Why sport is (not) the road to permanent disability

I'm afraid that with the sheer volume of information out there, we've ended up confused about how to approach training. The problem is that the fitness industry sees a person as an object, not a subject – an individual who deserves an individual approach and has their own specific needs. So we've created dogmas and myths about how (not) to squat with the knees past the toes, how to lift things off the floor with a straight back, or how (not) to lift objects overhead. The result is a phobia – a fear of whether it's worth taking the path of movement at all, or whether the old saying “sport is the road to permanent disability” will prove true. So let's go back to basics and look at the factors that affect how we move:

Anatomy

Each of us is born with a given length of limbs and torso. So not all of us can be professional basketball players, weightlifters or judokas. Likewise, one person will find it easier to squat down or touch their toes, and another won't.

Occupation

We sit an average of 6 or more hours a day, and from an early age. The structures of the musculoskeletal system – muscles, tendons, joint capsules – have the superpower of adapting to whatever we do with them, including sitting. Doing a squat with your arms overhead becomes science fiction, because over long years of sitting the adaptation mechanisms for that kind of movement never took place.

Injuries

An injury almost always happens in a body position we're not used to and haven't trained. We lift furniture when moving house, sprint after a football in the summer, or hang curtains with our arms overhead :) Bad luck?! More like a loss of control and range in that particular movement.

To keep injuries to a minimum, be sure to read our next article, Why flexibility and mobility matter.

Knowledge

Incomplete or none at all. For lack of time, the modern person goes to play sport and train alone, as a “self-taught” athlete. In the better case, they ask a mate. It often ends in a week of muscle soreness, or in the worse case, in pain. If you think about it, we don't build a house from a YouTube video or on a friend's advice either.

So start educating yourself, and first of all read about the 5 biggest training myths

In the next article we'll show you how to work with these factors and enjoy movement even more.