Are You Endowed with Non-Injury Genes?

If not, you will get injured.  And if you’re like me you’re not too good with pain.  Especially your own.  Apart from hurting it’s no fun on the sidelines, is it?  Not training, not competing and your fitness going backwards.

I know this from personal experience - many times over!  The longest time out of action was a few years ago when I hurt my neck.  As I recall, the pain came on gradually over a few weeks.  I used to swim a lot and noticed that after a swim I often had a stiff neck.  It wasn’t much and soon disappeared so it didn’t worry me. 

It should have done.

Not Moving, Grooving or Improving

On one occasion, the neck pains and stiffness happened during the swimming session not afterwards.  And they didn’t go away.  Even after several days there was no improvement.  Now, maybe a faulty freestyle stroke technique (crawl) was to blame.  But I’d been doing it for years and was probably complacent.  Anyway, I just assumed the pain would disappear as before.

To cut a long story short, it didn’t.  But after a few days rest and missing my usual workout I went to the gym for some light training.  This wasn’t one of my best moves.

In fact, it was one of my worst.  Right at the end of a brief session, doing an incline-leg-raise, I felt it get worse and I couldn’t lift my chin off my chest.

Judgement & Sentence

Various tests at the hospital mainly involved arm movements (tricky) and poking my arms and fingers with something like pins.  X-rays too.  The upshot was that I had to wear a plastic collar type of thing to support my head.  The suggestion was that I might need it for maybe two years. 

The other suggestion was that I should hang up my running shoes.  The idea was that when I recovered I should forget all about running and orienteering.  Too much impact and jarring.  The medical advice was that if I really must workout I should consider taking up swimming!  (I’m not kidding, this really happened.)

A Hidden Bonus of Being Injured

Now, one of the fun things about wearing a support collar is that everywhere you go you meet other people wearing support collars.  I mean everywhere.  You meet them in bars, in the library, in the supermarket, on the street, in the Post Office.  It’s a mass movement.  I thought about starting a club.

Sometimes, you get chatting about your hottest topic.  Swapping stories how they got hurt, how you got hurt, when it happened, about the operation they’re going to have, about the operation that just had, that no-way should anyone in their right mind have an operation, and so on.  Usually my story was the most interesting.

How I Handled The PAIN

But a special downside of having a bad neck is getting out of bed.  This is tricky.  It involves two quite distinct and unrelated pains.  The first is the pain in your neck.  The second is the pain of wanting to go and pee.  Eventually, after a struggle, this one wins. 

And just in case you’re wondering, here’s how you get out of bed with a bad neck.  First you roll onto your belly.  Next you slide your feet and legs out of the side of the bed and kneel on the floor with your stomach still on the bed.  Then you push yourself upright with your arms.  Easy.  But it’s still a big pain getting socks on.

Pain & Knowing Your Neighbourhood Better

It’s also impossible to drive.  So once I tried a bus ride.  Just once was enough as I just had to get off at the next stop.  The jarring and shaking were absolutely horrendous.  Gentle walking was much better, especially if you learn to walk slowly and cushion your steps.  And that’s how you meet so many people in support collars.  Because no one can go far.

Now, I’ve nothing against busses.  But this did remind me of when I lived in a ground floor room right next to a bus stop. 

On the one hand, this can be very convenient.  On the other, busses make a truly incredible amount of noise.  Normally, you don’t much notice the squeals, screeches, shakes, jolts, judders, doors opening, air brakes on, air brakes off, rattles, clangs and so forth when they stop.  Unless the first bus of the day stops right beside your bed at 5 in the morning.

How To Get Hindsight In Advance

I know from the collar-people I met that there were many, many folks who suffer neck and back problems far, far worse than mine. 

In truth, I was lucky because it didn’t take two years of wearing the collar to get better.  As it turned out, I was pretty well OK after five months.  I was still nervous about it for a while, kept the collar just in case, but was soon running again.

Now, in hindsight there’s probably a lot that can be learned from this story.  As we all know, hindsight is a wonderful thing.  The snag is that it always seems to arrive a bit late.

Are You Genetically Immune from Injury?

Some hindsight conclusions that you could draw from all this are dead easy:

Avoiding injury saves a tremendous amount of pain, aggravation, time, disruption and damage.  So, unless you’re endowed with non-injury genes, it’s worth paying attention to this beforehand and get your hindsight first.

But how?  Simple.  Make sure you click on this link to Dangerous Exercises Exposed! Plus Superior & Safer Alternatives now and find out more.

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