You Are a Product of Your Daily Life!

You are a product of your daily life!

Our bodies become good at what we tell it to become good at. It will also follow the path of least resistance meaning it will be as insufficient as possible when performing daily tasks. This can cause issues.

Have you ever noticed how your hamstrings are tight after sitting at work all day or your lower back hurts after climbing a ladder all day or even your shoulders are on fire since you were cleaning the house all day?

Now if you think about how you train, your body becomes sore after repeatedly doing the same motion in a shorter time frame. From hamstring curls to deadlifts to pushups and overhead presses, they all lead to soreness from inside the gym to our daily lives.

The concept for this is called Time Under Tension. Which is basically the amount of time that a muscle is under strain during a rep or set. But, of course, it also refers to the time that your muscles are under strain during the daily rigors of your lives. For an example of perspective, mowing your lawn with a push mower for an hour is the same as a light weight sled push for an hour. (And we all know how much some of you love your time with the sled.) The basics of Time Under Tension is to accumulate volume of the amount of time doing something from extra seconds in heavy lifts to half-minute to a minute with lighter or bodyweight movements.

But, as I ponder, we all do that already without even really thinking about it. Every part of the day we are training our bodies. If you slouch in front of a computer for hours on end you are putting Time Under Tension of making your chest tighter and your back looser. Or if you are carrying something up a ladder always on one side then you are over activating one butt cheek and quadricep more so than the other.

All of this leads to our aches, pains, and imbalances, but it can be counteracted. By understanding what is meant by Time Under Tension and how it relates to our daily lives, we can then start making informed decisions about how we approach our daily activities. Awareness of our mundane and unconscious daily activities can be the key to alleviating the pains we suffer chronically. Being conscious of what we do from one activity to the next could be the key to relieving your aches and pains so from now on, switch which side you carry items up a ladder, sit up with a straight spine and shoulders back while at the computer and be aware of how lean when standing and you might be surprised how you become pain free.