“Thank goodness it’s just fractured, not broken”

 

Oh. My. Goodness. My kids know that is probably the easiest way to get me all worked up.

Broke is fractured is broke. No difference. The exception is a stress fracture, which is still a break but usually an incomplete break. In other words, it doesn’t go all the way across the bone. Unless it does, and then it is a fracture. Or a break. Whatever.

Think of a stress fracture this way—if your bone is a tree trunk, then a stress fracture could mean that it is a crack in the bark. Usually stress fractures are the result of repeated stress, hence the name.

If you hurt on the outside border of your foot, about midway down, then it is likely that you have a stress fracture. Or at least the beginnings of one. It’s common in runners and those that jump a lot.

It really isn’t just one thing that causes a stress fracture. It’s the accumulation of impacts that begins to break down the outer surface of the bone. The solution isn’t exactly what anyone wants to hear. You either have to rest or wear a boot. Either way, you’re out of your sport for a while.

But here’s the thing—the earlier you begin treatment (rest/boot), the sooner you will get back to your sport. If you try and run through it, it will get worse. Let me repeat that. It. Will. Get. Worse.

And that’s not what anyone wants to hear. The more you try to play through it, the longer it will be before you get back. Some of those even end up needing surgery. That’s what can happen when you ignore medical advice.

While I’m on it, let’s talk about shin splints a bit. I’ve seen all the “treatments” that are out there for treating shin splints. Icing. Rolling your foot on a soda can. Taping.

Here’s my (strongly held) opinion as a physical therapist and athletic trainer that has been treating athletes for almost 47 years:  If you don’t change the way the foot hits the ground, you are only treating symptoms.

Addressing the biomechanical issues of the foot is necessary to solve the problem, to treat the “why” of shin splints. I’m not saying that treating symptoms is unneeded. We do it all the time. But treating the cause is more important.

Most of the time we are addressing pronation of the foot. Those with flat feet especially have problems.

Shoes are a huge part of it. Because of the risk of litigation, I’ll not mention by name those big, cushy “shoes” that pretty much everybody has a pair of, but those things are terrible. Yes, they feel good when you put them on, but I don’t think they were ever meant to wear all day.  They just don’t give you enough support.

And slides. Sure, there are some slides that have a little bit of arch, but for the most part, they’re terrible. Running shoes, or what my generation calls “tennis” shoes, are the best. Running shoe technology has revolutionized shoe technology in general.

Hiking boots? Completely changed by employing running shoe technology. It used to be that you wore a pair of hiking boots for a couple of years before they were broken in enough to be even remotely comfortable. Now days, you can hike with them immediately off the shelf.

Even dress shoes have embraced some of the running shoe technology, building a better arch and more comfortable foot bed. Now, there are shoes for everything but it’s mostly the outside of the shoe—the inside is still basically a running shoe.

Whatever the problem, if the feet aren’t happy, nobody is happy. So see a professional (and not your local shoe store) for advice if there is a problem.

Great Responsibility

 

With greatness comes great responsibility. That’s my own take on a quote used in a Spiderman movie but originally uttered by Voltaire that goes “with great power comes great responsibility.”

Charles Barkley was once quoted as saying “I am not a role model.” Sir Charles has since hedged on that or maybe he just clarified a misunderstanding.

We are all role models for someone. You may not choose that, but somebody, somewhere is looking at you, watching how you act, seeing how you treat other people.

I’ve told the story here before about the time that a buddy and I were doing something we shouldn’t have been doing when a young mom nearby told her child “don’t be like them.”

It’s stuck with me. Little eyes are watching. You don’t have to be a sports star or famous person. You might be just a teenager on a team. But somebody is watching you, wanting to be like you.

The whole campaign “Be like Mike” is all about that. A generation of kids started driving to the basket with their tongues wagging and wearing Air Jordans. Michael Jordan was not perfect, but he tried to always be a good role model.

Everybody wants to fit in, to be liked. But going with the crowd is easy. Being yourself can be difficult. It’s hard to be different from the crowd but all the great ones do. 

Lebron James has his detractors and people seem to argue incessantly whether he or MJ is the greatest basketball player of all time. I don’t see him getting into that much. He just lets his game do the talking.

But people like Lebron are worthy of being a role model. He’s married to his high school girlfriend and you never hear stories about him being in the wrong place doing the wrong things. He’s built schools, paid college tuition for strangers, and regularly pays it forward. Shaquille O’Neal, same thing.

When Warrick Dunn was a rookie in the NFL, he established the Homes for the Holidays program which provides homes for single parent households that are struggling. Deshaun Watson, quarterback for the Cleveland Browns, has made some mistakes in his life, but he gave his first NFL paycheck to two ladies that worked in the team’s cafeteria who were struggling.

And Deshaun still spends a considerable amount of time and money with Habitat for Humanity. Interesting fact:  Deshaun grew up in a house provided by Habitat for Humanity that Warrick Dunn paid for.

What I’m getting at is this—It’s ok to emulate positive characteristics that you see in others. If you see kindness, make that part of who you are. If you see strong character, copy that in how you behave.

But don’t copy the bad side. Don’t be selfish. Don’t be negative. Encourage. Lift up. Take bits and pieces of the good things that you see in people and make them your own.

I heard Pro Bowler Ray Lewis tell a young group “show me your friends and I’ll show you your future.” We become a combination of all the things that we see. And that includes the people and things that we choose to surround ourselves with.

If you want to be great in anything, you must do four things. You must be coachable. You must be mentally strong. You must exude a positive vibe. You must be a great teammate. That’s it. It’s a simple formula.

If you see those things in others, great. Be like them. But at the end of the day, don’t look around for someone to be like, be you.

I'm glad you woke up this morning

 

You woke up this morning. I hope that is a good thing for you. About 150,000 people didn’t. Wake up, that is.

Since this time yesterday, about 50,000 people have died of heart disease. Another 27,000 died from cancer.  Those two are the biggies. In the last 24 hours.

Since yesterday, 5000 babies have died.  8100 people have died in accidents. Almost 2000 people died of suicide and another 1000 were killed by somebody else.

OK. Maybe I have your attention now. 

Let’s skip the big ones for a moment. 5000 babies died since yesterday. Some of you instantly had the thought that most of those were in undeveloped countries.  Places where babies starve and hospitals don’t exist. There is truth in that.

But that happens in the good ol’ USA at an alarming rate. The infant mortality rate in these United States is 5.6 deaths for 1000 births.  In other words, we don’t rank at the very top of developed nations. The reasons for this are complicated but the bottom line is that we could do better.

Suicide claimed 2000 lives since yesterday.  In this country, about 18 of those are veterans of military services.  That’s per day. Every day. Eighteen people, mostly young men.

That’s almost twice the rate of suicides than in the general population.  It’s better than it used to be. It hasn’t been long since it was 21. 

Now back to the biggies. Heart disease. Cancer. Oh, and respiratory diseases comes in at over 10,000 per day.

Let’s look at cancer. In my lifetime, a diagnosis of cancer was a death notice. Leukemia? You aren’t going to make it. Most other cancers? Your life expectancy was short.

Today, it is totally different.  The 5 year rate of survival for all types of leukemia is 65.7%.  And prostate, thyroid, testicular, breast, and colon cancers have a 100% cure rate with early detection. Certain skin cancers, including melanoma—same thing.

I can’t stress enough how important that early detection is. Annual visits to your Primary Care Physician that include a prostate exam, colonscopies, breast self-exams and mammograms, testicle self-exams—all components of early detection.

I’m outside a lot and strongly advocate for an annual visit to the dermatologist. I saw mine last week. I had several small spots on my bald spot frozen off. That’s prevention. The scary thing about skin cancers is that they start innocent enough, a dark mole, maybe something we consider an aging spot, but then they migrate (metastasize) to other areas. And maybe those areas aren’t so easily detected. Until maybe it’s too late.

Which brings us to heart disease and pulmonary disease. For the most part, those are considered “lifestyle” diseases. What we eat, what we do, how we live our lives determines our chances of getting those killers.

You can’t affect your gene pool and maybe you can’t change your environment very much, but there are so many things that you can change that will decrease your chances of getting heart disease or pulmonary disease.

There are lots of things, actually. Exercise daily. Eat healthier. Stop smoking. Treat your blood pressure issues. Control your diabetes. Get help when you need it.

We, especially us men, won’t admit to emotional health issues. But four times more men commit suicide than women. In other words, in this country, for every five suicides, four are men. We’ve got a problem guys.

The big question is this—what are you doing today to make sure you wake up tomorrow?

The Best Exercise You Can Do

 

I know, I know.  You’ve heard it from me before. Too many times, I’m sure. But you know what they say—you’ve got to hear something 7 times before it really sinks in.

OK. Here it is. “The best exercise is the one you will do.” You can quote me on that. I mean, it seems simple enough.  Anything is better than nothing, right?

It really doesn’t matter what you do, just as long as you do it. Jogging, lifting, paddling, hiking, walking. Tennis, biking, paddleboarding, and yes, even pickleball.

It helps to find your why. Good health? Better fitness? Solving those aches and pains? If you know your why, you will find your way. Oh, there are the gym rats who really need no motivation. They can’t go a day, much less a week, without exercising. I fall into that category.

I don’t know if it is physical need, mental need, or just a habit. I do know that there have been times when my wife would tell me to go get on the bike, that it was obvious that I needed to release some energy.

I honestly believe that my mental health is tied to regular exercise. And there is research to support that proposition.

It’s particularly true on the mountain bike. I can be having a really bad day (yeah, I get those too) and can go hop on the bike and all the cares and problems fade away.

Part of that is the distraction. If you’re flying down a singletrack on a mountain bike, you really can’t be thinking about anything else. It demands your full attention. Let you mind wander and BOOM, you’re down.

It has a way of cleansing your mind. The problems that I had when I climbed on the bicycle don’t seem as bad when I get off. That vacation from worries definitely helps.

This week, a friend and I were discussing his difficulty sleeping. He’s having some health problems and his pain seems more intense at night. And he has a lot on his mind these days.

I told him about a get-to-sleep trick I’ve been using for years. If I’m having trouble getting to sleep, I play basketball. In my head.

I played basketball most of my life. Into my 50’s, I was still playing in pickup games. Tuesday and Thursday at Maryville College. Sunday evenings at Maryville High. I would still be playing but my knees won’t let me.

In my imaginary games, I’m all the things I never was on the real court. Good at defense. Make every shot. Even block a shot every once in a while. In my mind, I’m making all the moves that I thought I used to be good at. And the next thing I know, the morning alarm is going off.

My point in all this is that you can use your exercise program to relieve the stresses of the day. You can’t tell me that a walk in Jarvis Park won’t bring you some peace. It’s guaranteed. Or putting a lot of effort into the exercise of your choice.

It’s also beyond argument—daily exercise improves your health. We all know that. We know what we’re supposed to do, we just don’t always do it.

So, here’s the deal. Find something you enjoy doing. And go do it.

Yes, you do need to do some strength training as you get older (and younger if you’re playing competitive athletics) and it always helps to stretch daily. But if you enjoy it, you will do it. Don’t worry about finding time. If it is a priority for you, you will find the time.

And like Nike always said, just do it.

Three Little Words

 

Three little words. Hard to say for some. Profound, when said sincerely. And oh so important. I can remember the first time I ever heard a coach tell his team “I love you.” It was Don Story, Head Football Coach at Maryville High. I remember later hearing Punky Dalton tell his Alcoa football team the same thing.

That was a bit different for me. I played high school football for Loudon’s legendary Coach Chig Ratledge. He never told us that he loved us. We were all a bit afraid of him. He was probably 5’7” and 120 pounds but he could stop you in your tracks with just a look.

Coach Ratledge was pretty unique in a lot of ways. First off, he never played football. In high school, he played drums in the school band. His love for football manifested itself in college, where he was the team’s manager and, obviously, an astute student of the game.

A master motivator, Coach Ratledge also had a brilliant football mind. He was the first coach in this area to embrace the triple option. Coached it to the 1969 state championship. Coached it so well that the University of Houston had him teach it to their football coaches.

I last saw him at his 91^st birthday party, just months before he died. In a room full of former Loudon stars, he still had that look, despite being bent over at the waist from back pain. On that night, I bet even big ol’ Bruce Wilkerson, UT All-American and NFL star, would have ran through a wall for Coach Ratledge.

And everyone in that room knew that he loved them. When I was inducted into the Blount County Sports Hall of Fame, Coach Ratledge came for the ceremony. Of course, I was proud to have my family there, but having Coach Ratledge there, well, that meant the world to me.

Back to that 91^st birthday party—his daughter had arranged it and invited all the Loudon football greats. Plus me. I was decent, and I did play on the ’69 championship team, but I didn’t belong in that room.

In addition to Big Bruce, you had Lonnie Hawkins, Gordo Watson, Jackie Lefler, Bubba Brown, Bud Guider, Yancy Hampton, Ray Simmons—a long list of Loudon football greats. But Coach Ratledge wanted me there. He made it clear to his daughter.

You see, nobody in that room took more away from football and Coach Ratledge. I was an underachieving high school sophomore not even sure who I was when I overhead Coach Ratledge tell a practice visitor that I could be “a good one” if I worked at it.  It was truly transformative. He set me on the path to a lot of the success I’ve had.

Oh, I was still afraid of the man. One game my senior year got rescheduled to Saturday because of rain on Friday. I had to tell Coach Ratledge that I had to work that morning. I bagged groceries at White Store #32.  Coach Ratledge wanted all of our focus to be on the football game. On game day, he wanted all of your attention on the game at hand. I was scared to death but felt I had to tell him.

I walked into his office in the basement of the high school, probably shaking and barely able to speak. But Coach Ratledge didn’t criticize me at all. He knew that my family needed me to work. He knew that I was fully committed to football.

He didn’t say much, but he let me know it was OK. He loved me but I’m pretty sure would never have told me that. “I love you” was just not something he told his players, but we knew. By the way, we won that game. Beat Lenoir City 48-7.

I’ve heard lots of coaches since then tell their teams that they loved them. The ones I knew best, Tim Hammontree, George Quarles, Derek Hunt—they said it and meant it.

Kids, it may not mean much right now, but a coach that loves you and means it wants nothing more than your success. They want nothing more than for you to become a better person because of your sports participation. Same thing at home. Today, tell someone that you love them and mean it. Somebody needs to hear that from you.