The Secret Formula To Being Injury Resilient

You may have heard or been told that:

• Certain activities damage your body eg. Running is bad for your knees
• Wear and tear happens as you get older and you just have to live with it

But are these truth or popular myth?

The real secret formula to being injury resilient that few people know about is this:

WHAT you do is less important than HOW you do it and HOW OFTEN.

It may surprise you that running can be protective against knee pain from osteoarthritis. There's a growing body of  research evidence pointing towards recreational runners who do a moderate amount of running having less knee pain and incidence of osteoarthritis than sedentary people and competitive runners.

Scott Dye's pathophysiological model of injury helps to confirm these findings:

Scott Dye's model of injury shows that higher loads repeated frequently pushes tissues into overload and, eventually, structural failure ie. injury.

Symptoms of Supraphysiological Overload include:

• Muscle soreness that's slow to resolve 
• Persistent muscle fatigue
• Joint pain
• Minor injuries and niggles
• Reduced performance levels
• Loss of motivation to exercise or train

Symptoms of Structural Failure include:

• Pain
• Swelling
• Redness or bruising
• Change in movement or gait eg. limping
• Unable to maintain normal performance levels
• Obvious signs of injury eg. a fracture, visible muscle spasms

Following Scott Dye's model of injury we can see that a moderate level of running conditions tissues, making the body stronger and more resilient to injury.

A very low level of activity or a sedentary lifestyle deconditions the body, making any amount of exercise more likely to overload the tissues and cause discomfort.

At the other end of the scale, competitive runners doing a high volume of training are more likely to push their bodies into overload. Competition training programmes are designed to create a controlled amount of tissue overload. Then structured recovery periods help the body to adapt, increasing the size of the Zone of Homeostasis and allowing the athlete to perform to a higher level without breaking down. 

The more intense the runner's training programme and competition schedule the higher the risk they'll go beyond overload and into Structural Failure or injury.

The majority of running injures happen as a result of training error - either too little or too much too soon or too often.

If you want to injury-proof your body it's important to consider HOW much you're doing and how OFTEN you're doing it.

How you move and use your body is another HUGE factor in being injury resilient.

Contrary to popular belief, wear and tear is NOT an inevitable part of ageing.

Often, joint damage is the end result of dodgy movement patterns repeated over and over for a long period of time.

Take for example, you roll your ankle and sprain it whilst out on a run  It's painful and swollen for a few weeks, but you put on a support wrap and crack on. At first you notice that you're limping to avoid putting weight on the injured ankle, but after a few weeks the limping becomes less obvious.

Some years later, your knee starts hurting and a doctor diagnoses knee osteoarthritis with damage to the joint cartilage. You're told that it's a combination of running and getting older. It seems like you're powerless to prevent this or to do anything about it now.

The good news is that you're NOT powerless.

Let's rewind back to the original accident - the ankle sprain. 

When you roll your ankle, you damage the ligaments around the ankle, destabilising the joint. If the ligaments on the inside are involved and stop supporting the joint, the ankle will roll inwards.

This shifts your bodyweight more through the inside of the ankle joint, inside arch of the foot and inside surface of the knee joint.

This uneven weight distribution across the knee joint leads to localised pressure points building in the joint, leading to pockets of joint cartilage becoming eroded and damaged.

Left uncorrected, the areas of damage get bigger, leading to inflammation, pain and eventually, a diagnosis of osteoarthritis.

If you're aware of how  your body adapted to the ankle sprain, you can rebalance the ankle and foot before damage to the knee joint begins to accumulate. 

Summary

The two factors you NEED to consider in order to injury-proof your body and increase your resilience to wear and tear are:

1. How much and how often you do an activity
2. How you move and use your body

Remember that movement patterns are habitual and will be repeated across every area of your life - work, leisure, exercise, sports etc.

NEXT STEPS

• Book into a Stretch, Yoga or Pilates class with me - these are a good introduction to The Befriend Your Body (BYB) Method for pain relief.
• Attend a mind-body retreat - these are deeply relaxing, fun, social small group experiences typically held in various locations within easy reach of Worthing, West Sussex. The next retreat is  on Sunday 24th March. Click HERE for all the details.
• ** BOOKINGS NOW OPEN ** New 60 mins pop-up classes. One class a month, a different theme each month, Click HERE to see the class schedule and reserve your place.
• Subscribe HERE to receive "The Movement Chronicle", a weekly e-newsletter delivering mobility and pain reduction tips directly into your inbox every Monday morning,

If you would like support with managing pain or an injury please reach out to me on any of these channels:

• Email at norma@unicornhealthandfitness.com
• DM me on Facebook Messenger 
• WhatsApp message to 07801 867361.