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March 3 - April 11, 2023
Instead of asking yourself, “Why me?” ask, “What is the next logical step forward?”
Load training (a.k.a. resistance training) is the most effective lever for resolving joint pain and building a resilient body. Everything else—stretching, foam rolling, manual therapy, massage, flossing, smashing, taping, cracking, and popping—is secondary. You can spend hours each week on extraneous soft tissue and recovery work, but if you don’t effectively utilize load training, you won’t get the relief you’re looking for.
Despite popular opinion, tendon breakdown and joint dysfunction can only be fixed by increasing the load tolerance of connective tissues.
Studies show you must challenge your joints with weights around 80% of your one-repetition maximum to elicit the greatest adaptive response. This equates to a weight you can lift about eight times before reaching failure.
you can build significant muscle, strength, and joint integrity in as little as two days per week. The key is using the right exercises, repetition tempos, and recovery periods to create consistent, positive adaptations.
The quality of the exercise is more effective than the quantity.
most acute injuries have an overuse, posture, or movement fault component that could have been corrected before the injury occurred. Less common causes of joint pain and weakness are gout, autoimmune disorders, connective tissue disease, and chronic pain diagnoses such as fibromyalgia that negatively impact collagen synthesis and lead to chronic inflammation.32 Body weight is another factor that
4 pounds of additional pressure on your knees. Only 10 pounds of excess weight puts an additional 40 pounds of pressure on your knees.30
Load training is the only therapeutic intervention that addresses all five primary causes of joint pain—posture, movement quality, muscle imbalances, tendinopathy, and collagen degradation.
Tendinopathy treatment shouldn’t focus exclusively on controlling inflammation. The primary focus should be on restoring function with progressive load training to trigger cellular healing responses.
The only way to get past tendinopathy is to exercise for load capacity and tissue remodeling, using pain as your guide.89
activity is the driving force behind joint lubrication.
for stiff joints, high-repetition movements with a deliberate tempo pump your joint capsules full of cushioning synovial fluid.
A metastudy published in the Annals of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine demonstrated that although NSAIDs effectively relieve joint pain and reduce inflammation in the short term (7 to 14 days), they also delay healing times, increase reinjury rates by up to 25%, and reduce collagen mass at injury sites.
While corticosteroids help relieve pain and inflammation in the short term, they have inhibitory effects on collagen synthesis within connective tissue.137
A sedentary lifestyle leads to a decrease in total collagen in your body, while resistance-focused exercise increases the collagen formation rate.
Davis’s law states that soft tissues heal according to how they’re mechanically stressed.139 If you stop using a joint, your tendons and ligaments will naturally shorten, reducing mobility and causing severe mechanical problems. In other words, use it or lose it.
When you start any new exercise modality—be it weight training, running, bike riding, or a sport—start slow. Train the new modality no more than twice per week for at least four to six weeks (ideally with two to three days of rest between). This will give your connective tissue time to heal between sessions and increase load tolerance.
In one study, professional female soccer players who underwent structured agility training achieved a 400% reduction in injury rates.191 Practicing jumps, throws, and other total body coordinated movements is surprisingly effective for keeping athletes healthy.
A physical therapy study published in the journal Sports Medicine concluded, “Strong evidence exists that stretching has no beneficial effect on injury
Muscles lengthen most effectively (with the least joint stress) when they are contracted while being lengthened.
Prioritize stability over mobility. One of the best ways to get injured is to stretch a joint that’s already unstable. Before worrying about improving mobility, make sure you have a baseline level of joint stability.
Dr. Stuart McGill is considered by many to be the world’s leading expert on low back pain. He has published more than 240 peer-review journal articles on pain, injuries, and functional fitness.
stretches that lengthen muscles prone to tightness, while also adding an element of core stability training: Glutes and hip abductors ▶ Pigeon Hip flexors and hamstrings ▶ Cossack Squat Lats and thoracic spine ▶ Anchored Lat Stretch
