweak the routine and start another 6-8 week regimen. Simple and yields results.

More important is the correlation to not losing money. In fitness, this would be equivalent to avoiding injury. Nothing sidelines results like injury. I have some mileage on my body and it reminds me frequently. How do I stay healthy year after year?

I have a simple injury mitigation plan:

Always do a dynamic warmup
Train later in the day (when possible)
Never go to failure. Powerlifters don’t nor should you.
Stick with big compound movements. Isolation exercises provide un needed stress on joints with very little pay off.
Variety keeps you fresh and joints happy. Switch up exercises every 6-8 weeks, or at least vary the fundamental exercises. For example, switch grips, hand/foot widths, etc.
Keep the weight and ego in check. Deadlifting 500 for 5 reps is great, but what’s next. At some point injury creeps in. Pick a respectable weight to not exceed and add additional reps or sets. For example deadlift 315 for an extra strict set of 5 instead of jumping to 365.

Be consistent and drive results while following the steps above to mitigate risk of injury. Take action and go train!