Dealing with the heat

I’ve written this column before. Several times. I’m probably going to use some of the same language in here. I avoided going back to read previous columns on this topic so I wouldn’t be influenced by those.


Folks, it’s hot out there. Our athletic trainers have had to work extra hard this week to keep our young athletes safe and healthy. TSSAA has a list of guidelines that we are to follow when the Heat Index (a combination of air temperature and humidity) reaches certain levels.


I can tell you that our standards are even more stringent than those of TSSAA and most of our efforts this time of year are directed at dealing with the heat. Frequent breaks. Water available throughout practice. Acclimatization periods.


We have a really dynamic student trainer program in place at the high schools here. Those students have all participated in a week long camp in the summer and are a valuable asset to our athletic teams. They often become the eyes and ears of our Athletic Trainers.


They are taught what to watch for and are constantly observing our athletes to see if they are struggling with the heat. Red face. Labored breathing. Excessive sweating. Struggling physically. That’s when we want to get them, pull them out of practice, and get them cooled off.


If it gets to the point where the athlete is stumbling around, seems confused, or seems “out of it,” we develop a sense of urgency to get them cooled off. At each of our high schools we have a tub ready, filled with ice and water, to put an overheated athlete in.


It’s called “cold water immersion” and it is absolutely the best way to deal quickly and effectively with heat related problems. It’s cheap, it’s easy, and it’s important.


If someone stops sweating or becomes lethargic or listless, we have a medical emergency on our hands. Cold water immersion as quickly as possible and call an ambulance. The body is cooking itself and systems are shutting down to try to save themselves.


The key is prevention and prevention starts with hydration. Plenty of fluids, using both water and sports drinks is essential. It can’t be all water. You need the electrolytes that you get from sports drinks. And it is important to not just drink when you are thirsty or when you are practicing—it is important to be fully hydrated all the time. That means you drink all day.


If you are participating in a hot weather sport (or other activity), you should be drinking enough to where you have to pee regularly. And the color of your urine is important. It should be clear and light yellow. If it is bright yellow, you are not hydrated enough. Cloudy and you’re already in trouble.


All this is important away from sports too. I’m reminded of this on hot Saturday afternoons when I’m trying to do way too many chores in the hot sun. I’ve already rode my bike for quite a few miles that morning so I’m probably already a bit dehydrated.


The bike can be deceptive. You are moving so there is always a breeze so you really don’t feel the heat too much, but that also means that sweat is evaporating more quickly, dehydrating you more quickly.


Since my work hours during football season stretch from dawn to dusk, I’ve got a lot of catching up to do on Saturday afternoon and no choice but to do it during the hottest part of the day. I try to do what I insist that others do—drink lots of fluids and take regular breaks, but I still find myself behind on the hydration side. And once you get behind, it’s hard to catch up.

For a man your age...

I’m hearing it more frequently. “You look good for a man your age.” Or “you sure are active, for a man your age.” Not too long ago, I might have taken a tiny bit of offense at that. Not anymore. I now accept it for the compliment it was intended to be.


But then just this week, I picked up a men’s magazine and on the cover in big, bold print was “Staying Healthy and Active as You Get Older.” The problem is, it offered articles for men in their 30’s, in their 40’s, and in their 50’s.


What? Does the pursuit of good health and an active lifestyle stop for men when they reach their 60’s? It sure seems like it does. Now I realize I am not in the demographic for this magazine. By this set of articles alone, I’m pretty sure it is intended for men in their 20’s and 30’s. They didn’t so much as say that but it sure seemed clear to me.


And I’m alright with that. There are lots of magazines focused on older men.

Like….or….maybe….oh well, I guess they don’t exist. I guess when you get into your 60’s and 70’s (a decade that is staring me in the face right now), you’re supposed to be inactive and unhealthy.

Then today, a work colleague who happens to run ultramarathons was told by a health care provider that she was too old to run. That she really needed to quit thinking of herself as an athlete. Oh, and she’s 35.


Are you kidding me? I hardly even remember 35. I certainly thought of myself as an athlete at 35. I remember that my kids were into everything and I was right there with them.


But I’m not going to list the things that I was into in my 30’s and 40’s and beyond. To do so would be either bragging or complaining. But I will tell you that I played basketball until I was 59. And unless this is the first time you’ve read my column, you know I ride bikes. A lot. And I’m 66.


What’s a guy to do? Where do active, older adults go to for advice? It was at that moment that I realized that maybe that was something that I need to write about. I’m in that demographic. I pursue good health and an active lifestyle with a vengeance. I know what it’s like to be in my 7^th decade and still out there doing stuff, having fun. So I’m going to write about what it takes to be healthy and active in your 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s.


In your 60’s, your joints are starting to fall apart. More and more people are getting hip and knee replacements than ever before. That doesn’t mean that you need to take it easy—quite the contrary. Getting healthy joint replacements means you can do things that you maybe haven’t done for a while.


Your relationships are settled and your emotional health may be at its peak. People will constantly ask you when you’re going to retire but you don’t have to retire until you want to. You know who you are and you really get to be that person.


In your 70’s, don’t let others decide what you’re going to do. Travel. Do all those things that you didn’t have time for when you were running the rat race. Lift weights. Unless you’ve worked hard at it, you’ve lost a fair amount of muscle mass. It’s more important now for you to do strength training than it was when you were in your 30’s.


In your 80’s, your balance is not as good as it once was. You need to do some simple things every day, like stand on one leg with your eyes closed. March up and down on a pillow (or other unstable surface). You need to stretch more. You need to exercise daily. Always wanted to paint or do woodwork? Now’s the time. Follow your passions and yes, even follow your dreams.


In your 90’s? Enjoy everything. Enjoy every day, every moment. Do what you want to do? Heck yeah. As for me, I’ve got a long bike trip planned for when I’m in my 90’s. May even ride across the country.

You've got to play something

If you have paid close attention through the years, you might remember that I had three rules for my kids when they were growing up.  We would often recite those on the way into school in the mornings. I can remember pulling in to Ft. Craig School and together reciting those rules.


Be good. Be smart. Play something. I want to focus on that “playing something” today.


Tennessee is one of the most obese states in America. Our kids are obese. Our adults are obese. You can read all kind of statistics but the consensus appears to be that about half of Tennesseeans are significantly overweight.


We also know that active children become active adults. A sedentary lifestyle begins young and begins at home. Get home, have dinner, settle down in front of the TV or computer. That seems too often to be the American way.


A better way is to get out and do something. Walk around the neighborhood. Shoot hoops in the driveway. Go to the park. Ride bikes. Just move. It doesn’t have to be sports or part of a team or anything like that.


Let’s go back to that parks thing. We have great parks around here. Our community is laced with Greenway trails. You don’t have to go far to find one. We have parks with basketball courts and parks with wide open spaces. Tennis courts and softball fields. We have pavilions and picnic tables everywhere.


You can even drop in at our library, which is found mere feet from one of the Greenway trails and our beautiful downtown lake. One of the amazing things about the Greenway trail is that you can go for miles with very few road crossings. The planners did an awesome job.


Let’s talk about sports a bit. One of the most obvious ways for our kids to stay active is to play sports. There are leagues or organizations for just about everything. Basketball, football, flag football, soccer, softball, baseball, gymnastics, swimming, volleyball, wrestling, and on and on.


My personal parenting advice was to play everything. Dr. Jim Andrews, probably the most renowned sports orthopedist in the world, argues strongly against sports specialization for kids. Playing just one sport at an early age is just a bad idea. Kids don’t develop the all-round athleticism that will serve them as they get older.


There are three arguments here. One is that athleticism thing. I’ve said it before that my son loved gymnastics at an early age and that it was the balance beam that he enjoyed the most. The balance beam is a girl’s event but you will never convince me that part of his balance and athleticism didn’t come from that.


The second is that there is no way that you will know what sport your child is most suited for at a young age. You’ve got to let them play different things until either their passion or their body dictates focusing on one or two sports.


My son was always going to be a football player. His body dictated it. He loved basketball but after quitting basketball his junior year in high school he put on 30 pounds of muscle and made himself into a Division 1 football player. My daughter discovered volleyball as a high school sophomore almost by accident but then discovered that she not only loved it but that she was good at it. She also went on to a successful college career in volleyball.


The third point is that early sports specialization leads to an increase in injuries. Young bodies need different movement patterns to properly develop. They need to run, kick, throw, jump…move! Research clearly shows that avoiding sports specialization early on definitely decreases injuries.


So remember rule three:  Play something.

How clean is your coffee pot?

This is really how this happened.  Let me back up a minute. I love to get to my clinic early, long before anyone else shows up. I set up my computer, put up my gym bag, unlock the door, turn on the lights, and make a pot of coffee.

Before I make that pot of coffee, I need to retrieve water from the other side of the gym, where there is a sink. This is the coffee pot in our reception area so it brews several pots a day. I usually take just a few minutes to clean it up from the day’s residue.


On this particular day, it wasn’t too bad. I started just to do a quick rinse, thinking “this pot is clean enough, I’ll clean it another day.” But then this thought hit me—good enough just isn’t good enough.

I’ll go back even further, maybe 50+ years ago. One of my dad’s favorite bits of advice was “anything worth doing is worth doing well.”


So back to this day: I took the few extra seconds to clean the pot. It is important to me for it to start the day clean. I believe people expect that. And that oh-so-simple little task made me think about those little things that we need to do every day.


I’ve heard a lot of coaches talk about the details. The right footwork. Consistency. Doing the little things right every time. In team sports, it is important for many reasons, but if you’re doing those little things, then you are more reliable as a teammate.


In individual sports, it can be just as important. Start out with the wrong step in tennis and you’re a half step slower getting to the ball. Don’t execute the turn just right in a swim meet and you might have lost the race. Step wrong in a long jump and you get disqualified. The little things.


I’m a big list maker. My chores at home start with a list. I will bust it hard on the weekend to get everything on that list done. My wife and I have a pretty good deal—she can put anything on the list she wants to but I get to prioritize it and nothing gets added once I get going.


I’m the same way at work. Somebody saw my laptop this week. On the perimeter of the keyboard are all these notes (to myself) about individual tasks that need to be done. Those are my high priority items.


On my desk (which, truth be known, is really just a countertop separating our clinic from our gym) you will find a rather large number of similar notes. Some have been there so long that they are worn and tattered. Those are either lower priority or projects without end.


When someone sees my desk, they might remind me that there are digital forms of post-it notes that I can put on my computer. I used to have one of those. It didn’t work for me. I need the physical act of peeling up one of those notes, wadding it up, and throwing it in the trash. I get a lot of satisfaction from that.


What this gives me is a vehicle to remind me to take care of the details, to pay attention to the little things. It might be a call that I need to make or a thank you that I need to extend. Looking at it, I’m reminded to wear my black polo to the football jamboree, to order a new book on Amazon, to set up another meeting.


I don’t ignore the big things. I’m a “Big Picture” kind of guy. But I’ve learned that to accomplish the Big Things, you’ve got to do the Little Things. You’ve got to pay attention to the details.


Clean out the coffee pot? Here’s the thing—a grubby coffee pot might be how someone judges me, judges my office. So before I even see them, they might have formed an opinion about me or my clinic.


So…what are the Little Things in your life? What are the details of your day that deserve your attention?

How often do you get to see real heroes?

This is going to be a hard column to write. I’m often asked where I get ideas for this space. Somehow, something always comes up. This one jumped up and hit me in the heart, so I knew that I had to write it. I want to talk about heroes.


I can remember growing up that most of my heroes were sports stars. Johnny Unitas. Dick Butkus. Julius Erving. I grew up with the space program and John Glenn was certainly one of my heroes.


I was a teenager during the Vietnam War, a controversial war at best. I can’t say that our country’s leaders at the time were heroic to me. My friends that went to southeast Asia were surely heroes but when they came home, sometimes scarred and forever changed, we didn’t really think of them as such.


Growing up where I did, it never dawned on my that someone with a huge intellect could be a hero. Albert Eintstein and e=mc² was just goofy professor-type stuff to me. My vocabulary certainly wasn’t sufficient to understand how smart some people could really be. And that those were the people most likely to change the world.


My heroes tended to run along the lines of those that escaped poverty and mere existence, through sports, adventure, or business. The only politician that seemed heroic was John F. Kennedy.


But we are surrounded by heroes. A law enforcement officer that puts on that shield and carries that gun into the night…that person is a hero and worthy of our admiration. We have no idea what that is like but it takes something beyond bravery. Maybe a strong desire to protect those that under certain circumstances cannot protect themselves.


I find it a bit ironic that growing up, a lot of little kids want to be a fireman or an astronaut, or a sports star. Things change and those kids grow up to be accountants and entrepreneurs—admirable, even necessary professions but they don’t sound as dashing.


I believe firemen are real heroes. Think back to 9/11. There’s a very clear visual of people running from the destructing twin towers of the World Trade Center. Yet, running the other way, into the face of trouble, are the firemen.


It’s what they do. In situations where others find it best to flee, they head straight into the burning building or to the danger itself. If you ask, they’ll tell you that it is part of the job. If you keep asking, they will tell you that carrying a child out of a burning house is worth the risk.


Our military personnel are worthy of consideration as heroes. Especially those that have been in combat situations. Each and every one of them put themselves in the line of fire of somebody trying to kill them. And they do it because of their belief in our nation, our people. Because it is their duty.


But let me tell you about a different kind of hero. One that dwelled among us. Who was part of our community. A family man. A fellow that started a business to provide for his family and quietly went along to be a good man. The father of four daughters. Married for almost 28 years.


When two of those daughters were caught in a riptide in the Gulf of Mexico, he jumped in to try and save them. He saved the youngest then went back for the next one. After pushing her to safety with everything he had in him, a wave came along and sapped him of whatever strength he had left. Resuscitation efforts on the beach were unsuccessful.


I didn’t know this man well but we had met and chatted on several occasions. He lost his life on July 14^th but he saved his daughters. In the words of his wife “you did good, Freddie. You saved your family.”


Rest in Peace, Fred Pepperman. You are truly a hero.