How to set your exercise year up to achieve your goals and stay injury free

It’s the start of the year. We’ve all had the time and space to reflect on how much mental and emotional energy lockdown took out of us. It also made us reflect on how good exercise is and  how we miss connecting with our team mates or exercise buddies.

The new year is a good reset time to start thinking of some fitness goals. The new year is also a time where dreams can be  dashed because of overzealous training. Our bodies don’t forget we sat and relaxed on holiday (on a background of  a very long lockdown). So this year let’s do things differently.

Below is a Q and Q session with three of our BIM Physio team on how to achieve your exercise goals this year without getting injured because three minds are better than one!

So here are some questions to help you reflect on planning your goal successfully for this year

Give me your top three mistakes people make that could have been avoided in planning an event?

NICK T Not allowing enough time for the body to adapt to such an increase in exercise load is probably the most common I see. In terms of an event i'll use running as an example: if you've never run before a good goal is to do a 5km or 10km race. If you've done a couple of them and want to push your self consider a half marathon. You've done at least three or four halves consider going to a marathon

A good tip I can recommend is to reverse engineer your goal event over a minimum 3 months or 6 months for a longer endurance event. Try and work out an increase of 10-20% in load per week to get there. The human body tends to adapt well to this increase in load. Remember exercise load can be duration as well as speed and increasing both at the same time can get you in trouble. 

Failing at the final hurdle: Tapering for a race/ event can be a real mental test. You have trained so hard then all of a sudden you don’t have those endorphins. Your brain is telling you you need to train but your coach is telling you no. I’ll give you two examples from this week. A patient competing in her first half marathon decided to do a strength class followed by a 90 minute yoga class on a background of not doing yoga for a year 4 days out from her race. She hurt her back because she wasn’t used to doing two exercise sessions in a row. 

Second example:  I had a patient purchase a new pair of shows at the pre race event the day before the race. Completely different to their current shoes. They finished the race but didn’t run for 10 weeks afterwards.

You get the idea. Chill when you are told to taper so you have a full tank of gas for the race. You have done all the hard work. Don’t let the voices in your head tell you you need to do more. 

Finally going to work is also an exercise  load. If you just worked 70 hours and then have your biggest training weekend don't expect it to be pretty. You are training tired and stiff from work. Consider adjusting your training schedule or chuck in a yoga session, recovery session or BIM FIT Pilates class. 

MATTY B

People lack consistency in training. In my experience people start strong with the goal in mind but then don’t put in the work through the middle and back end. I find people won’t be in the gym doing the work enough and will be up and down with how much and how hard they train. Some weeks good and some weeks nothing 

Increasing the exercise load too quickly - Like most activities I see a lot of people skip steps in their training and try something they've seen on instagram or feel they can up the load much too quickly. As a very basic rule weekly increases by 10% are what you are looking for and are enough load to get more adaptation without the risk of injury

GET HELP!! - A lot of people find the gym and strength training very confusing and there is just so much content out there they struggle with how or where to start. The best thing you can do is see a Physio then an exercise physiologist/ Personal Trainer who will look closely at your biomechanics and help you plan a program around you and your goals! It is highly worth the investment and most people will get more out of the time they spend training.

NICK C

Not gradually returning to activity. COVID has meant a lot of people haven’t participated in sport for a longer than normal period so you will need to slowly get your body used to playing again via training before jumping into an intense game.

Not warming up and cooling down. Going from 0 to 100 rarely works in terms of physical activity so you need to make sure you allow your body to adapt to the load you’re about to put it through. Cooling down also gives your body the best chance to recover from the activity you’ve just completed.

Not treating a little niggle. Aside from traumatic events, all injuries tend to start as little niggles that don’t seem like a big problem. These little niggles are always easier to treat and settle from a physiotherapy point of view compared with a bigger, more severe injury. Make sure you pay attention to how your body feels and get some assistance with feeling good!

How do you stay injury free in pursuit of your goal? 

NICK T Getting stronger is one of the only evidence based ways of reducing injury risk in exercise pursuit. Add some strength training to your program Or you could do our BIMFIT strength and Pilates classes to take the guess work out of it

MATTY B  

Stay injury free by ensuring form stays consistent which can be very helpful to have a health professional such as a trainer or physio look at how well you perform the actions. Using equipment such as bands can help build strength in areas that need extra work. It is also important not to ramp up the weight too quickly with strength training, that is where we find injuries as Physios. Adaptation hasn’t occurred yet and the tissue is unable to take the load placed upon it. 

Warm ups are another super important aspect of strength work. I find a lot of people will race from work to jump in the gym and kill themselves for 45 minutes without performing any basic movements beforehand to help get their body prepared for the work ahead. As a very basic rule you can do the exercise before adding any weight whatsoever and go through the full range of motion to at least help your body to prepare for the exercise. More advanced warmups will include increased range of motions and adding resistance with bands or lighter weights. 

NICK C 
Gradually return to participation after a break such as lock down. Coming from a team sport background my examples are from cricket and soccer. Start to take part in training sessions before jumping into intense, competitive games. Whether they’re formally organised by your team or whether they’re sessions you do individually, training sessions allow your body to adapt to movements, postures, and positions you may not have experienced in a long time.

Make sure you complete a warm up before your training session and game as well as completing a cool down session afterwards. In the warm up, gradually build the intensity and complexity of your movements to mimic what you’ll need to do in your session. In the cool down, make sure you complete a wide variety of movements in a number of directions to gradually ease out of the intensity of the main session. If you are naturally a stiff person than finish with some stretching at night in front of the TV or use a spiky ball/ foam roller.