How to Condition and Strength Train Safely

The old saying “No pain, no gain” can be hazardous to your health, especially when starting a new fitness regimen. Rather than push yourself to the max and either burn out or become injured quickly (thereby putting an end to your fitness progress), ICWA would like to help you safely start and maintain your strength training and conditioning workouts. Here’s how…

Understanding Conditioning and Strength Training

First, a word about fitness terms. Often, conditioning and strength training are used interchangeably. Technically, they are two different fitness programs.

Conditioning refers to the work necessary to achieve a desired fitness goal and/or level of athletic performance. You can condition to improve a wide variety of fitness areas—cardiovascular endurance, muscle strength, muscle endurance, flexibility, balance, etc.

Strength training, on the other hand, is more limited; it is a subset of

conditioning that involves the exercises required to develop muscle strength (and sometimes mass)

We will use them interchangeably in this article because many of the cautions and tips we provide apply to both.

What Happens When You Condition the Wrong Way

We love the enthusiasm we see in people who are just beginning a fitness program. We don’t love the consequences if that enthusiasm runs wild because it can lead to conditioning the “wrong” way, which is:

• Too much too soon—too much weight, too many reps and/or too much exertion before your body is ready to handle the stress
• Too much too often—too much strenuous exercise without enough recovery time
• Too fast to keep form—setting a pace that does not allow you time to focus on your breath and form

Conditioning the wrong way almost inevitably leads to injury. In most cases, injury limits your mobility and kills your motivation. In severe cases, conditioning-related injuries can require surgery to repair damaged tissues (usually tendons and ligaments).

5 Tips for Safe Conditioning and Strength Training

To prevent injury and burnout, you need to condition the right way:

1. Warm up and cool down
   Get your muscles, circulation and respiratory system ready for a challenging workout slowly. Brisk-paced walking or light jogging for five to ten minutes before your strength training or other conditioning program will get the blood pumping and increase nourishment to the muscles required for optimal performance.
2. Do enough to challenge, not overexert your body.
   Your ICWA trainer and/or workout buddies can help you find the right number of repetitions and sets and/or weights that challenge your muscles but do not present so much strain as to cause injury or early fatigue.
3. Use proper lifting form every. single. time.
   Any weight bearing exercise should be done with your joints stacked to protect them from being pulled out of alignment and/or tearing connective tissue. ICWA trainers will instruct you on proper lifting form for every piece of equipment and type of lift. While we will keep an eye on your form during all workouts at ICWA, you also need to pay attention to your body at each stage of lift or exercise so that you strictly maintain proper form.
4. Exhale when working against resistance; inhale when reducing resistance.
   Proper form includes proper breathing. Your breath needs to support what your muscles are doing. You need to release CO₂ as your muscles are actively contracting, usually the “up” motions of lifts, push-ups and sit-ups. You need to take in oxygen during motions that decrease resistance—weight release and downward motions of push-ups and sit-ups.
5. Know when to increase workout demand.
   Pacing your workout to ensure proper form, breathing and appropriate challenge does not mean you’re taking it easy on yourself. On the contrary, when you slow down your conditioning to pay attention, you will more accurately assess when your workout becomes too easy and you need to increase the challenge, which you can do by either increasing the number of repetitions in a set, number of sets and/or amount of weight.

Whenever it is time to modify your conditioning and/or strength training program to accommodate new fitness levels, your ICWA trainer will be there to help you find a new starting point and introduce new ways to challenge your body.