on bulletproofing my body
I hurt a muscle deep in my hip or my illiapsoas 10 days ago skiing and it still hasn't healed. Luckily for my mental state and unluckily for my mental state and body it was a freak accident (I fell lol) and not something I could control. I think I'd be more upset if it was a regular knock which I still get plenty of and piss me off. I haven't fully rested it or really rested it but have been taking it easier and it hasn't gotten better, that's annoying to me. Also, I was watching my favorite team (Arsenal) play yesterday and one of our best players did his hamstring before a massive game against Real Madrid. That was also frustrating. This and years of playing sports, training hard, and getting aggravated by little tweaks, inspired me to explore how I can bulletproof my body.
On its surface this feels like a big project. For today I just want to fully get the idea out of my head and then tomorrow maybe I can break it down into chunks or categories to go deep on. Making athletes get hurt less might be the most fun way I could ever consider spending my time. There used to be a HUGE barrier to entry to understand biomechanics research but now with our robot overlords, this friction is mostly eliminated.
The big categories that I need to explore over the next few days (maybe a day per exploration)
- Joint range of motion - I actually tried to measure this before and it didn't go so well. It needs to go better. guessing there are apps for this.
- movement pattern quality - related but not exactly the same. need to make sure all of the things I'm doing in the gym are the 100% right way. also guessing apps for this
- muscular imbalances - ex make sure my R quad is as strong as my L quad and firing when i'm squatting
- training load - acute to chronic workload tracker. did a bit of this back in the ball days. something like: Weekly volume/intensity vs 4-week average. to make sure i'm ramping/not overloading my joints
- nutrition - specifically making sure I'm getting in enough of the right food. to be defined
- hydration - i feel like i've recently been not thinking about hydration enough. drinking enough, electrolytes, etc. when I take an electrolyte supplement when I'm intra workout I feel like a million bucks. maybe placebo, maybe i'm deficient, maybe it is just tasty
- mental - do I feel rested or agitated? waking up excited or dreadful? what is my willingness to train today
anyway this is by far the worst blog but the most exciting one. it's late so I'm going to shut it down for now. until tomorrow