Breaking The Injury Chain
Injury is something that can haunt athletes year after year, but it doesn’t have to. Learning how to train and recover smart can help greatly reduce the risk of injury so you can enjoy training and racing!
Here is a story that recently happened to me as a coach. Yes, this can happen to coaches as well as athletes. Here is how the chain of events could have been broken to reduce my risk of injury and help you as well.
Early on in my endurance journey, my way of training and racing was not smart. It led to injuries, illness, inconsistent racing and, honestly, was not much fun. Once I Iearned the proper way to train and recover, my injuries were greatly reduced. Other than minor soreness, I remained injury free up until a month ago.
Mistake #1
I was invited to play Pickleball which I was pretty excited about. I played tennis in high school so I thought this would be fun. Now I have not played competitive tennis in over 10 years. It is rare for to do play sports with a non-competitive energy level. It was a Friday. I ended up playing Pickleball for 3 hours! The amount of lateral movement, forward, backward, and stretching out to hit shots was quite extensive.
Mistake #2
I did a light warm-up but I definitely did not do enough. No matter what sport you are getting ready to participate in, warming up is crucial to injury prevention.
Mistake #3
During this 3-hour period, I sat out 3 times very briefly. I played a lot of Pickleball! I was staying fueled and hydrated but the lack of stretching, warming up and taking breaks definitely did not work in my favor.
I was so sore the next day. It took over a week for me to recover from the movement and intensity. Again, I had not played a sport like this in quite a while! I got sports massage, focal cryotherapy, and tried to stay hydrated and fueled. However, I did not do the stretching that I needed to do. Over the next couple of weeks, I had minor shoulder and neck issues that eventually went away with massage and cryotherapy but those things did not fix the underlying issue.
Mistake #4
Fast forward to two weeks later. I was flying myself and a friend to Florida from Texas for work. This involved sitting in a plane for almost 6 hours. After getting to the hotel room to relax before heading out to dinner, I should have stretched properly after being in a seated position for so long. I failed to stretch. After a quick shower and a few minutes to relax, we were off for dinner for more sitting.
Mistake #5
Throughout the next 4 days there was a lot of standing and walking which was good but the thing that I still lacked was the stretching part of the recovery. I was out of my routine and not eating like I normally do.
Mistake #6
The day before we flew home, after working all day I was late to meet my colleagues at their booth. They messaged me and said to meet them in the parking lot. I was making them wait and I felt badly about that. I decided to sprint to the parking lot where they were waiting. I did a half mile sprint without warming up properly or stretching after reaching the parking lot. I then got into the car and was in a seated position for 30 minutes before showering and going out to dinner for the next couple of hours - in a seated position again.
Mistake #7
The next day was a short day for work. Then, we headed to the airport to load the plane and fly back to Texas which was another 6 hours in a seated position. You can see how these mistakes are adding up.
We arrived home late on a Thursday night. At this point, I somehow did not feel any pain whatsoever. So, when I (we) don’t feel any pain or anything abnormal we typically don’t do anything about it. The little things like warming up, cooling down, stretching, hydrating and eating right can seem more like a chore than the sports activities we are training for.
When I woke up the next morning I could barely get out of bed. My entire back, legs, and glutes were so tight I could not stand up straight. I was hunched over. It took a couple of days to get to the point where I could stand fully upright but it was still painful to even walk.
I spent the next week focusing on my hydration, nutrition, stretching and rolling out my calves, glutes, hamstrings, lats, taking ibuprofen, cryotherapy, massage - all the things. When I was still not getting much better by the end of the following week it was time to go to physical therapy and start getting assessed by a professional.
Come to find out my ileopsoas muscle was the biggest part of my pain. It was so tight that it took two weeks to fix it. Once that started to get back to normal, other things started to tighten up on my like glutes, hamstrings, inner thighs, etc.
Over a month has passed since the severe pain from that Friday morning. I am now back to the point where I can swim, bike and run without pain. I am starting over because I pretty much lost all my accumulated fitness. So, I must start slow and easy. I have to work my way back up properly so I don’t get injured again.
You can see how many things in the chain led to my issue. But waking up on that Friday morning in severe pain didn’t just happen that day or that week. It happened over a month prior with so many small things that added up over time.
We must be vigilant when it comes to warming up, cooling down, stretching before and after our workouts and activities. Most times the excuse is I didn’t think about it, I forgot, I didn’t have the time. Something that takes far less time than the hours we put into training are the things that can cause the biggest issues. It is not so much the long distance and intensity that gets us in trouble. It is the lack of the small things such as warming up, cooling down, stretching, strength training, yoga, and mobility work that has huge impacts on our health. These things help us remain injury free!
So, be smart when you train. Always pursue mastery, even if it is just a hobby. Your body will thank you for it!
