I recently ran into a trainer I hadn’t seen in a long time.  His name is Frederick Entenmann, now a life coach for athletes, and he has some good stuff going on over at his website http://frederickentenmann.com. 

Anyways, he was telling me how he was training to try and break a 4 minute mile.  It was a goal that he wanted to accomplish and he was pushing his body to do it.  He says he got really close then he tore his hamstring.

Now granted, the hamstring was the immediate concern, but the reason he tore it wasn’t necessarily that it was weak.  He had jacked up his ankle way back when playing professional basketball and the muscles all around that area just never healed right so they weren’t firing correctly.

The hamstring had to work that much harder to compensate for the lack of power output not being generated by that ankle area.

I have a couple similar stories.

As you know, I am a big believer of Muscle Activation Technique (M.A.T.) and the guru I go to is Charlie Rowe of Physicians Fitness.  I also was running to try and do a 400M race at a track meet.  Two years in a row training for sprints, I tweaked my hamstring and plans got derailed.

It befuddled me because I constantly am strengthening my hamstrings and working on the flexibility.  I threw out the problem to Charlie and after some tests he performed on me he said the problem wasn’t my hamstrings.  They were firing great.  It was my calves.  Their power output was horrible and my hamstrings were getting fatigued trying to compensate.

Sound familiar??

I’ve written several blogs about Charlie and M.A.T, but to refresh your memory, I discovered Charlie when I had plantar fasciitis.  I had read about M.A.T. and Charlie and I connected.

Of course he did treat my foot some because that was where the pain was.  But, he told me that the cause (at least for me) stemmed from a pelvic tilt that had developed from all my years as a long jumper some 20 odd years ago.

Once the pain subsided, he spent more time trying to work on the lower back and correcting the strength imbalances that had formed there.  I haven’t had any issues since (knock on wood).

The point of today’s post is this.  Some injuries just happen – a broken bone is very definitive.  For other injuries (for example a lot of “itis” injuries) develop because of strength/flexibility imbalances elsewhere in the body.  These then cause pain that manifests at a particular location.

A good example of this is tennis elbow.  Tennis elbow is essentially elbow tendonitis.  It doesn’t happen because there is something wrong with the elbow.  That is just the area where all the pain is going to.

There usually is a weakness in muscles above or below the elbow that cause the flare up.  One muscle is over compensating and the elbow can’t take it anymore.  Strengthen the weakness and ideally the pain goes away.

As an athlete, or even just a normal everyday individual, you should do your own due diligence and start to address what imbalances you have on your body.  If these go unchecked, you will have some type of discomfort somewhere down the road.  Charlie has a great full body assessment that I highly recommend.

Don’t chalk that up to “old age”.  It could be something preventable if you had known about the imbalances earlier.

Trust me, if an older me had approached me as a 15 year-old coming out of a DeLorean (Back to the Future reference for you younger folk) and told me about my future injuries, maybe I would have had my imbalances looked at and started doing corrective exercises back then.  It certainly would have been worth it to avoid some of the pain and issues I deal with now as a 40+ year old when I don’t bounce back so fast.

The Moral – Be PROACTIVE, not reactive!!

Photo courtesy of Keith Allison on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/keithallison/