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1. The nature of conditioning:
- Cardiovascular conditioning, to give you stamina so you don't get winded.
- Muscular and tendon conditioning, to give you strength to exert to the extent you
want (this includes building the peripheral circulation in your limbs and within your
muscles to nourish those muscles, so you can get the level of oxygen you need at
the rate of exertion you're trying to achieve, e.g. 20 miles in 6 hours).
- Joint, ligament and bone conditioning to give you the level of activity (e.g. running
20 miles, biking 20 miles, rowing 20 miles) you want without causing overuse
injuries to those parts of your body, so you don't get pain in those joints and
bones.
- Isometric exercises: muscle contraction without moving the bone, so no motion of
the joint (which may be injured). Used while getting rehab. from a joint injury.
Isotonic exercises: the muscle moves the bone against resistance - the Nautilus
machines, increasing the number of weights you can move.
2. Causes of injuries
- Lack of prior conditioning: exercising too fast too soon after starting to exercise.
- Lack of warm-up and/or stretching before exercise: the muscles and tendons and
ligaments were just not limber at the time you exercised - stretch slowly and
steadily, not in a bouncing fashion.
- Improper shoes
- Disadvantageous anatomic variation that puts you at risk from particular
exercising causing an injury, whereas that same exercise would not injure someone
else who has a different anatomic variation: Type I shoulders vs. Type II;
variations in the anatomy of the foot/arch/toes.
- Lack of cross-training to avoid overuse injuries. Cross-training is intended to give
you cardiovascular training at a good level of exertion without stressing any one
part of your anatomy so you get injuries there because that part of your body
isn't ready for such a vigorous level of exercise.
3. Overuse injuries: always ice for the first 24 hours, to minimize added inflammation.
Heat to relieve symptoms only after that time.
4. A "stress fracture" occurs when the exertional stress on a bone exceeds the intrinsic
strength of the bone. Just like any other fracture, it takes 4-6 weeks to heal.
Unlike most "acute injury" fractures, stress fractures can be "partial," meaning not a
complete break (visible on X-rays) but damaged bone that would be seen to be
damaged on histological examination under the microscope. Thus, in the absence of a
visible fracture on an X-ray, a bone scan may show the presence of a partial fracture.
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