“Wise rulers…consider not only present difficulties but also future, against which they use all diligence to provide; for these, if they be foreseen while yet remote, admit of easy remedy, but if their approach be awaited, are already past cure…” Machiavelli, The Prince
(For an explanation of how I got here, see part I)
One of the more difficult aspects of training is understanding the importance of injury prevention, especially if it requires some tedious or repetitive work on movement patterns or mobility. It is tricky because we all want to work hard right away. This might lead us to work around issues or ignore them completely.
I think of fitness as long term. It’s not just about losing five or ten pounds now, it’s about keeping yourself healthy for the rest of your life. This means that you have to have an eye not only on the present goal, but also the future. That is the main reason why a good portion of your training focus should always be on improving your movement and correcting, as best as possible, any pain or issues you might have. As long as an injury or poor movement pattern is left unaddressed it has the potential to cause future problems which, once fully developed, can be very hard to deal with.
This can be a very hard sell because it is not immediately demonstrable. If you do a good job and succeed in correcting an issue and preventing an injury, how do you know that it ever would have been a problem? The very fact that it never occured makes it intangible. How can a trainer or Physical Therapist even know for sure if the injury would have happened? The fact is, they can’t. The very success prevents us from realizing what might have been.
So how do you motivate yourself to focus on prevention? By taking a look at the big picture. Look at your training as something that serves you over months and years, not days and weeks, and certainly not single workouts. For example, if you spend six weeks working on shoulder mobility before you ever press a weight overhead, remember that six weeks is only 11% of a 52 week year, and one year is only a small percentage of your life. There is plenty of time left to achieve goals. If you take the other route and hasten towards them you may end up with issues that bite into a much larger portion of your time.