Trap 10: Not Listening To Your Body...

Believe it or not, the laws of physics, chemistry, mechanics and biology do relate to you, too. Attempting to avoid them, believing that you’re too, err, special, or regularly cutting-corners or cheating, only lead down five paths: fatigue, ill-health, injury, guilt and shame.

Learn to listen to your body. Heed the signs from Mother Nature and her brother, Time. Your body has an infinite wisdom, yet you need to give yourself permission to listen, hear, and act accordingly...

·      Too little respect for Mother Nature:

Get out: accept that her 3.5 billion years of experience carries a little more weight than yours. Learn to listen for her signs, hear them, and act upon them. Better now than later, too

Prevention: read about and listen to the experience of others, and the expertise of professionals. Learn from your errors, and don’t make them mistakes. Aim to train regularly and consistently and not merely to record numbers

·      Too little respect for ‘listening to your body’. Learn and know what to listen for

Get out: that raised resting and easy-session heart rate and perceived effort, heavy legs and inertia to get out of bed may be saying, “ease up today, champ”. Respect that.

Prevention: that tender, sore, red, inflamed spot by a bone, tendon or joint that persists or get’s worse upon getting out of bed, warming up, or when you’ve cooled down is telling you something more serious. Respect it even more

·      Too little understanding of “pain”. What we experience in long or hard races is ‘Self Induced Discomfort’. It’s not true pain or suffering. Understand and respect the differences and train to physically and mentally reduce or cope better with SID, and minimize pain.

Get out: pain is Mother Nature’s warning sign that something is not right – that damage is about to be done, or has been done.

Prevention: minor injuries come with the territory if you train and race hard. Overuse, chronic and recurring injuries aren’t a badge-of-honor. Prevent them through improving your mechanics and technique, and through progressive cyclic, varied and individualised training

·      Too little injury prevention training. Most injuries can be prevented.

Get out: pay attention to little niggles, sore spots, a sore-throat fatigue , and dodgy mechanics and/or poor technique. A few lighter days now may save you missed weeks or months of training later

Prevention: get a video analysis of your swimming and running mechanics and technique. Perform a functional strength assessment too. Emphasize alleviating deficits, anomalies and imbalances. Use targeted and specific strength and mobility training on a regular basis

·      Too little respect for Time. Remember…planning, patience, persistence and power produce performance. Patience and persistence pay respect to Time:  

Get out: focus on training consistency and regularity.

Prevention: ‘Stacking’ or accumulating sessions over time (not all the time) is what brings success. Persistence provides performance. It will take at least 6-8 years to realize your potential.

·      Too light and too lean. Optimal body weight and body composition for performance and health aren’t the same things:

Get out: avoid the trap – too light and too lean is not necessarily better

Prevention: record and log your body weight and body-fat (and strength or power) in a standardized manner. Graph them alongside consistent training blocks and race-results. Associate both to find what works best for you

·      Too much dwelling on a poor session or poor race

Get out: value that no one session or race will make you, but they do have the potential to break you.

Prevention: Review, re-work and move on

·      Too much reliance upon technology and toys:

Get out: leave the gadgets and toys at home occasionally. Learn their shortcomings too – look-up “cardiac drift”

Prevention: re-learn and appreciate how and why there’s merit in simply going for a swim, a bike and a run without measuring it. Learn more about feel and be dictated less by numbers for, in the heat of competition and racing, your body dictates what you do -not prescribed numbers

·      Too much reliance upon synthetic foods and nutrients. Gels, powders and supplements are not major food groups, macronutrients nor micronutrients.

Get out: go to the fresh-food stands of the local market more often than you go to your local sports-store or cycle-shop. Differentiate between day-to-day real food and race-relevant “nutrition” that works best for you

Prevention: visit your sports-medicine specialist and discuss relevant performance- and health-related blood, urine and saliva tests to provide a baseline on various elements such as iron, other minerals, antioxidant status, hormone balance, blood glucose and cholesterol. Follow up with a visit to a registered dietitian or nutritionist and work out a plan. Work that plan too.

How well do you listen? 

What do you hear?