Ligaments - Keeping it all together for windsurfing

[Brian_S]

There was an article in Outside magazine that referenced a couple small studies on ligament health and healing:
https://www.outsideonline.com/2392880/gelatin-injury-prevention-recovery

Having gone through a bicep rupture and a high tibial osteotomy in 2018-2019, I've been doing the jello thing. Seems like a little Jello everyday can't hurt.

[justall]

Rigitrite, Mac, dllee, Brian_S,

Thanks for posting your experience/thoughts/references on gluclosamin/gelatin. I am reading up on these.

Yeah, most of the science still points to use/exercise to keep ligaments healthy and to promote repair. But, it seems logical there may be things we eat, or are missing in our diet, that could help the repairs along or delay general degradation. As you all may have found/see. I might write to the UC Davis lab to see where they are with follow-up research.

[isobars]

Sorry to take so long. I’ve had at least 17 things more urgent than this, and have been chipping away at it since you posted.

Studied? Not ligaments per se, but I’ve picked up lots of bits and pieces from many trusted sources. This stuff is important to me, especially since medical issues have degraded my physical abilities very dramatically in just the past ear or two.

First, as Lee says, we can’t strengthen ligaments. They’re just pieces of very strong fiber “installed” to maintain proper proximity among the various bones they connect, from your toes to your skull. We CAN, however, protect and preserve them for a long time by reducing the stresses on them by any of several means, most notably strengthening the muscles that splint our joints (except at full extension or full flex, where the loads on a joint’s ligaments spike if pushed any further and muscles can't do much to help them).

With our most obvious joints, including feet, ankles, knees, hips, core, spine, neck, shoulders, elbows, and hands, we can support the ligaments with strong muscles. The obvious implication there is to get our butts to a gym for some serious whole body strength-building exercises. Although most of them can be done at home, the gym provides many more options and freedom from @!%&!$% telemarketers.

The bible on extremely efficient, injury-free, very effective, strength building and aerobic/anaerobic development, IMO, is “Body by Science” by Doug McGuff. I consider it a must-read for anyone of any age who wants to get much stronger and fitter without injuries in 5% of the time most regular gym goers spend at it. He has MANY videos online, where you’ll also find many reviews of his Superslow protocol. One such review is at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjc_DpK9CI4
Root around the internet and you may find McGuff’s video of a moose doing a single two-minute chin-up for the hell of it, and another moose going through McGuff’s Big 5, 12 minute, whole-body workout. He falls to the floor trying to find more oxygen after his last exercise, effectively unable or unwilling to walk for a moment. I only FEEL that worked, but I try my best and often DO after my lunges or leg presses. I’ve asked several of our gym trainers about this form of training, and their answers have been consistent: it’s a great workout, but almost nobody’s willing to work out that hard. I also don’t see anyone else doing serious HIIT, either, in the big gym I use.

Jeez, folks, it’s just 12 minutes 2 or 3 times each MONTH; how difficult is that? (Arnold tried it, refused to do it again, and lost the world championship to a guy who DID it.)

My kinesiologist uses a version of it, and set a U.S. record in the bench press with a torn pec ... THE muscle that drives the bench press. He had two tries left, and broke his own record minutes later. He is often challenged by other competitive bodybuilders to match their feats because he uses (relatively) light weights. He easily bests them at their own sloppy, inertia-driven, dangerous, rapid lifts, then counter-challenges them to try his lighter-weight, slowww technique. When they do, they get angry and/or walk away humbled. (As a prison corrections officer, his very life often depends on his massive strength.)

Rather than recite the book here, I very strongly recommend you read it. Before reading it, I busted my ass in NON-STOP strength and HIIT circuit training (none of this standing around yakking and counting 30 or 60 seconds between sets) for 4 to 6 hours three days a week. I’m very lucky I didn’t get overtrained, which can athletically cripple even Olympic athletes for years.

I’ve been laughed at in the gym due to how hard I heave for air and struggle to maintain proper form while barely moving when lifting. I laugh with them (because it does look a bit silly) and remind them that the only lift that counts is the one we absolutely and literally Can. Not. Complete. despite trying as hard as possible; the others are just the warmup. That’s why warmup time is not necessary w/Superslow lifting. We just walk in there, start lifting at our operational weight level, lift to concentric and eccentric failure, change exercises, and in about 12 minutes we’re done … in more ways than one … with a whole body strength workout with a zero injury rate (compared to many thousands of injuries …many of them to tendons and ligaments … annually with heavy weights and the usual sloppy technique.) Slow lifting is also highly protective of tendons, as it eliminates the inertial spikes that rapid lifting produces.

If it’s good enough for many pro and collegiate football teams, it’s good enough for you and me. This workout is so strenuous that I have to wait a week before doing a rapid-fire, gut-busting HIIT circuit for an hour, then another week before doing another Superslow routine. Sooner and I lose ground. Longer, and I gain strength.

Isolated single-joint strength exercises are for targeted bodybuilding (i.e., body sculpting), not functionality. How often do we see football linemen do isolated bicep curls in a game? Instead of such isolated exercises as bicep or hamstring curls, focus on multi-joint exercises that include biceps and hams, such as chest pulls and lunges, respectively. Seated is fine, but I do them standing up with cables so I’m working my whole body from hands to feet. (I’ll use machines once in a great while to measure my progress objectively and repeatably.)

Stretching is mostly for gymnasts and ballet dancers who need excess mobility (at significant risk of injury) to do their jobs, and for injury rehab. It clearly lessens our explosive power, very important for many freestyle moves. For the rest of us, excess range/mobility places unnecessary load on our ligaments. (If anyone disagrees, please direct your counterarguments to the many researchers including the Philadelphia 76er and Ballet physician and a LOT of other researchers I’ve cited here before.)

Beyond exerting desired forces upon conscious demand, our muscles splint our joints (i.e., and thus our ligaments) reactively and often subconsciously. Sensors in our joints recognize when present or imminent forces threaten a joint’s integrity (i.e., they predict a ligament or cartilage failure if we keep doing what we’re doing) and can inhibit commands to perform some movement. The computer that issues this command is in our spine, to avoid wasting time going all the way to the brain and back in fast-moving situations. It has limits, of course, especially when external forces are involved like my landing on an extended leg … a very popular way to snap an ACL.

As for diet ... “certain” fruits depends a great deal on your overall way of eating. I (and a lot of world champs and pro athletes) choose keto as my way of eating, which means extremely low (almost no; we don’t need to eat ANY) carbs, which means very little fruit beyond a few berries. That’s OK; we don’t need much in the way of fruit, as antioxidants appear to be highly overrated. As for potassium in bananas, we’d have to almost live on bananas to get our daily potassium needs from them; many common foods contain more potassium.

Consider keto eating and the scores of books on it. It is not a fad, and offers many benefits in addition to better performance in most sports. One of its many advantages it the elimination of bonking ... hitting the wall in any long event from the Iron Man to a 4-5-hour WSing session. (One personal example is that despite consuming nothing but meds and electrolyte fluids for several days now for reasons you don't want to hear about, I've felt fine and am ready to go sailing today. This is the healthy way to crank out lots of human growth hormone.)

I don’t know much about collagen supps. I read just enough about them to add them to my diet recently, for what that’s worth. We do need extra protein on and immediately following workout or windy days.

As for slowing down with age, it’s not speed that matters; it’s that sudden stop at the end. Since my knee exploded from operator error plus age a few years ago, I don’t jump as high or as often, and I pay a lot more attention to my landings. I never have (intentionally) gotten my dirt bikes, snowmobiles, skis, or WSers upside down, and I consider footsteps, foot pegs, and bindings as important factors in my safety, fun, and longevity. Anyone who’s smart enough and old enough to start thinking about extending their athletic ability is likely to still be playing hard long after the “No Fear” crowd is crippled. Again, user preference.

And, oh, yes … don’t grow old. That plays hell with ligaments as they slowly turn to mush or, more likely, brittle cold taffy. Either of those may fail someday with minimal stress. Old muscles, tendons, and ligaments do need warmup before demanding exercise, and it’s not going to hurt our other body parts. In power production, as is required for many WSing tricks, sprints, and other sports movements, loose (stretched) muscles cost us explosiveness.

As for your latest comment … you might start with Pubmed. It's the source virtually every doctor in the world uses to access the world's body of peer reviewed medical research, and it has a great search engine. For example, there's
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5585011/ .

[Ugly_Bird]

[justall]

Many thanks, Iso.

Hah, certainly was no obligation for you to respond, but I indeed was interested in your opinion here.

Oh, I've read the McGuff book ... a part reason for the earlier DM. I like to mix up workouts. Without question, super-slow is the most painful, requiring the most will-power of the types I've tried ... difficult to maintain in my basement gym, since no one is watching.

On the muscles as splints, I guess that could be the source of my current injury. I wasn't doing anything dramatic, just my foot slid off the board resulting in a quick twist of the knee as my foot went over the rail. I was pretty relaxed at the time, so I guess that meant the muscles around the knee were somewhat off-duty, resulting in a next-man-up call to the MCL, which did the best it could but wasn't quite up for the major leagues. Might argue for keeping things tight, less-relaxed while cruising ... hmmm.

I'll check out the diet thoughts and work on the "don't grow old" challenge, ha.

Will come back and post as I digest further and learn more.

[isobars]

[dvCali]

[boardsurfr]

[swchandler]

While some folks can get carried away with supplements and vitamins and spend a ton of money, I think that there is some merit in taking vitamin D3, B complex and a simple multi-vitamin tablet. I take one D3 and a B complex tablet in the morning, and one multi-vitamin tablet before going to bed.

Years ago, I seemed to be always on the borderline of getting a cold, and it didn't take much to get one, particularly if I exercised and pushed it a bit. My younger brother recommended taking a multi-vitamin a day, and upon doing that regularly, my susceptibility to colds totally vanished. When something readily works for you, it's tough argue against it.

The key is to keep it simple, avoid overdoing it, and not to spend a fortune. I pick up all three at Trader Joe's for peanuts.

[rigitrite]