DISCLAIMER: I am not a physician, physical therapist, personal trainer or anything remotely related to being a healthcare worker. As always, consult with professionals on your exercise program and do your own research. This is just my personal experience.
It is the pain that makes the pain go away.
ALEC BALDWIN
Alec Baldwin uttered this line in regard to getting a second hip replacement. It has stuck with me because we often endure short term pain for the sake of eliminating long term pain. I thought the line captures the essence of bodywork. It is the pain that makes the pain go away.
"Bodywork" is the catch all term I use for the battery of strengthening, stretching, and isometric exercises I have to do to keep myself moving without injury. Sad to say, I neglected those bodywork exercises and gave myself a bad case of IT band syndrome and peroneal tendinitis. It also didn't help walking on shoes that were past their mileage. That was dumb. The result was a bitter lesson, and bitter lessons are not soon forgotten.
I believe strength is the foundation of fitness. People pit strength vs. cardio, but the outcome of the contest is clear. Strength training is more important because it allows you to do the cardio training. I believe in both, but the most important element is strength training.
The goal of strength training is injury prevention and resistance. You want to build for yourself a bulletproof body. Those bodywork exercises can be tedious at times and not always pleasant. But as Mr. Baldwin put it, "it is the pain that makes the pain go away." I say that to myself before every bodywork session.
My bodywork hero is the ultrarunner Dean Karnazes who has run thousands of miles without a single overuse injury. Compare Karno to Anton Krupicka who has had his career wrecked by overuse injuries. I do not recommend ultrarunning, but these two are "lab rats" for comparing running with bodywork versus running without bodywork. Dean Karnazes proves the value of strength training for injury prevention.
I first learned this lesson from watching basketball in the nineties as NBA players started hitting the weight room. I could understand football players doing this but not basketball players. But those NBA players discovered that the strength training made them resilient to injury. Now, you see everyone from baseball players to tennis players to golfers doing strength training. That training is indispensable.
Believing in something is not the same as doing something. As the Good Book says, "Faith without works is dead." This IT band injury and peroneal tendinitis has made me get religion on bodywork, and I have vowed to not have this happen to me again. Consequently, bodywork is a daily part of my program, and I have no excuses for not doing them. I can do them rain or shine.
I post this piece on bodywork as a companion to all my posts on fitness walking. I have a book published by Prevention magazine on walking, but it is mostly chapters on these bodywork exercises. I think fitness walking is a great exercise, but it cannot be walking alone. Bodywork is a must. Let this be a warning to the Gentle Reader from someone who learned the hard way.