With school exams done, the holidays are just around the corner. With the holidays, I had planned quite the bulk of training in an effort to make up for some lost time. After all, it’s not like I have much to do over the holidays but relax, visit with family, and play video games. Well, I’m no good at relaxing, hence the huge amount of proposed training. Well, as usual, I got over zealous, trained passed fatigue and tweaked my knee. Even with schooling in kinesiology, I chose to ignore all signs put forward by my body, continued training and paid the price. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and this is the same approach to take towards my training. Anyway, so what happened was that I went to drop-in soccer one day, played a full game in goal, had plenty of shots, went home, and then took part in an almost 2 hour long training session the next day after probably 5 months of not training. Not a good idea, but a common mistake, especially with athletes who have taken a lot of time off. Too often, it seems realistic that they can just jump right back into things as if they haven’t missed a beat. Well, the body doesn’t work like that, and usually tells us to slow down in some way. In my case, my knee decided to bend the wrong way, resulting in my MCL feeling quite disturbing.
With my injury, I did what any athlete would do, I took an inadequate amount of rest days and then pretended like I was fine. Well truthfully, I more or less convinced myself I was fine and healed, all the while knowing that ligaments don’t heal that quick. I only took 6 days of rest before doing another long training session. The cool thing was, I felt great for the first hour and a half, but once again tweaked my knee in the last little bit. It got me to thinking, if I can fool myself, and I have schooling and previous experience with this issue, others must definitely have a similar problem. So, moral of this story is always rest your injuries fully. Even more, rest until you feel fully healed, and then rest a couple more days. Training is a marathon, not a sprint so keep this in mind.
Realistically though, if I was to get injured, now really is the best time to do it. With the holidays comes Christmas parties and family gatherings. This compounds even further for me as I have a medical test for my disease as well. Add these things all together, and even if I wasn’t injured, I probably wouldn’t be training. It kills me not to train, but really, it’s not so bad to take some time to visit family and let loose a little bit before really digging in my heels. The way I’ve thought about it is that most sports take a holiday/Christmas break, even if it is just for a week (which is basically all the time I want to spend off). Honestly, looking into it, I am missing maybe four or five possible sessions (weather permitting).
I guess the biggest thing I realized though is that I am going to have to take some extra time to plan around my condition if I plan to be successful. If I hadn’t been injured, I would’ve lost two possible training days. Without proper planning, and the need to be constantly consulting with doctors, etc., these limitations could quickly add up and severely hinder many training opportunities. However, with a stroke of luck, I have been able to recognize the possible problem before it really happened and now I can address it. So we turn to moral number two of our short little article today and that is that planning plays a priority when it comes to success.
Organization and planning is important. We must not stretch ourselves too thin regardless of our goals. We are of no use to ourselves or anyone else if we make ourselves injured, or brain fried, or overstressed. And the easiest way to avoiding these things is to plan accordingly. When I study for exams, I utilize a similar strategy. For starters, I refuse to cram the day of exam; regardless if the exam is at 8am or 7pm, I will not study the day of for that subject. I rely on my ability to study ahead of time to prepare me for my exam. Secondly, I will not overstudy on any given day. I used to study for exams for 8-10 hours a day, starting a couple days before exams. Nowadays I study a little bit everyday (3-4 hours) but extend the overall time of study. So now, rather than a couple days, I take a couple weeks and bite off material in mini topics.
This kind of approach is easily transferable into athletics, or into any aspect in which training or studying is required. For example, in my case, instead of slamming myself with 1.5-2 hour training sessions on back to back days plus weights and conditioning, I should be breaking it up into smaller chunks, slowly increasing duration or intensity so my body can handle it. With that said, I’ve learned my lesson. I guess what I’m trying to say is, heed my warning, don’t try and tackle everything at once because you will only end up worse off than when you started. In my case, that is injured and out of commission for an extra week. Work hard, but do it smartly. Trust in your training, trust in your body and mind, and tackle your goals one step at a time. You will get there.
UPDATE: I broke my own rule, which is a testament on patience. When goals loom over your head, it is easy to forget that rest is important. While I did still train, I avoided anything that would aggravate my injury further. Keep on the lookout for training specific posts!