Weight Training

Over the past year, I have been incurring an unusual number of injuries considering that I have given up all contact sports. I haven’t played basketball or flag football. My softball outings are pretty tame. Further, I haven’t indulged in adventurous sports like skiing, rock climbing or mountain biking. However, I have been less disciplined about weight training and stretching.

To that end, I finally got a leg workout completed today. The last leg workout I tracked was May 13th, 2008 and the highlight was 90 pound squats on the Smith Machine. I have no intention of returning to 275 pound free weight squats, but I do feel that 135 pound free weight squats are a reasonable goal. My plan is to strengthen my leg muscles and tendons to reduce the risk of overuse injuries such as tendonitis or acute injuries such as strains.

The workout today was limited to leg presses, leg extensions and hamstring curls. After a month of these straightforward workouts I intend to incorporate free weights.

I had an aversion to weight training based on my early experience running track and cross country. Weight training on legs was something done during the off-season and in-season resistance training was limited to sleds and other tools. This has to change as I have repeatedly heard and need to consider strength training for performance and injury prevention.