Learn to LISTEN to Your Body!

By now, I’m sure most of you have heard about Lea’s injury and I wanted to take this unfortunate situation and make sure each of you can learn from it.

Playing with a deep thigh bruise or a taped up sprained ankle has come to be expected in sports…it’s called playing hurt. Most every athlete has done it before. They are then branded as “warriors” and there is a certain badge of honor associated with doing so. However, there is a major difference between “playing hurt” and “playing injured.” Lea participated in Monday's soccer practice with what she thought was a pulled a muscle in her calf. It was bad enough to cause her to have a pronounced limp when I saw her on Sunday afternoon.

I recently read about a college runner whose Olympic hopes were crushed by a broken foot. The young woman competed with the injury for two months before it was finally diagnosed. It was a heroic effort that drew the following praise from her coaches: “Only the real special ones can do this kind of thing.” There's that badge of honor thing.

Both the runner’s toughness and the applause it won reinforces that the new breed of female athlete has caught up with their male counterpart in receiving proper respect for athletic ability…but the downside is that we often demand too much from our athletes, particularly our girls. It’s easy to fall in love with the idea of the wounded warrior playing through the pain. I know first-hand, because I’ve allowed Liz to do it on more than one occasion.

This new breed of female athlete doesn’t think anything of “gutting it out” and playing through the pain, which is probably what Lea was doing.

Another example to help illustrate this dilemma is Amy Steadman’s story. Amy is a former member of the University of North Carolina’s powerhouse women’s soccer team. Over two years, Steadman, a fearless competitor nicknamed “the Killer” by teammates, ruptured the ACL in her right knee three times. After each surgery, she returned to the field as quickly as she could, forgoing the rest and strength training that might have protected her knee. When her ACL ruptured for the third time, the surgeon told her there was “nothing in there left to fix.” Her playing career is now over. Steadman suffers chronic pain and only in her early 20s, moves “like an old woman.”

Where am I going with all of this?

Don’t push yourself physically beyond what your body is telling you. LISTEN to your body. It's better to skip a practice (or game) and rest an injury than to risk a far greater injury as a result of pushing yourself.

Please keep Lea in your prayers.

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