The fear mongering of getting hurt doing training is getting athletes hurt while competing. Let’s be honest, all of the talk is cheap as we are not seeing a reduction in injuries, but seeing a reduction in performance and longevity. If you train like you are hurt, you will get hurt. The game is called hot potato when an athlete is not prepared to compete, so each therapist and performance coach doesn’t do much but baby the athlete and toss them to the next guy to deal with and hopes they are not with the athlete last.(1) When I hear that we don’t put fitness on dysfunction I ask is not being in shape functional, I always hear crickets. Train like you are not hurt when you hurt with creative work arounds. Corrective exercise doesn’t need to be like a patient and doing training that would be mocked by senior citizens at the silver sneaker fitness class at your local YMCA.
My biggest mistake is trying to play too much of a PT in the past and it only delayed the problem. If I wasn’t doing my job the athlete was not getting a workout in. Unless I doubled my time I only got half the work done. If an athlete get’s hurt work around the problem but get them to a great therapist. Keeping people healthy and happy by not doing things will come back to haunt you. This is why coaches avoid a jog on the grass for a 5 or 10 minutes because they can’t move unless it’s a KB swing or indian club circuit for recovery. Recovery from what? The corrective exercise routine?
The art of working around injuries is not easy and I don’t have any secrets, but the obvious, meaning getting real therapy, is so flagrant people are not seeing it. If you are a coach you need to focus on create a stimulus and pedagogical recovery, not spending all your time acting like a waiter with recovery drinks and foam rolling instead of warming up. We are enabling people because tough love is not popular at first. But the relationships one has being honest will be priceless later.
(1) Ironically the game is also played when therapists and coaches want to do therapy on the star last. If the athlete got hurt they predicted it and tried to mange it but ran out of time. If they do well they have magic fingers and manipulated facial slings to be in harmony with their nervous system.
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