Be Your Best: Check your ego at the door when starting a new fitness regimen

(Dr. Brian Sokalsky, DO, is at the helm of Jersey Shore Sports Medicine in Ocean City and is a board certified family physician with special training in sports medicine. Once per month, Glory Days Magazine publisher Dave O’Sullivan talks with Dr. Sokalsky about various sports injuries, treatments and prevention methods.) So, you’re 40 years old and back in the day you were a pretty good athlete. But, in the past few years life, kids, jobs, all that stuff has gotten in the way and you’re not in the kind of shape you used to be in. New Year’s Day rolls around and you resolve that in 2016 you are going to get healthier and get back in shape. It happens every year at this time, as we try to battle the effects of time and our busy schedules. We all want to be in better shape, and January is a time when many people say, OK, I really need to get serious about being healthier and getting back into shape. Which is a great thing, but many times people over-do it in the beginning, which can lead to injuries that sidetrack you on your fitness goals. Dr. Brian Sokalsky of Jersey Shore Sports Medicine in Ocean City sees the same types of injuries each January, as people go on a blitz to get back into shape — trying to make up for months, and sometimes years, of inactivity in their first couple of workouts. “It’s very common this time of year. The most common types of injuries are overuse injuries, such as tendonitis. We most frequently see that in the shoulder with rotator cuff tendonitis or bursitis, and tennis elbow,” Sokalsky said. “Tennis elbow is an inflammation of the tendons that connect the muscles that pull the wrist and fingers back into extension, and that comes from a lot of repetitive lifting. People start doing things like P90X, Insanity, T25, all those at-home DVD based workouts where they are using dumbbells a lot, that’s where we usually see it.” Now, many exercise programs urge newcomers to check with their physicians before starting an intense workout regimen, but, Sokalsky said, that rarely happens. Brian Sokalsky is a doctor specializing in sports medicine. His office is located in Ocean City. To contact Dr. Sokalsky, call 609-545-8553 “Off the top of my head, I cannot remember any patient calling me beforehand and saying, ‘hey, I want to do this, what do you think?’ They may talk to their primary physician about it. But for me, I may get a patient who is in for something else and they may say, ‘hey, by the way, I’m thinking about starting this type of workout, what do you think?’ But for them to make it a separate phone call or appointment, that doesn’t happen.” The problems that most people run into, Sokalsky said, is that any extended period of inactivity puts muscles into atrophy. It may not be noticeable, but any extended time without exercise causes muscles to shrink. That’s kind of the body’s way of telling a person, ‘hey, you’re not using these muscles regularly, so we’re going to go ahead and shrink them up. You don’t seem to need them anyway.’ “The reality is, the biggest risk factor is too much, too soon. Particularly patients who previously were in shape or who did work out regularly but haven’t done anything for 3-6 months and then trying to go back and pick up right where they left off,” Sokalsky said. “That’s where you see the injuries. They don’t realize how much strength they have lost by not working out, so you can’t pick up right where you left off. If you were running six miles a day, three days per week but haven’t run in six months, you can’t go back to that pace. You have to start low, maybe start at one or two miles and then build back up over the next three to six months. It’s the same thing with weights. You can’t pick up the same weight you finished on six months ago. You have to drop the weight and build back up. “The muscles atrophy. Muscle is the ultimate ‘use-it-or-lose-it.’ Unless you are consistently stressing the muscle, it will begin to break down and shrink. Ask anybody who has had a cast on their wrist or ankle, and ask them what their forearm or calf muscles look like after six weeks in a cast. That muscle shrinks down.” As Sokalsky explains, a typical error people make when getting back into working out is going full force, every day, wearing themselves out to try to make up for months or years of inactivity. Muscles get stronger by being broken down and having time to recover. This recovery time is how the muscles get stronger. Lifting and running causes the muscles to expand, and as the muscles recover they are filling in the broken down areas with new muscle mass. “You have to take the time to rebuild it to get back to where you were. People over-burden the muscle. The muscle breaks down and the body rebuilds it bigger and stronger, but it needs the time to rebuild. So if you are overdoing it, you are breaking down the muscle too much and the body doesn’t have time to rebuild it before you start breaking it down again, and that leads to injury,” Sokalsky said. Sokalsky said the best advice he can give is to not have an ego when starting up a new exercise regimen. It’s going to take time, and people have to be willing to accept that challenge. “If they are really serious about getting in shape and if this is something new to them, they should work with some type of professional trainer to have supervision so they learn how to do things properly and learn how to progress safely,” Sokalsky said. “If it’s someone who has worked out regularly in the past and wants to get back into it, the best advice is to check your ego at the door. Start low and progress slowly.” [adsense]