Body Mindfulness and how to avoid injury

I listened to a fab podcast by Kit Laughlin as he discussed steps to injury recovery.

It is always affirming to hear a respected professional telling the same stories that you preach to your own clients.

He discussed the steps to recovery, with an eminent break-dancer (whose name I have forgotten but his luxurious beard lives in my memory) which I will highlight in the next blog.

However what struck me was how they discussed the path to complete recovery and the acceptance of pain. I think of this as body mindfulness - it needs to be taught to athletes who want any longevity to their career, and to coaches who need their bodies to remain on form in order to teach and practice.

LISTEN TO YOUR BODY WHISPER AND YOU WILL NEVER HEAR IT SCREAM - 

has become a bit of a mantra of mine. 

Being present in your body, feeling where there is tension, breathing into that spot, consciously relaxing the structures you are not using and moving mindfully into stretches, lifts and movement should be the norm. If you spend time in a gym you will hear grunting and swearing you will even hear some coaches encouraging their clients to work through the pain and give more. More what? and for what?  This causes stress and tension, and tension is the precurser to strain which comes before damage and injury.

Practices like yoga and tai chi have been preaching this for years, but often for the practitioner the emphasis is on the form of the movement rather than the feel of the movement. This is necessary for performance but for the rest of us, awereness of how movement feels is where all the pleasure lies.

Exercise without experiencing the feel, leaves us tired and often strung out on endorphins, it gathers rather than dissipates stress. It leaves us exhausted, and in need of rest to recover and relax. Exercise done mindfully is relaxing itself, it is meditation for the body and it feels good.

Once you learn how to listen you will know when to challenge yourself, you will know when to hold back, you will know when to test your limits and when to nurture and rest.

I would encourage practitioners and coaches to find you new cues. Cues that help your clients to experience the joy of movement, help them celebrate the abilities of their body and relax into themselves.

Cues, that include words like:

• experience
• feel
• open
• release
• let go
• be aware
• let the weight move through you
• adjust into balance
• breathe out the tension

....make up your own!

Coaches & Therapists - Learning through Shared Experiences

Within my therapy practise, I sometimes see a series of individuals from the same sport or activity with the same or very similar ailments. I thought it was important to figure out why, after all, understanding the cause is more effective than constantly treating the injury.

However, communicating that information to coaches or instructors is often a challenge. Coaches can be very sensitive to what they perceive as criticism and can sometimes get very defensive. This is understandable as they are doing their best with what they have been taught, what they have researched and for what they need to achieve.

Shared Information

We learn best through personal experience, but there is always opportunity to learn through others’ experiences too. Shared information can be very beneficial.

If health professionals feedback their findings to coaches, the coaches can act on it. If coaches feedback their observations to health professional then that health professional can adjust their treatment accordingly.

It sounds like a simple and effective plan for improvement but it can be surprisingly difficult to put into practice.

The Gymnasts

In a short time span, I treated a series of young female gymnasts with similar knee injuries. They all came from the same club or training facility. I began to ask myself. Is this is something associated with their training practice? Do I approach the coaches? 

The Ruggers

Another time, I treated several young men from the same rugby club. Their ailments were not similar but a lot of their best players were spending too much time on the bench due to injury.  At first, the coaches were defensive that their training regimes were being questioned or criticised, but they were keen to understand this and open to discussion. Eventually, we did come to some conclusions and the injury rate plummeted.

Traceurs

I get to treat some of Edinburgh’s finest Parkour athletes. The movements involved in this activity are very natural, a changing variety of powerful and flowing motions.  Nonetheless, training will involve repetitive movements to improve skill and strength like all other practices. I treated a handful of women with the same right shoulder issue. Troubleshooting the problem with them and investigating training practice we concluded that the problem probably arose from wall climbs. Fortunately, I already have a strong relationship with the coaches and practitioners and feeding back is a little less sensitive.

What did the parkour coaches say?

The coaches were absolutely aware of the need to work on both sides of the body equally and believed that they did. But their students in the early stages did not have the upper body strength to pull themselves with effort through both arms.

Thanks to Donald Dalziel Media for the photo

So they all pushed up through the left foot and relied on the stronger right arm to get to the top of the wall. Their left arm couldn’t do the movement and so they could only practice on one side. Preferring one side and practicing so relentlessly is likely to have created an imbalance. Even though these athletes are now strong enough to lift and pull through equally on both sides the likelihood is that they still habitually pull harder through the right side, especially as they tired.

The Feedback Loop

If we want to progress and improve, coaches and therapists need to set up a dialogue, be prepared to take on new information, evaluate it, and change practice where required.

A feedback loop is required for best practice. Coaches who receive information from therapists about the physical health of their athlete or client need to use that information to alter their programme and potentially make changes their wider practice. Coaches can also feed information back about the imbalances that they encounter in their practice and engage the help of therapists for best results.

Win/win!