HOW MUCH IS TOO MUCH? (Understanding Your Body's Capacity)

Picture a horizontal line about three quarters of the way up a page.

That line is your capacity. It's how much stress or load your body can endure before something bad happens. An illness. An injury. Total burnout.

Now start at the bottom of the page and stack boxes of stress underneath that line. Each box is a different load your body is carrying every day.

WHAT'S IN YOUR STACK

Anatomical Dysfunction: Parts of your body that don't quite work the way you'd like or need them to. Maybe one hip doesn't move well. Maybe your shoulder is stiff. These things interfere with your physical activities even when you don't notice them.

Stress, Sleep, and Diet: Things you can definitely control and improve with practice. Most people are running deficits in all three.

Functional Diagnosis: If you're working with a coach who's properly assessed how your body moves, these are the movement limitations you've identified. Maybe you can't squat to depth without pain. Maybe lunges feel awful.

Everyone has some level of all the above. Plus another box on top of that one: sitting in a car and at a desk for 8 to 10 hours a day.

After all those boxes are stacked, then comes your workout.

WHERE INJURIES ACTUALLY COME FROM

The goal each day should not be to feel crushed by your workout. It should be to feel awesome when you've finished, and still be below your capacity.

If you've ever been injured doing a workout, chances are it wasn't that last deadlift or kettlebell swing that did it. It was everything leading up to it that pushed you over the edge.

HOW TO SHRINK THE STACK

Most of us can't control how long we need to sit at a desk. But you can shrink that box a bit by getting up every 90 minutes or so and doing some walking or stretching.

By working with a qualified coach, you can reduce anatomical dysfunction over time with corrective exercises targeting the trouble area.

By going to sleep an hour earlier, using healthy strategies to manage stress, and getting lean protein and colorful veggies with every meal, you can significantly reduce the size of the sleep, stress and diet box.

And rather than training through pain, you can shrink the Functional Diagnosis box by executing the movements in your workout pain free. Limit range of motion. Use assistance like a TRX or band to move gently through a difficult position. Substitute an exercise that's just as effective but doesn't hurt.

For most of us, the three foundational boxes can all be reduced by about 50%, leaving way more room for error below the capacity line once we walk into the gym.

This way, by the time you finish your training session, you'll still have plenty of room beneath your line so that you don't go over capacity and hurt yourself. And you'll feel amazing after your workout, instead of battered and broken.