Are you an athlete or are you just active?

For some, the answer is obvious - particularly if you don’t classify yourself as an active person. Remember, this is OK and in most cases, merely a snap shot in time. The goal of this book is to inspire you to change that however. If successful, you’ll not only start exercising because you know it’s “good for you” but because you’ll understand that this is written into our DNA - we move or we face the consequences of gradual tissue degredation and the subsequent pain that comes with it.

For others, this can potentially be a triggering question, especially  people who’ve been conditioned to hearing themselves being referred to as “athletes” (Crossfit gyms are notorious for this). The liberal use of the word athlete, albeit well intentioned since it can help people reframe their belief systems, can also lead some down a path of chronic injury. This is why the title of this chapter [or section if it would be best woven into another chapter] is critical because it determines what course of action we take on everything from food intake, exercise regimens and of course recovery. To properly answer the question, we must qualify it first. 

Athletes are those who are professionally active and subsequently have nutritional & recovery requirements that foster optimal performance for their respective sport. Active people can range from weekend warriors to those who exercise daily. While every program should be customized to the individual, whether an athlete or an active person, what makes it more challenging for the general population is having less access to professional guidance. 

It all starts with proper assessment and these days we have better access to assessment templates & tools both in person and online. The more thorough the assessment, the better customized it will be to provide you with a current snapshot. This snapshot serves as a benchmark to properly program and chart one’s progress over time. For example, figuring out what your daily nutritional and recovery requirements to support your body’s functions as well as perform your daily activities is just as important as the exercise regimen you follow. In fact, I’ll go even farther to say that most of the clients/patients we end up working with are a direct result of poor (or non-existent) programming! Think about that - if these clients/patients had been given proper guidance, they would have never gotten injured performing the exercises they thought were so good for them.

Considering how many active people across America struggle with chronic pain, this warrants closer observation. Why does this happen? It’s understandable when an athlete gets injured during a game because the margin of error is so low, but when the average person gets a repetitive strain injury or a sudden disc herniation we have to take a deeper look into their programming in order to conduct a forensic analysis and determine exactly what went wrong. In most cases, we find compensatory patterns are to blame. In other words, when faced with certain stress loads, the body is designed to function with equal and opposite tensional forces - we call this biotensegrity. Biotensegrity is a concept derived from architectural models, like suspension bridges, which are comprised of solid pieces connected by equal & opposite tensional forces which provide it with far greater strength and stability than a traditional bridge with rigid components. So how does this apply to training injuries?

For example, if you’re a weekend warrior that works long hours, comes home tired & hungry and eats dinner in front of the TV, it would be very counterproductive (and borderline dangerous) to follow a program designed for an athlete. The reason it can backfire is because it takes time for our bodies to adapt & change to take on excessive loads & forces applied to it. Hastening the process, whether it be through overzealous supplementation, testosterone therapies or any performance enhancing drugs may lead to catastrophic injuries.