Nowadays everyone speaks about excercising. Even my last presentation on konwersatorium1-ms-pjwstk.blogspot.com was about sport routine. But recently I have had this whole new perspective on performing sport mainly because of my sister. She is a professional sportswoman, she does kitesurfing on a daily basis. When she is in Warsaw she trains at the gym, when she is abroad she trains kitesurfing. So she excersises almost every day.
Logically she was supposed to be disgustingly healthy. On one hand she was. Her condition was excellent, she was super strong and stretched. But at some point she started to have injures almost all the time. One time it was her hip. It fell out from the pelvis during some evolutions in the air. She had to had her leg operated and then she was supposed to go to a rehabilitation center. When she recovered she started to kitesurf again. After several months she hurt her arm and everything started all over again. This situation happened a few times.
I’m writing about my little sis because I know that case well but actually it is not just her. Many famous athletes have suffered from all sorts of injuries.
Doing sports all the time operates the body. People want to exceed the limit of endurance no matter what. They do not exercise to be healthy and fit. There is this thing called „contrast” - when you hurt something in your body but you cannot allow yourself to be in a bad shape and you just inject contrast into your body and for a few hours you don’t feel anything. I’ve heard that it can be really dangerous.
Do you think that sport is good for us? What can we do to protect ourselves during exercising? We want to stay fit so we exercise but we cannot exaggerate because professional and extreme sports can be rather dangerous for us. Do you agree? Do you do sports? What kind? Tell us all;)
Here are some extreme situations:
Ballet dancers:
Snowboard crashes:
at vimeo.com you can watch it in better quality
Sources:
www.youtube.com/user/TheAustralianBallet
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBhyxOdeEC9i_OGRsBhX7dw
Comments
However, as you have written in your essay, professional and extreme sports can be dangerous for us. I have ridden horses since I was 6 years old. Till high school I used to ride every day, sometimes during winter breaks and holidays more than 2 horses. During high school and studies I rode rarely but after every time on the horse I had terrible back pain. My doctor told me that it was because of horse riding. Unfortunately, lots of riders have back, knee or even hip problems. So it is as you said, professional athletes suffer from all sorts of injuries. To sum it up, I think that sport is good for you if you exercise wisely. One should always remember about warm ups before workout and stretching afterwards.
According to the snowboard movie - first of all I LOVE Eero Ettala :D And this kind of "crashes" are commonly shown in the snowboard movies (as you probably know :) ) Once I have heard the snowboarder, who was talking about his injuries that have been caused while snowboarding, and he said that during his career he has broken only facial bones about 40 times!!! And it's quite obvious that face is not the first thing to be broken in this discipline...
That made me believe in one thing. Training sport is definitely a good thing, but only to do it for fun, for ourselves. To not to exceed our limits. When someone wants to step out it is almost impossible to stay healthy :) So any sport trained professionally cannot be healthy, as long as you are doing way more than your body is ready for. You are practising sport professionally, something that's over the average.
I am a snowboard instructor and it's been 15 seasons when I am snowboarding. I have never had problems with my body, but last season was a breakthrough - my body got tired and it started to show me that I have to take a break if I want to continue training in the future. Of course it is hard to take these break, but I think that's the most important thing to do - listen to your body, not to overuse it.
Imagine you have reached a really high level in something, you are almost the best, only one step is between you and your biggest dream, and suddenly it all doesn't matter, because it is not your life anymore, you must stop doing it and it useless what you have done so far...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SH44i3nH9sQ
Check this out its really nice cardio.
I didn't know that you did some horse ridding. I did it too back in a day. But I wasn't so into it. Maybe because I was quite a big child and it was hard for me to get on a horse. Pretty embarassing:P
Did you compete in competitions?
I totally agree that we musn't give up sport and just remember about all the things you mentioned above. What is your warming and stretching rutine?
It's another thing with professionals they forget to take pleasure from discipline they train because they can be so focused on winning...At least I think so...Do you agree girls?:)
I took part in a few show jumping and dressage competitions. Unfortunately, my horse had injury and after it he couldn’t compete any more.
I don’t have my warming up and stretching routine. It depends on which part of my body I workout.
Yes, I agree. Exaggeration is bad by definition.
I mostly ride a mountain bike, sometimes in the mountains(at least once a year), it is much more dynamic than running and the technology used in the bicycle industry is astonishing.
I'm sure that professional athletes are very careful and have teams of specialists and doctors that are always there to help them but I think that these sportsmen and women are aware of their own situation. Too much exercise can be really bad for them and their careers will probably only last till their 30's or 40's(If they're lucky). These people are aware of this and I think (or at least I hope) that's a conscious decision to choose this hard way of life. If it's bringing them joy and their goal in life is to get an Olympic medal (or something like that) who should stop them? The important thing is to finish this career at the right time so you don't become an invalid.
Talking about professional sportsmen we should understand that behind such person is a well build team of professionals in different fields. Plus we must also face the fact, that sportsmen are using special suplementary diet and steroids with heavy training graphic which is always under the observation of numerous doctors and coaches. Professional sport also is not about having fun and enjoy from the activity, professional sportsmen are usualy could be found under constant physical and moral presure which also increases the possibility not only of physical injury but also mental trauma (depression, fear and etc.).
On the opposite regular person should understand above-mentioned things and be more responsible in the terms of physical activity: diet and constant medical check-outs are necessery if person is about long, happy and healthy physical activity. The edge between health and trauma sometimes could be too narrow.
But if we talk about pro sportsmen, in my opinion this is not the healthiest way of life.
I agree that people exceed the the limits, this is sad but this is the only way to be the champion.
I understand them because I trained crossfit regularly 5 days a week. For me being healthy and feeling like athlete sometimes is more than all that life can offer me.
Now I am finishing work write MA, and the only thing I have time is running at night.
In general, sports are good for us and when we are reasonable, injuries happen rarely. We can protect ourselves by training under supervision of a professional trainer and not exceeding our natural limitations.
As for me, I like dancing, cycling and swimming. From fitness stuff I attend some body conditioning and stretching trainings. I also do yoga.
Izabela I’m felling sorry for your sister.
Hmm, If we want to take care about us during exercise, we can use different sorts fenders. It should be helped.
Recently I’ ve climbed. Fortunatelly I’m still intact and I hope that wil be good to the end.
For sure it's better that doing nothing. But there is a big difference between being/staying in good shape, being fit and doing sports professionally. As You mentioned in the article your sister is a pro sportsman. She's probably training every single day or even twice a day. After so much of work, she can be tired/ exhausted. Let's add bad weather, headache, flue, or lack of proper rest and the probability of getting a injury rases. So I would say that doing sports as your profession is always connected with the posibility of getting a injury. Especially if we're talking about extreme sports.
What can we do to protect ourselves during exercising?
Eat good, sleep good, and train without overtraining.
We want to stay fit so we exercise but we cannot exaggerate because professional and extreme sports can be rather dangerous for us. Do you agree?
When You train hard, do it semi professional/professional you always need to remember that ur body isn't a machine.
Do you do sports? What kind?
I dance and train calisthenics. I started dancing round 2007-2008. First was popping and a bit of Hip Hop dance, then salsa and a bit of afrocuban stuff. Now im trying to find my own style/way:)
About calisthenics... My first training was sth like 1,5 year ago.
Ok, maybe that was pessimistic opinion. In fact I believe that any kind of sport activity, especially in an era of sedentary work is good, but as always, we have to keep in bounds
I believe that such injury-sprees as described in the article are results of overtraining or lack of warmup before or cooldown after the workout or training.
I used to train tennis but due to injury I had to stop it. I know that lack of warmup and streching was responsible for it so now, when I do some sports, rather as entertainment than in professional way, I always remember about warmup - just to signal my body: hey, we will be doing sports now. Be careful!
What I did observe and it surprises me in positive manner are elderly people exercising on outdoor gyms in Warsaw. They did motivate me to join gym and workout :) If they can - what's my excuse now?
Sport is healthy.
Recreational almost always.
Professional almost never.
Making sport is important to have well-build body or feeling better. I like to go to the gym or some various kinds of fitness exercises, after that I know I did something good for myself, better than watch youtube clips. But it is important to know limits, as in every parts of living.
When I was younger I was training Parkour (jumping between buildings, from balconies and some more stupid thing like that;)), skateboarding, little extreme skiing. I liked adrenaline, but now... Im a little afraid of that thing, propably now I couldn't repeat that:)
Fortunately it is everything ok with my body now, because there were risky.
I love team sports - they give additional meaning to running around with balls and stuff and scoring points. For some sport achievements are a way of living and that's good :) And as for injuries - pushing limits hard is always dangerous, in any activity.
Physical activities are great for us but only done in proper way.
How to protect ourselves during exercising? Good equipment for sure, warmup before workout and after too. This is very simple. I am running for 10 years now and I must say that good shoes and warmup are crucial here.