Are you in Balance?
This content has been archived. It may no longer be relevant
Is your life in balance? How about your training? I could write a book about this topic but I will try to keep it short. Balance governs everything in life. You must balance friends, family, job, and your personal world in order to live a healthy life. People who spend too much time and effort in one realm neglect another and eventually it will catch up to you. You can get “caught up” in work and neglect your family and loved ones, or put too much effort into pleasing others without taking care of yourself. As a side note, I think it is ones responsibility to take care of ones body, because there is a lot of value to a healthy body and healthy life. Just look at how much we spend on healthcare if you want to put a number to it. Anyway, the principles in life parallel the principles of training in so many aspects.
You must balance your training in a number of ways. The Chinese talk about the yin and yang, and they were definitely on to something. A body in balance is something beautiful to watch (click here) and look at. If you watch the video you may have noticed his ease of movement or movement efficiency. Great athletes make it look easy, and move with great efficiency, that is they move effortless. They have bodies in balance; strength as well as flexibility. High level gymnasts and acrobats obtain some pretty good balance and strength as well. They don’t get those abs doing crunches that’s for sure.
Runners are notorious for not being in balance, which is why they get injured all the time. Balancing resistance training and endurance training is such a foreign concept to most runners. The first thing people think of when they want to get “in shape” is I should start running. You need to be fit to run, not run to get fit. Computer nerds and desk jocks should spend more time not sitting and actually moving and maybe those back problems would go away. 
For a great article check out Deconstructing the Computer Guy. Now is the time I want to present to you the idea of Repetitive stress or overuse injuries. There is a nice equation that expresses this concept very nicely. Eric Cressey talks about this in his newletter, whom I actually learned it from.
It is called the law of repetitive motion. “I” stands for injury and is proportional to the number of reps you do x the force involved, and inversely proportional to the amplitude (range of motion) of movement x relaxation. For the math people out there this means that lots of reps at a high force and a small range of motion increases your chance for injury dramatically. Running is an activity where each foot contact with the ground is close to 4-6x your bodyweight (ouch) and most of us run in short strides (low amplitude) and run a couple miles (thousands of reps). A bodyweight lunge on the other hand is much lower in force (maybe around 60% of your bodyweight), amplitude or range of motion is high , and reps are low (usually less than 30), thus a very low risk of injury. So many people dont have the strength to properly do lunges yet would take a 5 mi jog or run, and think that is serving them well. No wonder people have knee problems. This is where I stress the importance of quality over quantity, every rep counts. You must do the kind of movements in the gym that you do not do the other 23 hours of the day, and maintain a balance. If you have poor posture, the hour that your in the gym with better posture will NOT balance out the 23 other hours of the day that you have bad posture. If you sit all day and have no glute activation or strength, then when you go to the gym you better be trying to get your butt in gear! If all you do is push ups or bench pressing then you better be balancing that out with some rows or pull ups. If all you do is low intensity cardio/aerobic work then balance it out with some high intensity kettlebell/anaerobic work. I could go on and on but I think that is enough for today. Enjoy!