How much sport is healthy?
The question of training frequency is one of the most frequently asked and most difficult to answer in the field of sports science. In the foreground is the individual prerequisite. The question should therefore not be, how much sport is healthy?
The thesis that too much sport is unhealthy is wrong. Marathon – runners or cyclists with an immensely high amount of training would therefore have to get problems with their musculoskeletal system already during their career. But this happens only in the rarest of cases, when mistakes are made in the technique.
It is much more often the ball sportsmen who complain about joint problems. Especially sports with fast changes of direction such as badminton, tennis, squash, sports with increased body contact such as martial arts, soccer, handball etc. are anything but health-promoting.
Another misconception is that regular endurance training wears out the joints. Just the opposite is true. Those who do too little sport have a higher wear and tear.
How can this be explained? The human organism functions according to the principle of adaptation. This principle is particularly widespread in muscle building training.
If you train your muscles regularly, you will achieve an increase in muscle mass. However, the fact that the passive movement apparatus (bones, ligaments, joints, etc.) is also adaptable is often disregarded.
If you train with the correct running technique, you will stabilize your joints at the same time as well as other adaptation symptoms. The statement that running is bad for the joints is therefore incorrect. Only in individual cases, in which a previous joint injury is associated, training with high joint stress is not advisable.
In such cases you should switch to endurance sports such as swimming or cycling. Isolated forms of overloading often occur when the muscles are not working properly (when running: (thigh and buttock muscles) is not sufficiently developed. Overload damage to the patella or spine can then be the result.
The cardiovascular system and the metabolism can hardly be overloaded in healthy people and under normal weather conditions. Running with overweight is also not a problem unless it is a severe case of obesity. It is not to be ignored that many recreational athletes often challenge the urge to complete exhaustion and the associated overload and thus sport can become an addiction.
Other problems that arise when asking about the frequency of training is the fact that training not only increases performance but also the ability to regenerate. Top athletes complete several training units daily. Therefore, the limits of resilience become more and more difficult to determine as performance increases. In order to optimize the training success, more and more recreational athletes hire a personal trainer for optimal training support in recreational sports.