“Like I need you to breathe
Wash over til I come clean
When I feel darker than night
You say I’m faster than light”
Our ability to adapt is something that continues to amaze me. Even though I’m going to be mounting off about the physical adaptation of our bodies, it also applies to our minds as well.
Last night at The Box, I was observing two athletes performing a specific movement. Kat always says that if you’re one centimetre off at 50 percent, then you’re about 10 inches off closer to 100 percent (paraphrasing of course). The guys are both pretty strong athletes, so even if they’re off at any point in the movement, they can make up for it.
One of the guys’ hips seemed to shift to the right when the weight got heavier during the movement. Though I’m no doctor, I know that was an imbalance somewhere – one that could’ve been caused by an injury that wasn’t properly rehabbed. It’s hard to paint the picture for you as to what it might look like; however, imagine sitting on a computer chair at your desk with your chest facing the computer, but your pelvis is turned about 45 degrees to the right.
Whatever the reason for this, his body had learned to still lift heavy weight despite the imbalance. Though this will prevent the athlete from reaching his “true” maximum numbers in the lift, it’s amazing to see what the body can still do.
In 2017 post Irma, I injured my left knee. I hadn’t worked out in a WHILE, so when the opportunity came up to play football, well…you know I was there. I was a little frustrated during the game so I was running hard – and fast…like Flash. (I had to I’m sorry, lol.) At one point, I planted my left foot into the turf to do a juke move to the right and I heard the pop in my knee. I walked off the field on my own. I had a shoot that afternoon. Since that day, the injury has haunted me.
I guess it’s also my fault. Feeling like I was Wolverine, I didn’t rehab as well as I should have. Even present day when I’m doing certain lifts and the weight is really heavy, my body naturally shifts the weight off of my left knee. After the injury, my body was doing that naturally to protect my knee, but because I wasn’t aware that it was happening, I never corrected it. (Bad body, bad! lol)
So that’s something that I’m really intentional with now – warming up correctly. I’m also focusing during lifts so that the weight is distributed evenly on both legs. If I don’t, then the adaptation my body took to protect one knee will only cause an injury to my hip or lower back or somewhere else that is being overworked.
Sometimes, I’m just amazed when I’m watching videos of myself and I can see how I’m so unaware of the shift my body makes at certain weights. It’s really not something you can notice unless you’re recording yourself or someone is watching you. Your body adapts so well that you feel perfectly fine, until the weight gets too heavy and the one centimetre turns to 10 inches and you miss the lift.
Eh. This might not mean anything to any of you, because it’s a whole bunch of weightlifting jumbo. But if it helps for you to get something today: Imagine all the behaviour patterns that you have today that might just be an adaptation of an emotional injury you sustained – things that seem completely normal to you, until someone points out the imbalance.
You might want to flip out, lol. But consider that you can have an imbalance and try being more aware, yeah?
*Yo, Siri, play FTL by James Droll*
