You can spend too much of your time focused on the outcomes of your next season. The wins, the losses, your performances, and things of that sort can often distract us. For many sports, getting better naturally comes down to being able to stay healthy for an entire season. The most significant winner is usually the person who can do that for the most consecutive seasons. Why do you not focus more on this? Countless pro athletes have had promising careers ruined by the fact they were not able to stay healthy.
Don’t Be Fooled By Just Working Hard
Athletes can fool themselves into thinking that the only way to succeed is to work harder. This form of thinking can lead you to believe that the only way you can get better is if you do more and more. Sometimes this can be true, but often all we have to do is find a way to stay healthy. When we focus on this, we give ourselves confidence that we never had before because we no longer have the interruption of injury.
Injuries are massive obstacles because they stop you from getting better. Injuries bring much of your training to a complete halt hurting you physically. Injuries also come with a lot of mental baggage that you don’t need. Many times you are physically healed, but mentally you are still damaged causing the injury to last even longer.
How to Focus On Staying Healthy
1. Take Nothing For Granted
If you have an injury, do not sit there and think that it will just magically go away. Do everything in your power to find out why something is hurting and then fix it.
Athletes always say, “I thought it was nothing” then the injury ends up being a season-ending one. Take care of your body and take every ache and pain seriously. This way no small injuries slip through the cracks and become large ones.
2. Think of Quality Over Quantity
Whether you are at practice, in the weight room, or doing pre-rehab/rehab, the goal should always be to do quality work. Doing more is just for the sake of doing more is not better. Have a plan and decide exactly what you need, then make everything count.
3. Know When To Bow Out
See when you are at that point where you are risking hurting yourself. You must learn what it means to live to fight another day too. Just because you are not in a good position to do it this week, does not say you will not be able to it next week.
Athletes never like to back down, so this one can be tough. Personally, I hate even the thought of backing down from a workout, but I realized that it’s part of being a smart athlete. You can only push yourself for so long so make sure you wait for the right times.
4. Learn The Body
The human body is your toolkit as an athlete. A tool man always takes care of his tools and wants to know more about them. Few athletes genuinely study everything about their body. Still be on a mission to know more about how your incredible machine works. The more you learn, the healthier you will stay.
5. Ask as Many Questions as You Can
When you are getting treated from a professional, try and ask questions and understand everything that they are doing. You want to make yourself known so that when the professionals are not around, you can still help yourself stay healthy.
6. Put in The Extra Time on Your Weak Body Parts
A lot of time we put in extra work on things that we are already good at. Spend time on the things you are weak at. You will probably hate it the most, but it will bring you the most improvement, and help eliminate weak links in the body. It’s not to say that you should always focus on your weaknesses; but if a muscle in your body is weak and causing your whole body problems, it needs to be addressed.
KHO Health was acquired by was acquire by 9INE POINT in the summer of 2019 and is now referred to as 9INE POINT Health.
