Are you one of the millions of people with chronic joint pain? Then, the first thing to do is make sure you don’t make common mistakes.
One of the most common problems in the world of strength training is joint pain. “My shoulders are killing me,” or “my knees have been bothering me for months now,” or “I live on analgesics to get rid of wild pain in my elbow joint” are frequent complaints that can be heard at any time in any gym on the planet. However, and this is rather strange, the topic of joints is rarely covered in print publications devoted to fitness and bodybuilding issues. Perhaps the reason is that the problem is not so “popular” and lacks “revolutionary ideas”. Meanwhile, if you are one of those thousands of athletes whose muscle growth is stopped by pain in the joint, you don’t give a damn about “popularity” and “revolutionary ideas.” You just need to take this pain away!
In the past few years, I have seen an increase in the number of emails that come from people complaining of joint problems. And frankly, according to my conservative estimates, in more than 80% of cases, bodybuilders could completely avoid joint pain. If you look at people with chronic joint pain, nine out of ten cases, you can easily find the root cause of their suffering. Most often it is associated with the fact that they:
- do not devote enough time to warm up;
- Exercise too long and too often
- overuse sets with huge weights and low reps;
- Rest, which allows muscles, joints, ligaments and tendons to recover from grueling workouts, is neglected.
- when working with heavyweight, use the wrong technique;
- do not take essential nutrients.
Of course, we all experience painful sensations in the elbow, knee or any other joint from time to time, but chronic long-term pain is a completely different story. Within the framework of this material, we will proceed from the assumption that the reader is not guilty of the sins listed above, and the cause of his (her) joint problems is associated with a factor that he cannot influence. In a word, if you devote enough time to warm-up and stretching, do not do more than 3-4 times a week, constantly change the working weight and the number of repetitions, rest as much as necessary, do all the exercises correctly, take the necessary medications and still face pain in joints, then this article is addressed to you.
Types of joint diseases
Scientific medicine knows a lot of joint diseases, accompanied by pain, both in athletes and in “normal” people. Bursitis, tendinitis, various forms of arthritis and other pathological conditions can cause joint pain. In this section, we briefly describe the most common causes of joint pain in athletes.
Arthritis
There are many forms of arthritis, but the most common are osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis. Of the two, osteoarthritis leads by a wide margin in bodybuilding and other sports. Osteoarthritis caused by fatigue and wear and tear of the joints is characterized by damage to the cartilage that covers the articular surfaces of the bones. Once smooth cartilage becomes rough, uneven, and this causes more friction and pain. Left untreated and untreated, osteoarthritis can undermine the strength and health of hard-working athletes. I must say that chronic osteoarthritis put an end to the careers of many athletes.
Bursitis
Our joints have small fluid-filled sacs called bursas (bursa). The task of the bursa is to ensure smoothness and smoothness of movements in the joints by preventing friction between the articular surfaces of the bones. If inflammation develops within these sacs, and/or if they are damaged by some external factor (see the errors listed above), then a chronic pain called “bursitis” occurs. Most often, the ailment affects the elbows and shoulders (the so-called tennis elbow), but it can also hit other joints in the body. The pain with bursitis is hellish and, without treatment, quickly puts an athlete out of action.
Tendinitis
Tendinitis is arguably the most common cause of pain in bodybuilders and other athletes, but luckily it is the easiest to treat. However, it is not worth neglecting treatment, as people “exercising through pain” risk serious problems that will quickly put an end to muscle growth. In essence, we call tendinitis inflammation of the tendon near the joint, caused by excessive stress, microtrauma, etc. Although it sounds harmless, for people suffering from chronic tendinitis, this is no longer a joke, but a real pain in … a joint!
Treatment methods
Once again, we repeat that within the framework of this material, we proceed from the fact that the reader devotes enough time to warm up before training, does not overexert himself, and so on, and so forth, said at the beginning of the article. If the reader (you?) Spends the whole day in the gym, considers one approach to the bench press to be an adequate warm-up, and calls everything more than 3 reps multi-repetitive training, then you do not need to delve into the material to find a remedy for your joint problems!
When choosing treatment methods, we will look for natural ingredients and combinations of natural healing substances that can help a person who has been suffering from joint pain for many years. Unfortunately, the methods of therapy offered by mainstream medicine today are not very suitable for people who lead an active lifestyle. Most joint medications target the symptoms (pain, swelling, swelling, etc.) rather than the underlying cause, which makes the problem worse in the long term.
Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatories, corticosteroid injections, synovial fluid prostheses, and the always-win-win advice “avoid exercise” do not produce the results most athletes want. What to do? If you look at the names of the joint diseases mentioned above, you will notice that they end in “-it”: tendin-it, arthr-it and burs-it. According to the Encyclopedia of the American Medical Association, the suffix “-it” stands for “inflammation.” Armed with this knowledge, you can reasonably conclude that bursitis is inflammation of the bursa, tendinitis means inflammation of the tendon, and arthritis means …. in a word, you get the essence.
Medical terms ending in “-it” tell us that, despite the differences in the etiology and clinical manifestations of diseases, inflammation is invariably at the heart of their pathogenesis. It is this that is the source of all troubles. Inflammation is accompanied by pain, swelling, increased volume, hyperemia and other less obvious symptoms, and it is with inflammation that we will fight. All we need to do is make a list of natural ingredients and foods that can reduce inflammation. Reduce inflammation and save the joints of people reading this material, even if they thought that training would never be the same again due to endless joint problems. And most importantly, these products act not only on the symptoms, which are based on inflammation, but also on the hidden causes of the disease.
Who wants jelly?
It may sound strange, but the main ingredient in good old jelly (gelatin) may be exactly what the doctor ordered for painful joints. For many years, gelatin has been sold worldwide both as a food ingredient and as a dietary supplement, and it is obtained from animal collagen. In fact, both animal and human collagen is an essential structural protein that forms the scaffold of bones, tendons, and other connective tissues. It is a poorly soluble protein that plays a key role in the mutual integration and unification of cells and tissues of the human body. Gelatin contains a huge amount of two amino acids that are essential for collagen synthesis, namely proline and glycine.
Just think, you need 43 grams of egg white powder, or 35 grams of skimmed milk powder, or 89 grams of lean beef to get the amount of proline, which is contained in just 10 grams of gelatin hydrolyzate. And although the body can synthesize these two amino acids on its own, it is believed that in certain situations, endogenous synthesis does not keep up with the needs of the body, and the rate of tissue destruction begins to outstrip the rate of their recovery (that is, the body constantly loses collagen).
Ingestion of hydrolyzed gelatin provides osteoblasts (cells that form bone tissue) and chondrocytes (cells that form cartilage) an alternative source of these essential amino acids in quantities sufficient to create structural proteins. True, for neocollagenesis, not only amino acids are needed, but also chondrocytes, the number of which is limited, and their ability to synthesize this essential protein depends on a person’s genetic characteristics, age, physical activity (too low or too high), trauma and the availability of other nutrients.
I must say that bone metabolism is a rather confusing and complex process, with which everything is still not clear. However, the results of numerous experiments prove that a daily intake of just 10 grams of hydrolyzed gelatin is highly effective in relieving pain, increasing the range of motion in the joints and generally strengthening bone and cartilage tissue. Several crossover, randomized, double-blind studies have reversed clinical symptoms associated with joint pain (Adem et. Al. Therapiewoche, 1991).
