Fitness Highs and Lows and the Spaces in Between
It’s tempting to see the world as a binary. Certainly in our day to day life (hello 2026!) but around health and fitness as well. Fitness, much like life, exists across a broad spectrum of experience, and when we drop things into the furthest bucket of explanation, we often miss opportunities for the best sort of development. High intensity! Low impact! We throw these terms around like their existence at one margin is a benefit, staking out that territory as a contrast to the people doing it the other way.
If this all sounds a little abstract, here’s some real world grounding:
We had a client at Lumos recently who had developed a chronic injury, likely at the junction point of where their deskbound/sentient modern life collided with the sports they wanted to play and the stuff they were doing at the gym. That’s not uncommon, usually just a case of load exceeding capacity, and we can easily bring balance to that and on we go.
This person did their due diligence in running down the issue- doctors, MRIs, physical therapy, etc. That’s often a good thing- you don’t want to just ignore a problem, and expert help is valuable. Their PT and I communicated about the best path forward for this person, and I thought their recommendations were by and large very smart, but one piece of language stuck out at me. In regards to the person resuming some squatting patterns the PT wrote:
Light goblet squats should be fine.
I’m sure they thought that was helpful, but what is light in this context? Often, when someone has a medical procedure, doctors’ instructions forbid them to lift anything “heavy” often with a hard cap of 5-10 pounds. What if that person has a 400 pound deadlift? Does a 5 pound bag of dog food still count as heavy? In the context above, light is similarly nebulous, and in this case, if the person tolerates a light load well, we can assume that after some rest and adaptation they would tolerate light plus a little bit, right?
This also comes up when people tell me that they have switched their fitness routine to something “low impact,” as if avoiding impact force is a universal good for human bodies. I’m currently studying for the CSCS exam, and was just reading about how training can help develop bone strength, density, and integrity. I won’t get too in the weeds but for both anaerobic (resistance) and aerobic training, the impact force we feed the body needs to be more than we tolerate in our normal activities, or else we remain at our baseline. So, if we want to build healthy and resilient bones, “low impact” is not necessarily a boon- it could be a detriment.
“But wait!” you cry- what about when impact, or loading, or anything else is legitimately too much? It’s too fast, too heavy, too much volume, isn’t that bad? And the answer, obviously, is…yes! I’m not arguing that the opposite of low is high, or vice versa, but that the word we really need to use more often is appropriate.
People don’t need high impact or low impact training, they need appropriate impact- impact that is just enough beyond their current baseline to push adaptation, while not so overdosed that it causes pain or injury. This can be equally nebulous at times, and the less experience you have, the harder it can be to figure out. The good news- you can always err on the side of caution and build from there. But ya gotta build.
So, someone rehabbing from an injury, or living after a surgery, should lift appropriate weights- beginning with weight they can manage with almost no strain, breathing/bracing compensation, or other signs of overwork, and progressing to things that feel slightly more challenging. Caution is warranted, but to lock them into an arbitrary number will only slow their progress back to full function.
Why does this happen? I suspect that liability comes into play- doctors especially are highly aware of litigatory risk, and take steps to insulate themselves from it. Scope is an issue too- do no harm is a foundational medical ethic, but there is a lot of ground to cover from not doing harm to actively doing good- to getting the person back to where they were and beyond. Lastly, these prescriptions are often just that- written prescriptions that don’t have the fullness or depth of understanding that a true coaching relationship does. You thought you were going to get through a whole article without me saying coaching is valuable? C’mon man.
Maybe I’m a pedant. Maybe I just like to look for things to pick at. Or maybe we need to be more accurate with our language, to work hard to see the person in front of us as an individual and not a blanket recommendation, and to realize that much of what is good in fitness, in life, comes from appropriate, gentle progression through and interaction with the broad middle of the spectrum, and not camping out at one extreme.
