Thursday

How weight training saved my leg...

As you know, I'm a HUGE proponent of regular weight training regardless of whether your goal is fat loss, muscle building, or even just general health.

I have a quick story today on how regular weight training most of my adult life just saved me from a broken leg recently!

A couple weeks ago, I was skiing in Utah in some deep, deep powder. We came over a ridge and saw a beautiful steep wide-open slope that looked like an untouched powder field.

I started ripping down the powder full speed when all of the sudden I crashed into some hidden (and jagged!) boulders that were hidden just a couple inches beneath the powder surface, and since the wind had blown the surface flat, you couldn't even see any bump or outline that there were hidden boulders.

Well, I'll tell you... I slammed into those boulders full-speed, they ripped me right out of my skis and sent me cartwheeling down the steep slope hitting every part of my body on more jagged boulders.

Good thing I wear a helmet huh!

The place that I slammed the hardest on the rocks was my leg, right smack-dab on my shin bone. It was an extremely deep gash on my shin, and we can even feel that there seems to be a bone chip missing from that spot now on my leg.

However, the good news is that despite slamming my leg full speed onto a huge nasty boulder, I didn't break my leg. As a matter of fact, the next day, I was back out skiing without any problems with my leg.

I'm willing to bet anything that if I hadn't been a regular weight lifter for my entire adult life, that I would have easily snapped my leg and be in a cast right now.

But that's another great benefit of regular, intense, and heavy (for your personal strength levels) weight training...

Beyond just the benefits of making you leaner, building muscle, increasing your metabolic rate, improving your heart health, etc, etc... weight training also drastically increases your bone density, so that you are more protected when life throws accidents at you like this little rock-slamming ski incident of mine.

And I'm sure you've heard about senior citizens breaking their hips when they have a simple slip & fall later in life? Well, if they had been weight training most of their lives, those hip fractures would be a lot less common.

Thanks to all of those years of heavy deadlifts, squats, lunges, and so forth, I still have a leg that's not snapped in two!

Now let's go pump some iron!

On the topic of weight training, here's a great workout program that I used a couple months ago which really gave me some unique new ideas on how to structure sets, reps, and rest periods... pretty cool method:

http://1-rep-fitness.com

Til next newsletter,
Don't be lazy... be lean.

Mike Geary
Certified Nutrition Specialist
Certified Personal Trainer
Founder - TruthAboutAbs.com & BusyManFitness.com