"One of the most common assumptions made about sport is that being an athlete is beneficial for both body and mind, and that sport is practiced by healthy bodies experiencing healthy outcomes. While the world of sport is populated by persons on and off the field who wish that this were true, anyone who has played, coached, administered or simply watched from the sidelines will attest that this view is, at least in part, a misconception, often forwarded by those unwilling to acknowledge what Messner and Sabo have called the 'very limiting, often painful downside of sport' (1990:14). The potentially healthful benefits of sport and exercise have been well-documented (Berger & Owen 1998: Biddle & Fox 1989; Curtis & Russel 1997; Sargeant & Siddons 1998), but the less healthy injurious consequences of sport have been far less widely researched, certainly by sociologists. In many sports and at many levels, sport is also about learning to live with pain and hurt and, for a disconcertingly large number of athletes, injury and even disablement that can last well beyond the playing years. Of the sundry badly kept secrets from the world of sport, this is surely among the worst. Everyone knows that it is almost impossible to play sport without experiencing pain; every athlete has a story to tell about injury" (Young, xi).
I think the world of sport has changed dramatically, even since Young wrote this preface in 2004. In the very least, national bodies such as NFL, the NHL, USAC, and USAT are more aware of the negative long term benefits of concussions. But the quote is still thought provoking in many ways. I think reflecting on how you define health will bring about an awareness of what you are willing to go through in order to achieve a particular performance goal. This reflection will help you make decisions about how to react in those moments of pain and injury--those moments when the pain or injury directs our attention away from the ramifications of our actions. So, how do you define health? Is health a specific body image? Is health a lack of disease and injury? Or do you have a more holistic view of health that involves body, mind, and spirit? Is health something you attain or maintain? How do you attain or maintain health (does it involve physical activity, nutrition sleep, social activity)? In what ways do you think your sport is healthy and in what ways do you think it is unhealthy? How do you evaluate whether you are healthy or unhealthy. For instance, do you account for pain or just physical injury in this definition or what is unhealthy? How does time and frequency influence your definitions of being unhealthy? Given your definition of health, how far are you willing to become unhealthy in order to achieve your goals? Culturally speaking, we might ask how our own definition of health is different from the definition of health in sports magazines and other media. Are the body images of the models you see in your favorite sports magazine a true representation of a healthy body? Does the information these media provide about workouts and training actually lead to a healthy body (...or just a "healthy" body image)?
Scientifically speaking, we might ask why there is less information about sports injury than about the positive health benefits of sport? How does our economic system play into the promotion of scientific studies on the health benefits of sport but not the health limitations of sport? What does this say about the values of those who fund scientific studies?
Feel free to comment on the blog or my facebook page. As always feel free to e-mail me at jafecik@gmail.com if you want to discuss how knowing the answers to these types of questions can help direct the way you train and race.
Jon
717-368-7198
jafecik@gmail.com
Image from: http://bicyclinghub.blogspot.com/2013/04/top-5-tips-for-staying-injury-free-on.html
