Workout Fads that Injure: P90X >> Yahoo! News Online

Problem: The P90X workout is one of the biggest fitness trends in the past several years, with enthusiastic endorsements across the cultural spectrum, including everyone from singer Pink to 2012 Republican Vice Presidential nominee, Paul Ryan.

But businessman Matt Lombardi says that just one day of the program's strenuous routine sent him into the emergency room with near kidney failure.

"I simply wanted to get back in shape. I could have killed myself in the process," Lombardi writes on his site, College Spun.

Lombardi says he has "always been an athlete," and that he didn't wander recklessly into the program. Instead, he says, he wanted to try P90X to help lose the 20 pounds he had gained while developing College Spun. Read Yahoo!'s coverage of his story here.

The above article references what our physical therapists see all day. You can try to figure out what program will work for you and hope that you do not get injured, or you can rely on a time-tested and proven program that is safe and effective.

Solution: After a careful review of the P90X workout when it first came, out we predicted a plethora of overuse and traumatic injuries. Since then I have had to explain to the many clients injured from these high intensity, ill-designed training programs that not even my Olympians would hold up under the stress of these workouts. 

The creators of this training program may have forgotten the lessons of Jane Fonda-type workouts of the 1980s, which caused an epidemic of joint and muscle injuries from jumping and running on hard surfaces and performing body weight exercises with no regard for form and technique.

The basic premise of all well designed exercise programs is the progressive overload principle. Fitness must be "pushed" from below, i.e. starting slow and progressing slowly to harder workout. In addition, what recreational athletes and fitness enthusiasts don't realize is that elite and professional athletes spend half of their workout time in the gym on injury prevention. All strength and conditioning programs must begin with a joint stability phase where the body is hardened against injury. This involves the use of light weights and other exercises to strengthen all the little "helper muscles" around the joints, which, along with a lot of stretching ensures that each joint is functioning properly. This phase prepares the body for the more strenuous work to come later in the training cycle.

Secondly, no one can withstand high intensity training for more than a period of about eight weeks. Even if one was to avoid injury with this type of workout, in about eight weeks the body will adapt to a certain level of stress, and as fitness plateaus continued training at the same intensity will cause burnout, injury, or both. Conversely, the way we train elite athletes to win gold medals and set world records is with a periodization training program rooted in science and built specifically to avoid overtraining and prevent injury. This involves breaking the training cycle into phases and training for a specific fitness attribute for no more than eight weeks, and changing the training stimulus as the body adapts to foster further improvements. This is the key to achieving injury-free, peak fitness.

At Phase IV our strength and flexibility programs are designed by physical therapists with over 30 years of experience helping athletes of all ages and abilities achieve their goals, injury free. Following a head-to-toe Structural Exam, a personalized strength and conditioning program will be designed to meet your needs whether you want to train with us, at your gym, or at home. Call or click today to schedule a complementary consultation to discuss your goals and learn more about the only fitness program you will ever need.

Call 310.582.8212 today to learn more about Phase IV personalized home or gym-based weight training programs built for anyone. If you are dealing with injuries please call Forster Physical Therapy at 310.656.8600 to schedule an evaluation.

Always stretch BEFORE and AFTER each workout to stay injury-free.