But If You’ll Hum Few Bars… Listening to New Information From Your Body

Respect.

As an athlete, you have learned how to mentally manage pain and fatigue. Play through whatever your body tells you. If it hurts, suck it up! You can take it!

By now, you have probably found some physical limitations with this approach. Pushed through until something failed. Got hurt with no one but yourself to blame. Embarrassing, wasn’t it?

Now that we’ve become older boys and girls, it is time to take into consideration some of that body chatter and give it some respect.

For those readers who are unfamiliar with this chatter, endurance athletes have learned to listen to their bodies closely. At times this feedback from the physical body can become too much information, so as well as the athlete has learned to listen, he/she becomes equally good at ignoring body feedback. This feedback often expresses itself  as odd sensations that the athlete thinks they are experiencing during the early stages of an exercise session (warming up).

Sensations like a muscle is strained or a joint is sprained, will appear and encourage the athlete to discontinue their activity. Novice athletes will stop and eventually find nothing wrong. More seasoned participants will continue activity and find that the sensations just go away as the body warms up. The perceived injury turns out to be nothing more that mental mirage.

Now with our much more experienced bodies (read: older), we are forced to listen more reflectively to this chatter in our minds.

• Older bodies tend to be less lean so muscles may not be as fully conditioned for the rigors of exercise.
• Ligaments and tendons are less flexible.
• Hydration status factors more largely in your physical makeup.
• And it takes longer to recover from effort (THIS is a tough one)

Respect.

Now that we have conditions which can lead to injury if we don’t pay attention but the really cool thing this teaches is that “You don’t have to push hard to do hard things.” This is the play smarter, not harder strategy. You learn to compete by racing your own race – not your opponent’s.

And remember that there is much more to learn. As you take your body through it’s paces or competition, stay open to new ideas. Responses that you did not need when younger, may become your special charm now. Embrace the change and enjoy the journey!

“My friends scoffed at my anxiety and said dumb things like, ‘Fifty is the new forty!’ Which just made me realize that there are a whole lot of other people who suck at math as bad as I do. No. Fifty is fifty.”
― Celia Rivenbark, You Can’t Drink All Day If You Don’t Start in the Morning