Don't be a Jerk

 

Not too long ago, there was a Letter to the Editor of the local newspaper complaining about a bicycle rider on the Greenbelt that frightened a walker (she fell).  Apparently, this rider didn’t stop to check on them either.

Let me say first that I wasn’t there, and I know there are often two sides to every story.  With that being said, the behavior described by the writer was totally unacceptable.

Once, years ago, I wrote that I didn’t think bicycles belonged on the Greenbelt. I was advocating for bike lanes. It was pointed out to me rather quickly that the original grant for the Greenbelt was engineered by the bike riders as a way to bike-commute around our cities. In other words, we have the bicyclists to thank for our Greenbelt.

I’ve had many arguments about bicycles on roads but the fact remains that it is legal in Tennessee to be on most roads. That doesn’t mean that it smart to ride most roads, just that it’s legal. There are certain roads that just aren’t safe for bicycles. Anywhere in town. Montvale Road, Morganton Road, Old Niles Ferry, and others—until you get way out in the county.

There aren’t really many roads with a shoulder adequate for bicycle riders, and even when you find them, they might narrow down quickly to no shoulder at all. And all the glass and debris on the shoulder guarantees a flat.

I don’t know a single road cyclist that has not been threatened or harassed by someone in a motorized vehicle. Lots of folks simply hate everyone on a bicycle, despite the fact that we are spouses and parents and somebody’s child.

So we have a dilemma—the walkers don’t want us on the Greenbelt and the cars don’t want us on the road.

It used to be that you could ride out in the country. South Blount County and Rocky Branch have always been favorites of mine. But now, there is so much development that traffic even in some of our most remote areas is intolerable.

And with increased traffic, you get more harassment. Too many people see a bicycle on the road and embrace their worst behaviors. A group I was with one time got harassed by a man in a truck bearing the markings of a local business. The problem was that we were riding according to the law (no more than two abreast, riding toward the right side of the lane) and this guy had plenty of room to pass.

For whatever reason, he felt compelled to dog-cuss us for being on his (expletive deleted) road. I wanted to tell him that it is likely that I pay far more in taxes to use these roads than he does. I did and I still do.

I’ve always ridden with a group of riders, knowing that there was some safety in numbers. But because of the traffic and trucks and some other issues, I’m not riding much on the roads.

It’s sad, really. I have great memories of riding with a cadre of friends on remote and scenic roads. Road biking in a group is a special event. You are really working together as a team to help each other, draft off of each other, and ride safely.

Oh, I’m still on the bike. A lot. But it’s mostly mountain biking now, which is really a return to my roots. I was a mountain biker before I had my first real mountain bike. Heck, go back far enough and you would find me riding the streets of downtown Memphis while my wife took our only car to work.

But back to that guy that (allegedly, but probably) ran the lady off the Greenbelt. I still insist that the Greenbelt is not the place for serious bikers. We’re just going too fast. But for casual riders, it is a great place to ride and I will fight for their right to do so.

You will even find me on it from time to time. My 10 year old grandson loves to ride it on Sunday afternoon. And if you haven’t been on the segment from Alcoa Elementary School to Clayton, then you have missed out. It is spectacular.

But use common sense and courtesy on the Greenbelt. It is no place to race or even go fast. As you approach walkers, well before you get to them gently call out “on your left,” and slow down as you pass.

And if you do happen to frighten someone, please stop, apologize, and help them. People tend to put all bikers into the same pot so that person might hate me because you were a jerk.

My Little Tree

 

I’ve mentioned the little tree behind the building where I park for work a few times. It was emblematic of all the changing seasons. Budded out in the spring. Green in the summer. Colorful in the fall. Barren in the winter. I’ve used it as a metaphor for life.

 

The bigger Maple trees in the parking lot in front of the building are already magnificent in their red attire. And they’ve not yet reached their peak. I had a quick trip to the mountains last weekend, and I can tell you that the foliage is already showing off its fall colors.

 

Folks around here make a big deal out of the fall display. It’s one of the great things about living around here. I know that the leaf peepers make the Cades Cove Loop Road a bit of a nightmare and you will never find me there this time of the year, but there are sights to see wherever you go.

 

There is one stretch of road on my way home that was always as pretty as I would imagine the northeast must be (according to all the folks that visit there), but the necessity of keeping electric wires cleared has sort of put a damper on that corridor.

 

That’s OK.  Progress, I guess. I know that I don’t want to be without power for very long. A hot shower and fewer worries about losing a freezer full of food are part of the reason I’m a huge fan of the linemen that work at Fort Loudon Utilities.

 

Those people are truly heroes. It just so happens that our worst weather days happen to be when they are needed the most. Bad lightning storm? They’re out there. Roads and wires are iced over? On the job, while we call in forty-eleven times that our power is out.

 

Despite the growth around here, when you fly over, most of what you see is green. That’s because it is. Despite a population approaching 150,000, we are still largely rural, not even counting the third of the county that lies in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park (known as “The Park”).

 

I love it. I’ve spoken quite a bit about “Green Therapy,” or the value of getting outside. There is no denying that it is good for our health. Emotionally. Physically. Mentally. It’s why we build parks.

 

Also on my way home is the last remaining of the three oaks on Big Springs Road that marked the Hawkins/Pickens Line of 1797 which was to form a boundary between white settlers and the Cherokee Nation. It marked what was then the southern boundary of the United States. Settlers were supposed to respect this border and leave all lands south of the Line to the Cherokees but we know how that worked out.

 

This line was revised in 1802 and then became known as the Meigs Line, running from Meigs Mountain in Blount County to Meigs Post on Mount Collins and into North Carolina.

 

Those three Oaks were planted in 1797 and are directly on the original Hawkins/Pickens Line. Local outdoors rock star Dwight McCarter wrote a book about the Meigs Line in 2009. The second of those Oak trees fell earlier this year after the first one succumbed several years ago.

 

I miss those trees and now there is just one to remind curious minds of a piece of the local history. To me, it is an important remnant of the Cherokee Nation that thrived in these hills and valleys. It helps me to re-imagine what life would have been like for a native tribe that was here long before Columbus.

 

A group that was sophisticated, with a written language and organized social order, living life in the most perfect place on earth.

 

What’s all this got to do with sports. Not much, I imagine. I guess I just want folks to appreciate what we have around here. And get out amongst it. It’ll be good for you.

I Shall Return

 

"Upon the fields of friendly strife are sown the seeds that upon other fields on other days will bear the fruits of victory," said Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

Every cadet at West Point is required to memorize that quote. It is also required of all cadets to participate in some type of competitive athletics. The Academy believes that sports participation aids in leadership development. I happen to agree.

General MacArthur’s intent may have been preparation for military combat, but his words ring true for how sports can impact life. My friend Ken Bell has often said that sports are “life lessons.” That’s very true.

The opportunities for learning life lessons are everywhere in sports.  Look at teamwork. In sports, a team depends on effective teamwork for success. One of the beautiful aspects of sport is watching teamwork in action.

Think of a football play, where all eleven team members are moving in concert, moving parts executing with precision to achieve a common goal. Although it can look like chaos, movement on the soccer pitch is orchestrated to achieve the same objective.

Watch a volleyball match, where every movement is purposeful and coordinated.  I happen to think it is a thing of beauty. But take away that teamwork and execution and it all falls apart.

It doesn’t take much imagination to extrapolate those lessons to life, relationships, jobs, and just getting through a typical day. Learning to work as a team will carry you far. We are always better together. A five stranded rope is stronger than a single cord.

We learn social skills through sports. You have the opportunity to be a gracious winner and a good loser. You have the opportunity to learn how to be a good teammate.

We all want to win every time out but it is often through losing that we discover more about ourselves. We can learn what our shortcomings are. We can learn who we can depend on when things get tough. We can learn how best to work together.

If we’re paying attention, our failures will teach us what we need to work on. I remember working with a nephew one time on his strength training. A two-sport high school athlete, he only wanted to work on what he was good at. I insisted on working on the things that he hated to do.

He always wanted to do bench press and arm curls. He was good at those. But he needed better core strength and explosive power. He didn’t like those, but we did them anyway. I didn’t care how much he could bench but I did care how effectively he moved his body.

I’ve heard people say “we just need to learn how to be winners.” The context is that you need to learn how to win by winning, which might lead to an attitude of win at all costs. I don’t agree with that at all.

We learn how to be winners by learning HOW to win, not in the winning itself. Does that make sense? We learn how to be winners by understanding our strengths and weaknesses, learning how to work as a team, by being the best version of ourselves.

We learn how to be winners by executing, by being coachable, by being fully prepared, by being good teammates. We learn how to be winners by discovering how hard we can push through pain and hard times.  We learn how to be winners by doing the little things, like eating right, getting enough sleep, and by putting in the work.

Winning isn’t everything—striving to win is everything. Doing what you need to do to succeed is everything, whatever the game you’re playing.

 

 

 

Movement: The Magic Pill

 

OK. I’m going to repeat myself today. It’s hard not to, since I’ve been occupying this space for over 39 years now. You would think that after a while, I would run out of ideas. I worry about that too, but then something happens or a thought pops into my head and here we go.

Let me set the stage for you. I get to my clinic early most days. Some days really early. My desk is simply the countertop on the half wall that separates the clinic from the adjoining gym. I am almost exactly in the center of both.

I choose that. It keeps me in the middle of the rehab center but also makes me available to those people working out in the gym. And it is often the source of ideas for my column.

When we built this facility, we purposely made the space wide open. My concept is that when you walk in the front door of the rehab clinic, you first see others working with physical therapists and athletic trainers, working hard to get better to overcome whatever injury, surgery, or disability that brought you there.

And then, if you look just beyond the clinic, you see a full gym, with people working to stay healthy. It’s a rewarding dynamic. There have been lots of folks through the years that are here for the rehab side that have never darkened the doors of a gym.

What we want them to see is that a gym isn’t such a daunting place after all—that there is a place for everyone. I’ve heard the comment many times “so that’s what the inside of a gym looks like!”

I’ll be the first person to tell you that a gym or fitness center isn’t for everybody. Some people just don’t want to exercise in public. I get that. But regardless of where you choose to get your daily exercise, strength training needs to be a part of it.

Let me back up a moment. I’m often asked “what’s the best exercise?” My answer is most often “the exercise you will do.” There is no secret elixir. There is no magic pill. You have to put effort into it. A walk in the woods is exercise. Biking the Greenbelt is exercise. Yoga is exercise.

Movement is exercise and it’s the one thing I see as a physical therapist that is missing in a lot of people. I remember one time that I was visiting with my mom in the transitional care center. Her roommate had just had a knee replacement.

What sticks in my mind is that the roommate did not want to move. She refused the efforts of the physical therapists to get up and walk. She didn’t want to move her leg because it hurt. She was there, in her words, to “rest and recuperate.”

All this nonsense about moving and exercising just wasn’t what she was there for. What happened? She developed a DVT (blood clot in her leg) and ended up back in the hospital. All she needed was movement.

I know that when I had my own knee replacement several years ago, if we had carpet in our house, I would have worn a path on it. I woke up from surgery moving my knee and working the leg muscles.

Movement. Maybe that’s the magic pill.

Back to the strength training thing. I’ve also said many times that it’s more important to lift weights as you get older than when you’re young. Two big reasons: we lose muscle mass as we age (which means we need to work our muscles) and weight training can lessen the impact of osteoporosis and bone loss that happens as we age.

Is it broken?

 

My kids will tell you that one of my biggest pet peeves is the misinterpretation of the terms “broken” and “fractured.” I’ve heard it too many times “it’s a good thing it’s only fractured and not broken.”

Cue the eye roll out of dear old dad. They used to use that one just to bother me. They knew that there was no difference. Broke is fractured and fractured is broke. They are the same thing.

A partial break is still broke. Stress fractures might fall into a bit of a gray area, as there are certainly degrees to those. And there is definitely a difference between a simple fracture and a compound fracture, but both are really different levels of the same thing. A broken bone.

I’ve been told that everyone has a superpower. It has been said, that maybe Xray vision is my superpower. I don’t know. I know I’ve seen my share of broken bones in 40 years as an Athletic Trainer. And I’m right most of the time.

After you see a lot of them, you really know what to look for.  If someone comes off the field hunched forward and clutching their elbow, they probably have broken their collarbone, medically known as the clavicle.

Again, there are simple clavicular breaks and then there are breaks that are in multiple pieces with bone ends going different directions. Either way, it’s broke and the game is over. What happens next depends on the needs of the athlete and the advice of the orthopedic surgeon.

One of my favorite stories is based on the very first game that I was on the sidelines of a Maryville High School football game. Don Story was the coach and at halftime, his star lineman asked me to look at his jaw. It was really hurting.

I looked at it, decided it was broke, and told Coach Story that he shouldn’t play the second half. The player protested, admitting that he had broke it in a fight at school that day and that since he had already played the first half with a broke jaw, he should be able to continue playing.

Coach Story looked at me and asked “should he play?” Now keep in mind, Coach Story had just met me. He hadn’t worked with me. He really didn’t know that much about me. And he sure didn’t have much reason to trust me.

But he did. “Go put your clothes on—you’re out for the second half.” That was just the kind of man Don Story was and still is. One of my greatest compliments was when Coach/AD Jim Campbell told others that I was a “Don Story-kind of guy.”

The bottom line is that I was right. He had actually broken his jaw on both sides and it was absolutely unsafe for him to continue playing.

Athletic Trainers that work with all our schools don’t really have the latitude to be wrong. Yet, you can’t let every little bump and bruise end with a visit to the Emergency Room. You’ve got to know when to pull them out of the game and when to let them play.

It’s part of the basic skillset of the Athletic Trainer, but the good ones can be a little more bold in their decision making. In the heat of the game, you’ve got to make a decision in seconds.  You’ve got to know what to do without the benefit of X-Rays. And you can’t be wrong.

Now before you jump to the conclusion that I’ve never been wrong, or that my Athletic Trainer colleagues are never wrong, let me tell you that I’ve been wrong plenty of times. I allowed a basketball player with a partial ACL tear back in the game one time. And then she tore it the rest of the way through. I told a young athlete once that I didn’t think his foot was broke but it was.

That’s just the nature of the beast.  Every minute of every game, Athletic Trainers have to make decisions that might  impact the long term health of our athletes. We accept that responsibility because it’s what we do. It’s who we are.