Avoiding injuries is critically important for staying on track to perfect health, leanness and high performance. If you are injured, your improvement and great fitness maintenance is limited. It is not impossible, but it is substantially limited.
Most injuries happen to people when they exercise. Of course they happen everywhere else too, like for example when you twist your ankle while walking on uneven floor, or brake a bone when falling down from the bike or falling on a slippery floor. But as unavoidable as they seem, they can be avoided or the damage they cause can be decreased.
Exercise and gradual, consistent intensity increase.
Exercise, mainly strength training is the best prevention medicine against injuries. And I can tell you, that is absolutely true statement.
But a lot of people do it wrong and they injure themselves while exercising, wandering what went wrong. A big mistake people do in gyms and playgrounds is, that they want to do too much. A typical weekend warrior is hurting a lot from soreness in his cubicle on Monday after some intensive physical activity he did on weekend. If he is lucky and he doesn’t have anything broken or thorn, he will be sore for whole week and won’t exercise until next Saturday or so.
Inconsistent exercisers over-strain themselves, they want to lift too much while their shoulders are not ready for it. They want to turn much faster after the ball while their ACLs pop, or go for it on the ski-slopes like the old times, but their knees and hamstrings are much weaker than before, or keep up with the guys on the basketball playgrounds, or hockey fields and go for intense body contacts.
Trying suddenly too much without any longer term preparation is very dangerous and injury most probably happens. Injuries like twisted ankles, thorn meniscus’s and ligaments in knee joint, dislocated shoulders and knees, minor and major muscle tears, broken bones and tendinitis are the most common.
If you haven’t been consistent with your physical exercise for a while, you can’t keep up with somebody who has. Maybe you can, if you try very hard, but you are increasing your chances of injuring yourself. This applies mainly to men who get very competitive and can’t stand loosing or lifting lighter weight than the other guy. What would that babe in the corner say if she sees me lifting only 15 pounds kind of mentality.
The best injury prevention in the world.
While exercise and mainly strength training can cause injuries, if done right it is the best preventive mechanism you can use to avoid injuries. As I am known of saying: You have to deserve to exercise and play intensively. And you deserve it only, if you are showing some consistency and increasing your intensity very gradually.
I am very consistent with my exercise. I haven’t missed my workout for about 7 years now. Of course I have a day off when I feel tyred or I’m sick (not very often), but I bounce back into it as fast as I can.
I know exactly why I have to be so consistent. Engaging in high probability of injury sport activities like surfing, skiing, skating or playing soccer, I need to keep my body in perfect shape. I can get very aggressive catching a big violent wave or skiing very fast downhill or getting into an intense physical contacts with guys much bigger than me. Back in my mind I know I can afford to do this. Keeping my body in perfect physical shape allows me to get away from these situations unhurt. I would never take chances like that, have I been sitting in the office the whole week and didn’t do any regular physical training. That would be a suicide.
While I still get hurt occasionally, like pulling a muscle or developing sore shoulder, these injuries are not serious and usually go away very fast. If I stopped doing my consistent, intensive weight training and still engaged in these activities, I would not last very long. I would be probably lying in the hospital with a broken back or something else that serious.
Top physical shape and injury prevention.
Being in perfect physical shape, meaning that you strength train, endurance train and stretch regularly and intensively is like having an extra health insurance. But you have to work hard to have it, because you you can’t buy it.
When you are in the best shape you can possibly be by exercising regularly and constantly pushing your limits further and further, you might not realize that, but you’re creating another huge benefit for yourself. Your body, muscles, tendons and bones are getting very flexible and resilient and they can handle a lot of outside pressure. It’s like a steal spring that you can band to all directions as much as you want and it always comes back to its normal shape.
I really appreciate this benefit a lot. Actually a couldn’t live without it. I have been pushing my limits in surfing to improve and that’s the only way to improve if you reach a certain level, and I have taken some serious falls and wipe-outs. While they still hurt a lot, nothing serious happens. I have been engaging in extreme sports for a long time now, but past 20 years I haven’t have anything broken, dislocated or thorn on my body.
I am going to repeat that again:
The single biggest atribution for avoiding injuries I am giving to my diligent, intensive, consistent physical preparation.
Jerry Rice is a perfect example of injury prevention with consistent, intensive physical preparation.
Jerry Rice is generally regarded as the greatest wide receiver ever and one of the greatest players in National Football League history. He is the all time leader in most major statistical categories for wide receivers and the all time NFL leader in touchdowns.
He played unbelievable 20 seasons in a position that is notoriously famous for often occurring serious injuries – when players get often crushed by other players. And he played almost every game of every season beside 1997 season when he was out because of an injury. But he recovered and returned sooner than his doctor advised.
To play this long (Rice retired when he was 42 years old) in this kind of brutal game when players retire when in their 20-ties is almost impossible.
So how Jerry Rice managed to do this? Rice was known as the hardest working player in the league at that time and he would probably be the one today too.
By asking Jerry by a reporter what he attributes to his success, he answered: I would work even harder in the off season that on the main season. While other players took vacations and enjoyed their time off, Jerry never stopped his preparation for the next season. And that not only made him the best player in the history of the sport, but carried him through his career without any serious long term injuries with exception of one. But his recovery was unbelievably fast.
And that is another great benefit of maintaining the best possible physical shape – faster recovery from injury.
Physical fitness and injury recovery
Strong fit people recover much faster from injury when it occurs. If you take a nasty fall from the bike or fall down the hill in your garden or get into a car exident and you break a bone or tear a muscle, or dislocate your shoulder , it will take you substantially shorter to recover from these injuries than to the fragile inactive person. First of all the injury won’t be that severe, because of a resiliency of your body and second, the better and more effective nerve connections and blood supply of highly physically trained person will speed the recovery.
So, here you have another reason to stay physically active. It works like an extra magical invisible doctor that speeds up the healing process.
The anatomy behind prevention and faster recovery through physical exercise.
Strength training, aerobic training and flexibility training cause certain beneficial anatomical changes in our bodies that help prevent injuries. Tendons and muscles get stronger and more flexible, resilient and durable. Cartilage in joints of an active person becomes thicker and stronger. Bones attract more calcium and become stronger and more flexible. Volume of the blood in the body of an active person increases by up to 0.7 littre and new vein routes open bringing more oxygen to the muscles and joints and heal them faster. Also nervous system becomes highly efficient and it fires on the maxim levels and all this helps speed up the recovery from the injury and inflammation.
How wonderful to have benefits like that. It kind of makes you feel like an superwoman. But it doesn’t come free. You can’t buy it, you have to work consistently and hard on it.
Physical intelligence and injury prevention.
When you exercise regularly, lift weights and engage in different cardiovascular activities, you are building something I call physical intelligence. This means, that you are able to judge situations in your life better from the point of injury prevention. Also your balance and coordination skills improve substantially.
You will know for example that jumping down from certain height would be dangerous, so you go around. You will know that catching that buss would be impossible, it’s too far already, or that guy or girl with the ball is dangerously running after you and if you don’t move she is going to crush right into you, so you move. You walk on that slippery floor comfortably without falling. This kind of benefit occurs without consciously thinking about it and it’s great thing to have. Physical intelligence can even save your life. So don’t pass on it and work hard at it.
Working in a high injury probability environment and injury prevention
If you work as a mover, construction worker, wood worker or other field where injury is highly probable, physical preparation – strength training, aerobic training and flexibility training as prevention applies even more importantly for you. I don’t even think you would be able to hold job like that for very long time without being physically fit and being able to avoid injuries.
Best injury prevention in the world
Are you convinced by now? I hope you are. Quite honestly, you can’t afford not following this advice. If you do, sorry to tell you this, but you are dumb, lazy or you don’t care much about your heath and you will get hurt sooner or later.
You don’t have time for injury and you want to enjoy your life to the fullest. Life is short.
The only disappointing thing for some people and why they pass this benefit, is that you have to work very, very, very hard on it. And that’s why most people will not take this hard route, and that’s why there are going to be more injuries. Injuries that could have been avoided.
Having this incredible benefit under your belt do is a fantastic thing to have. You are more confident, less afraid, you know your abilities and limits, you can do many daring things without injuring yourself. In short your body functions like a very well oiled engine that never breaks.
The question is: Are you willing to take this benefit and keep it? Are you willing to work hard on it? If you are, congratulations. You deserve it and it will serve you very well in your life. But if you are not, some rough days full of injuries are ahead of you.
Rest and injury prevention.
Sometimes, injuries come from overuse. It is important to let your body to recover from hard physical activities. Recovery is an important part of injury prevention. The key is to find a balance and listen to your body.
Sometimes people get too ambitious and try to do too much too fast. But it doesn’t work that way very well. The key is: in the long run increasing gradually intensity, to be very consistent and to know when to keep it easier for day or two, but than bounce right back into it.
Your homework
Create a perfect schedule for your perfect injury preventive physical preparation that consist of strength, endurance and stretching exercises. And than just diligently do it and never stop and you’ll keep injuries at bay.
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