Bodybuilding is about lifting weights and developing large muscles on your body, but it's not about using them for strength. It's all about performing to showcase the hard work you put into it. Competitive bodybuilding is a sport where men and women will compete to see who has the better muscular body frame. It's almost like a form of art, where you're presenting a physique that you carefully crafted through specific methods of weight training and dieting.
When you're competing against others, judges will evaluate your body form and rate you on things like symmetry and body conditioning. They determine your scores by having you, and the other contestants perform, on a stage, certain poses that show off your sculpted muscle mass. They will declare the one that gets the best overall scores, the winner.
As ABC Health & Well Being reports, competitive bodybuilding looks healthy on the surface, with lean bodies and beefed up muscles. However, the process to get those sculpted physiques aren't always the healthiest and can be downright hazardous, if you're not careful. Performing exercises improperly and not maintaining a healthy diet are recipes for an unhealthy future.
Negative Effects of Bodybuilding To Your Body
Training starts a couple of months before the competition. Bodybuilders will increase their fat intake, eating more carbs than they're actually burning off. This is to help when it's time for growing muscles. The next phase of training is when they start weight lifting to build muscles in various parts of the body.
About two months before the competition, a bodybuilder will then lose the weight, by adding some intense workouts into their regime, while still keeping up with the weight training. The problem is, though, to get lean, these athletes will eat less food, so they can burn more energy than they're taking in. Add in the high-impact cardio workouts and intense exercises on top of that, and it spells disaster for some.
Other negative effects intense training has on the body are:
Injuries
When an athlete isn't sustaining a proper diet, and they're taking part in a rigorous exercise routine, they run the risk of injuries, like a muscle strain or joint damage. Bodybuilders will often compete in many competitions, thereby repeating these cycles of training and hardcore dieting, which can cause scarring on the muscle tissue. This will be problematic later on in life.
Bad for your mental health
Some bodybuilders thrive from the challenges they face with intense training. That's great, but not all athletes will have the same positive attitude from it. In fact, many will suffer from mental health issues after the competition is over. When they go back to a normal diet, they gain weight and losing the body physique they had. Coping with that change can be tough.
Dehydration
While not every bodybuilder does this, some will take their training to the extreme, days before the competition, by deliberately dehydrating themselves. Diuretics and cortisol and insulin-controlling drugs are added into their regime to accomplish this. The intent is to get even leaner right before they get on the stage, but, for some, it fails, because they end up passing out during the competition.
How Physiotherapy Helps Make the Training Successful
There's nothing wrong with competitive bodybuilding, provided you set more healthful goals to accomplish the physique you're looking for. Physiotherapy can help you make the most of your weight training while preventing injuries from occurring.
Some benefits physiotherapy offers, include:
Performing weight exercise properly
Bodybuilding trainers are great for helping you with your form for proper lifting techniques and using the right-hand positions on the lifting bars. What they don't always take into account is the way the muscles move, and how they respond to certain resistive techniques.
A physiotherapist's job is to know pretty much everything about a muscle. They can evaluate the exercise and show you the best method to achieve the result you want, without causing injuries to occur. You'll learn the correct way to warm up before training and how to stretch your muscles out when you've completed your routines.
Prevent future problems
What you do in your younger years can have an impact on your ageing body. The longer an athlete performs bodybuilding training, the more likely they are to face serious problems in the future, when they're older.
Muscle and joint pain are common complaints from retired bodybuilding athletes, who can no longer get around as easily as they once could. A physiotherapist can help you keep your body healthy while you train so you're not regretting it when you get older.
Overcome current injuries or damage
If you find yourself struggling with muscle aches or have pain when you're weight training, a physiotherapist can help you heal the muscle and get you back on track with your bodybuilding goals.
Special massage techniques or other procedures can relieve scarring on tissues, increase range of movement, and help improve elasticity with muscle fibres. For those who've been competing for years, a physiotherapist can help with posture issues or use non-invasive methods for spinal manipulation.
Staying free from drug use
It's easy to seek out medications from a health professional to handle pain caused by an injury. But, continued use could bring on a new set of problems you're not prepared to deal with.
Pain-killer meds are highly addictive and should be avoided as much as possible. Physiotherapy will help you keep from getting injuries that would normally have you seeking those pills in the first place.
Find a Physiotherapist Near You
If you're a competing bodybuilder or plan to become one, consider adding physiotherapy to your bodybuilding goals to see the results you expect from your training. At CK Physiotherapy, we help you build the routine that not only gets you the winning body but one that's injury-free and won't cause damage you'll regret when you get older. Consult one of our physiotherapists today to see what our extensive experience and knowledge will do for your bodybuilding goals.
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