Which one is worse? Chronic or acute injury? Or are they actually the same thing? Are acute injuries a product of chronic destruction? Or are they both? Certainly the damage from an acute injury can result in chronic pain. Of course, some acute injuries are a product of a major accident, but some are just chronically worn parts that finally fail, yet are labeled “an accident.” In many instances, I believe that avoiding chronic wear does reduce your chance for acute injury, as we often fail at our weakest link.

Consider who you really are. If you are training as a paid athlete, you take risks – you are expected to. It is your career and your job to win, and so, you are aware that your hard training and sport might have consequences down the line. Are you training hard and competing hard because it is fun? You may want to contemplate the cost benefit of your competitive journey and what it might mean in ten to twenty years.

The Difference Between a Nova and a Ferrari

I see our bodies like cars. Some people come into a training situation like an old Nova and get right in there and race with the Ferraris. This is downright dangerous. You can give the Nova a tune-up, but you won’t ever make it a Ferrari! And to dream that you might get that Ferrari status is a false hope (sorry). That being said, the Nova can do just fine – if you do the right maintenance, drive her conservatively, and realize this important fact: she is a Nova!

Now, let us say that both the Ferrari and the Nova are racing and crash into a wall, sustaining destructive injuries to both cars, except that the Ferrari has a crumple zone and the Nova bursts into flames. Where am I going with this in the realm of training? Well, you can improve and become great at your exercise modality by getting strong and stable and perfecting your movement patterns to protect your joints. You may even become a classic amongst Novas. I encourage you to do that. Just realize what kind of parts you are working with. Will your joints hold? If they seem to be holding now, will they in the future? And how can you ensure that you are doing what you can to preserve and protect yourself so that you can be fit, along with maintaining a strong healthy body, down the road?

The Necessity of an Experienced Trainer

Here is where you need an experienced trainer. An inexperienced trainer may not know what they don’t know, and that is where it looks like the blind leading the willing. So, before you take part in a new fitness endeavor, make sure you know if your tires are bald before you decide to peel out – and your sidewalls blow off! This might mean the burpee challenge is not for you, especially if you have shoulder stability issues. And, your trainer, if experienced, will be cognitive of your strengths, as well as your weaknesses and be able to advise you accordingly.

Chronic injuries creep up on us usually from wear and tear, and they can also increase your risk for an acute injury. Jumping headlong into intense, repetitive, and unfamiliar motions can cause acute injury that turns chronic. There is no way we can avoid all danger, but we can use our heads and decide the correct path for ourselves. Accidents happen and we want to withstand them with the highest resilience possible.

Make sure your trainer is experienced and recognizes what kind of person he or she is working with. If a trainer never holds you back, ask why. Because if he or she is treating you like a Ferrari and you are really a Nova, there might be an unexpected repair bill – and that will be your responsibility.

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Nova ad by Chevrolet pre-1978 (Chevrolet Ad – Time Magazine) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Nova photo by IFCAR (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

The post Does Your Trainer Know the Difference Between a Ferrari and a Nova? appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

I know I am not perfect and that everyone errs, because all humans do. And yet, sometimes when I f*ck up I am unable to maintain perspective. I denigrate myself, I wallow, I grow my mistakes and shortcomings in my mind to be so big that they displace all the good things I am and have done. I catastrophize that these mistakes will ruin any chances I have for success, love, and happiness in the future.

Perspective is Key

This is something I struggle with on a regular basis, and in this past week, I’ve had enough discussions with people about perspective that I can’t ignore that maybe there’s a message here for me. Some of the people I’ve been talking with have health issues. Some have family issues. Some have money issues. And without exception, these people’s issues are trumping mine. The fact that I didn’t handle that meeting as well as I wanted to pales in comparison to dealing with a chronic illness. I wouldn’t get much sympathy, and understandably so, that I’m sucking more wind in training than I would like, if I were to ask for it from someone who only has enough in the bank this month to cover rent or groceries.

Hearing those kinds of stories really does put my concerns into perspective, but then I can even use that to beat myself up more: Who am I to worry about trivial things when others’ lives are so difficult? And hearing about others’ travails doesn’t help me address my own. So I have to strike a balance between being empathetic and being responsible for my stuff. A saying I’ve heard goes something like, “Just because another’s heart attack is debilitating, that doesn’t make my broken arm hurt any less.” In other words, the magnitude of another’s issues might surpass mine, but my issues still require attention.

Self-Knowledge, not Self-Abuse, Leads to Progress

Sometimes an element of taking care of my issues involves corralling them. If I truly failed, on a weightlifting PR attempt, for instance, or on a professional responsibility, it’s appropriate for me to process it by feeling bad and then examining what went wrong so I can change my strategy. But when I give in to the temptation to camp out at the corner of Self and Flagellation, that’s when it’s time to do a better job of maintaining perspective. Through an unfortunate amount of trial and error in this domain, I have come up with a few reminders of why perspective is always important and how to get it:

First, I don’t want to run the risk of making my friends and family feel like idiots. As I mentioned, when I do something poorly, I don’t just feel bad about what I did. Rather, I use the failure as evidence that I have failed as a person, that I’m unworthy of success, love, and happiness. But if I do that, then I’ve basically turned the people who love me into liars. They think I’m pretty great (luckily for me), and if I insist that I am not nearly as great as they have come to believe, then I am devaluing their opinion and probably making them feel pretty stupid for continuing to love me. So, since I don’t want to lose the them, it’s important for me to put the kibosh on beating myself up too much and even allow them to remind me that I’m really pretty okay.

Second, I’m wasting time. If I don’t like feeling bad about the mistakes I make, then it would behoove me to spend time debriefing them and planning my future actions, so I can improve my odds of doing better in the future. This would seem to be a more effective use of my time than mooning over what I can’t change – unless, of course, I get something out of mooning over what I can’t change, which is a completely different conversation altogether.

Third, I’m not that important. One of the things about paranoia and wallowing is that it’s actually kind of arrogant to indulge in them. If I mess up at work, it’s highly likely that everyone will forget about it within a matter of days, if not hours. This is because everyone else has things to think about that are far more important to them than the fact that I made a mistake. Thus, beating myself up and assuming everyone is sitting around judging me is actually overvaluing myself in someone else’s estimation, which is exactly the opposite of what I’m ostensibly trying to do: cut myself down. So truly, the humble thing to do is to get over it and move on.

I’m not likely to stop f*cking up anytime soon. I’m quite good at it, and it is one way, albeit a painful one, I can make progress along the path toward self-actualization. So I guess I have to figure out how to f*ck up with aplomb and then deal with the fallout in an effective way. And part of this is ensuring that I maintain proper perspective.

Assuming I’m not the only one, how do you handle your own f*ck-ups? What’s the best way you’ve found for maintaining perspective? Post your ideas to comments.

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post On %$#@ing Up and Then Moving On: The Importance of Perspective in Athletics and Life appeared first on Breaking Muscle.