Serving two masters – dealing with injuries

Dealing with injuries sucks. In fact, it sucks big time.

I’m currently dealing with 4 minor niggles handily spread evenly across my body.

Left elbow
Right shoulder
Left achilles
Right hamstring.

I could have soldiered on and got by keeping them at bay but I decided that a bit of deferred gratification was required.

Being Sensible

I’ve come to the end of a training cycle, which went fairly well even though I failed the goal. I had been aiming for a sub 7 minute 2k row on the concept 2 and managed 7:03. Oh so close but oh so far away.

The main reason I missed out was that I have been looking to get leaner all year, reasonably successfully. But, as I approach the 1 year mark I wanted to be done with it. As such, I switched to a bit of the 5/2 diet to hopefully deal with it once and for all.

I then foolishly did the time trial on a day where I hadn’t eaten before I did it. I know, I amaze myself sometimes too.

The net result was that I was fine over the 1st 1k but faded over the 2nd kilometer and had nothing left at the end. I wasn’t particularly suffering I just ran out of gas.

If I’d remembered a couple of apples or something similar in the hour beforehand probably would have seen me hit 6:57 rather than 7:03.

No point crying over spilled milk it was more a case of what lessons were there to be learned from the foolishness?

I definitely should have done it on a different day for a start. Even better would have been to have started the 5/2 aspect of my weight loss plan the following week. So with that in mind, I set about looking at what training would be like for the next few weeks.

With the niggles needing to be dealt with I decided that a plan for easy sessions and really hitting the rehab work was needed.

Complementary Goals

You can get away with serving two masters for a while, sometimes, depending on what they are. For most of last year, I didn’t do anything particularly hard. I concentrated on looking to move more and eat less. In the 2nd half of the year, really the final 4 months I did work hard but not crazily so.

I hit a PB in the 2k row and a 5k run and maintained my strength levels whilst doing it. The running was aided by the weight loss and the weight loss itself was slow enough that it didn’t really affect my strength.

WIth the last portion of weight loss though, the need is to really focus on it and another goal that is complimentary. Rehabbing my injuries fits the bill. It isn’t too stressful, quite the opposite, and also means I’m forced to really take my foot off the gas in training too.

When you are suffering from an injury or persistent niggle, you really need to reappraise the situation.  If you want things to improve then banging away as per normal is a waste of time.

Do yourself a favour and set aside some time to properly deal with them. Drop any goals you have until they are dealt with and you’ll give your self the best possible chance to succeeding at both.

If you are unsure where to start with the process why not enquire about one of our FREE Discovery sessions where we can look at what is going on and what you need to do.

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