Why you should be more proactive and purposeful with your exercise
to you
Last Saturday, May 10th, marks the one-year anniversary of a day I’d like to forget.
While playing tennis, my shoulder stiffened up. As I instinctively reached across my body to stretch it out, it felt like Velcro being slowly torn apart.
It didn’t hurt, but something was definitely wrong.
Injuries are part of sport … and life. But there’s more to this injury because it probably could’ve been avoided.
And it’s not just that nasty Velcro sensation I’m talking about avoiding.
It’s the sadness of missing out on life. That’s what's really worth going out of your way to avoid.
In the past year, there were many days that I couldn’t play tennis or golf despite wanting to … and many days that I did play, but couldn’t fully enjoy it because of the pain.
The sadness and frustration of that hurt a lot more than the physical pain.
Before I go any further, let me be clear that this is not about sports. It’s about protecting your physical capacity to enjoy life.
Think of some of your most treasured activities … walks with your spouse, playing with your kids or grandkids, going on vacation, a random family outing to the bowling alley, or even giving something new like pickleball a try because all your friends are doing it.
Unless lying in bed completely still is one of your treasured activities, every single activity on your list requires a certain level of physical capacity to enjoy it without pain or injury.
While everything you do might seem easy now, it won’t always be that way. Maybe you’re already noticing that.
There’s no avoiding the fact that your body will degrade with age. And the more demanding an activity is, the sooner you may experience difficulty doing it. But you have a say in how fast and to what extent that happens.
When you apply the right stimulus to the right parts of your body and allow proper recovery, your body adapts and becomes more resilient in specific ways.
When that added resilience aligns with the activities you enjoy most, you have a greater chance of continuing to enjoy them later in life.
It’s like a runway – doing the right things to help your body maximize the right type of capacity will extend the runway, but doing the wrong things, or nothing at all, will shorten it.
This is why simply getting off the couch and moving is a good first step, but not nearly enough. There needs to be more intent and purpose behind how you exercise … especially if more complex/demanding activities like tennis or golf are part of your happiness equation.
In the case of my shoulder, there were warning signs indicating that I could have (and should have) been doing a better job of managing my runway.
My rotational range of motion was suboptimal. Although that’s most likely a result of my dislocation from 23 years ago, I still could’ve carefully worked at improving it, or at least paid closer attention to ensure it wasn’t getting worse.
More importantly, my shoulder started bothering me a month or two before the Velcro incident. I assumed it was just a random strain that needed some rest, but again, I could’ve been more proactive.
It’s great that I got 23 years of high-intensity tennis out of a formerly dislocated shoulder without incident (until now), but the run could’ve been even longer.
I did a lot of the right things, but I could have done more. I'm not beating myself up, but am reminding myself that there's always room for improvement. That's a good way to perceive setbacks and how they should influence your intentions for the future.
How about you, friend? Is there room to extend your runway for your most treasured activities?
What warning signs are you experiencing right now that might be worth paying closer attention to?
Are there any physical tasks or activities that seem more difficult than they should be?
How might that difficulty interfere with your enjoyment of life?
And how do you think your exercise priorities might need to change to help make the activities in question less difficult?
Let me know if you'd like my help answering any of these questions.
To a longer runway,
Dr. Vin
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