What if that minor irritation suddenly becomes an intense pain of a career ending injury? I bet we wished we had listened then! Of course we ache after a tough session, but when they become more frequent and prolonged you have to stop and reassess a few things. Your ache has officially now become a pain.

Early Warning Signs And
Sports Injury Prevention

I would define an ache as a sensation you experience after training and may last for up to a day (at most). Putting your body and its muscles through its paces will cause tiny tears in the muscle. Hard, prolonged training will also deplete your body's mineral resources adding to the distress your body is under. However, this is a natural process - it's called getting fit. Your body has to adapt to the new conditions you set and bit by bit it gets better at meeting your demands.

But if you start to ache during your training, or long after you session has finished, this is a sign that something is wrong.

If you take sports injury prevention seriously you will need to re-evaluate your

    training program

    recovery period

    attitude

    nutritional intake

    technique

Is your training program too intense? Are you allowing sufficient time to recover? Consider cross training in another activity or sport to compliment your training. For example, many runners enjoy a light swim to relieve aching legs. Choose an activity where you can relax and enjoy yourself without needing to compete or set a personal best.

Nutrition plays a significant role in how your body adapts and recovers from your training. Long training sessions will use up valuable minerals that your body needs to rebuild and repair. If you are not eating properly you could be seriously limiting your performance plus accelerating your way to a sports injury.

Check your attitude is not too competitive to the point you are adding unnecessary tension to your body - this will severely impact on your technique. You may argue that you need to be competitive to progress, I agree but what is your idea of being competitive involve? Too often I see it resulting in undue tension in clenched jaws, neck and shoulders - not a good way to get a peak performance from your body!

Sports injury prevention is about taking your foot off the gas a little and listening to your body. You will be amazed at what you can sense happening plus just how much effort the majority of us waste on the 'wrong kind of effort'. Most of this effort is working against your body and just adds stress where it is not needed.

I have written a program about how you can get more from your body for less effort. It's about getting into The Zone and letting your body flow.

For more information click sports injury prevention program . You might be surprised to just how much effort you can take out of your body and still find it's quite happy to perform at its peak.

Want to ask a question? My view of what sports injury prevention entails is different to the conventional approach. If there is anything on this page that you would like to follow up please feel free to contact me

Copyright 2005 Roy Palmer (Art of Performance)
e-mail: contact@artofperformance.co.uk

SBI!