Small Holes Sink Big Ships

“Small holes sink big ships.” I couldn’t find who to attribute that quote to but a friend who works out in our gym was the one that told me about it. He said it might make a good topic for a column.

What are your “small holes?” What is it that’s keeping you from your best health, your best self?

Time? OK…there are 168 hours in a week. Let’s say you spend 45 of those either working or traveling to work. And another 56 hours a week sleeping. That leaves 67 hours.

Let’s generously say that you spend 3 hours a day eating or snacking, that’s 21. It takes me 15 minutes to shave and shower but let’s say you take an hour a day. That still leaves 39 hours a week.

You belong to a club? Maybe an hour a week. Attend church? Another 3 hours for most. What else? Mowing the yard? 2 hours. Cleaning the house? 3 hours, maybe. We’re down to 30 hours a week.

30 hours of time that you can call your own. Hobbies, gardening, visiting, running errands, parenting. For the purposes of this discussion, let’s just say that you spend 20 hours a week on all that. Now we’re down to 10 hours a week.

10 hours every week that you can spend taking care of yourself. Exercising. Getting outside. Going for a walk.

But don’t take my word for it: Do your own math. If your health is a priority, you’ll find the time.

Opportunity? Well, for the getting outside part, that’s really easy around here. Our Greenbelt system is amazing and somehow keeps growing. It is a wonderful oasis in the middle of where we live. Haven’t been to the new Craig Jarvis Park yet? Oh, my. It is amazing and thank you Dr. Jarvis.

Have you looked to the east lately? One of the things that I brag about to visitors is that a huge part of our county lies within the boundaries of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  It’s right there! Everything you could possibly want.

There’s a gym on every corner so that’s not an excuse either. But you don’t need a gym to work out. A couple of kettle bells, a space in your garage or basement, maybe a jumping rope, a box to use for step-ups.

Eating better? That one does take some effort but not much. It all depends on what you put in your grocery cart. Put in the effort at the grocery store, a little more food prep, a little less fast food.

If you’re playing a sport or on a team, what are the Small Holes there? If an offensive lineman on a football team takes the wrong steps, the play could be over. If the running back hits the wrong hole, even by a little bit, it just won’t work. You’ve got to do the little things right. Small holes.

Little things might be preparation. If you expect to hit the majority of your free throws, you’ve got to put in the effort. I’ve never met anyone that was “naturally” good at shooting free throws. Maybe more than anything on a basketball court, the charity stripe requires effort.

It might be adequate sleep. Or eating right. Whatever it is that keeps you from being your best. Those are small holes that will sink big ships.

And here’s the thing about those small holes. Once the ship starts leaking a little bit, it doesn’t stop. Those small holes keep getting bigger. The excuses multiply. Your health or your performance starts to sink.

What are your small holes?

Sport Specific Exercises

My wife can be my biggest supporter and my best critic. So, every Sunday morning when she sits down to read the newspaper, I anxiously await her opinion of this column.

It’s usually “good column, Joesie.” After I wrote that piece a couple of weeks ago about sport-specific exercises for performance and injury prevention, she immediately said “good column, but now you need to tell people what to do.”

OK. Good point. Go back to that column and you will see that I told throwing athletes that they need to focus more on the deceleration of their arm and to work on trunk rotation strength. I told basketball and soccer athletes to work on ankle stability.  I told baseball pitchers to focus on their hips.

But how? What does that mean?

Let’s look at the deceleration of the arm during the throwing motion. Remember that the throwing motion is utilized in a variety of sports. Hitting in volleyball. Serving in tennis.

If you watch someone warming up to throw, hit, or serve, they might fasten an elastic band behind them and pull forward on it. I’ve seen that happen a thousand times.

Either that or they just throw (or spike or serve). But if you want to prevent injuries, you’ve got to work on those muscles on the back of the shoulder that slow your arm down after release.

To do that, you should take that same elastic band and fasten in front of you and pull backwards against it. Work on the muscles that pull your shoulder blades toward each other.

As for making those ankles more stable—run in sand, hop from one foot to another, hop up and down on one leg. There are all kinds of reaction devices which use lights to send you in one direction or the other. Old-fashioned shuttle runs help with this.

Pull an old couch cushion or pillow out (with permission) and walk on it. Then hop on and off of it. Now do it with one foot.

Take a yoga class or look at a video to learn good ways to stretch out your hips. Take that elastic band and fasten it around your ankle while seated, anchoring it under your other foot. Pull you lower leg to the outside. Do it slow and steady and then quick and fast.

Probably my favorite piece of gym equipment is the leg press machine. You can work everything from your ankles to your knees to your hips to your core.  I’m not a big fan of a full squat with heavy weight but squat jumps can develop explosive power.

I’m not a big fan of the bench press either—I understand that it can be important for some sports but it often leads to shoulder problems if you don’t pay equal attention to developing the back side of the shoulder.

And let me throw in my bias against dropping weights. Put simply…don’t! It really seems like the “thing to do” right now. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, visit a gym that allows it. You’ll find people repeatedly picking up a weight and immediately dropping it. Time after time after time.

What these folks don’t realize is that they are missing out on what may be the most important part of the lift, the eccentric unloading that comes from setting the weights down. You will develop better body control and more functional strength if you lower the weight to the floor instead of dropping it.

And if you need more ideas or better advice, consult a personal trainer, strength coach, Athletic Trainer, or Physical Therapist. 

 

The Best Teammate

I’ve decided that nobody looks out the window on airplanes anymore.

I’ve been on an airplane a couple of times in the last month but I just realized that everyone keeps their windows shut. All the time.

On one of those flights, I was seated by the window, instead of the aisle, which is my usual place, a concession to my bum right knee now healthy because it has been replaced by a new one. I’ve always liked the window seat ause it allowed me to look at the landscape from above. I’ve seen tiny islands in the ocean, the Grand Canyon, New York skyscrapers…all from 20,000 feet.

I watch that little map tracker thing on the back of the seat in front of me, keeping up with where I am in relation to the ground below. That lets me try and figure out what I’m seeing below. I am fascinated by travel and intrigued by adventure, still a kid who wonders where those people inside that amazing flying machine are going.

I’ve been fortunate to get out and see a lot of the world. I’d like to think it has made me more tolerant, more accepting of a world that can be quite different from my rural roots.

I went bike riding on the Greenbelt with one of my grandsons last weekend, on a beautiful Sunny afternoon. We had done this before, but it was usually my idea.  This time it was his idea, and he knew where he wanted to go.

First, all the way to the bubbling spring at the Ft. Craig monument. But he’s there just to see the map that shows the location of Fort Black, which was out near Chilhowee View School and was founded by Joseph N. Black. Maybe a relative, maybe not. He likes that maybe it is.

Then back to the upper end where the trail makes a loop, above Pearson Springs Park. There we can find the tree and plaque placed there to honor my dad, Carl H. Black.

He wanted to know more about my dad. Was he big and strong? Was he smart? What was he like?

This is my little Social Chair, more like me than any of the others. When he walks into a room, he wants to get to know everybody there. On this day, he spoke to every single person we encountered. 

Because that’s who he is. He played basketball this year and got the “Best Teammate” award. How could we want more than that?

The world is a big, beautiful place. People are generally wonderful if you look for that in them, if you give them the space to be wonderful.

I want my grandchildren to know the world yet not become worldly. I want them to fly in an airplane and wonder about the people down there.

I never want them to stop looking for the good in people, to stop being kind to everyone they meet. If it’s in them, I never want them to stop walking into a room and wanting to know everyone’s story.

And I want them to always be the Best Teammate.

 

Best Exercise by Sport

I was in a discussion on sports performance and training programs this week when the conversation turned to the best exercises for different sports. 

In other words, if you play softball, what are the most important exercises for you to do? Or baseball, or football, or pretty much anything out there. It was a pretty high level discussion so there were a lot of really great ideas thrown about. 

I took notes but the discussion was fast and furious so I didn’t get everything but I did get the basics. For the most part, you can divide the discussion into two parts—performance and prevention. The two go hand in hand.

From a performance perspective, prevention of injuries can be huge. If you’re injured, you can’t perform, you can’t practice, you can’t work on those things that translate to performance.

Let’s start with baseball/softball. You might think that they’re about the same thing but there are some important differences.

With any sport that involves throwing, those muscles that rotate the trunk, mostly what we think about when we consider our core muscles, are the single most important thing to consider from a performance standpoint.

And throwing is not just baseball and softball. Think about the volleyball serve or spike—those are both basically a throwing motion. Quarterbacks, discus throwers, shot putters, the tennis serve…all those involve a throwing motion and require strong trunk rotators to be effective.

For baseball pitchers, the hips are key.  The lead leg needs to have really good hip external rotation motion and really good trail leg hip internal rotation strength. In a huge study done by a friend of mine, these two factors were the best predictors of pitching success, not the shoulder nor the trunk.

In preventing injuries in the throwing athlete, the single most important exercises are those strengthen the “decelerators” of the arm. Think about the back of the shoulder and the muscles that pull back on your shoulder blade. Those are often neglected and that’s when you see me with an injury.

Swimmer’s Shoulder is a very real entity and is related to that same thing. So much of what swimmers do develops the front of the shoulder and ignores the back of the shoulder. It is absolutely necessary for swimmers to work on muscular balance at the shoulders.

Basketball and soccer players change direction a lot so their injuries tend to be more at the lower leg and ankle. Dynamic strengthening of those muscles that stabilize the ankle are essential.  Think planting your foot and suddenly changing direction—that’s where the importance of strong ankles comes into play. Same thing for running backs and receivers on a football team.

Working on sudden changes of direction in the gym can get you ready for practice and games. Hopping from one side to the other, plyometrics off of a box, jumping onto an unstable surface, all those will help develop the strength necessary for performance and prevention.

It just makes sense that if you’re a soccer player that heads the ball that you need strong neck muscles. Don’t forget that the foundation that those neck muscles depend are on the rest of the spine (core strength).

Training for performance is not all bench press and hamstring stretching. It’s more about focusing on what you need for your body to do in space—controlling motion and reacting to outside forces. 

Headaches: Not to be ignored

Headaches are something I know well. Beginning in my early teen years, I had frequent and often severe headaches. Somewhere along the way, those evolved into migraines.

My 20’s and 30’s were marred by frequent and sometimes debilitating headaches. Being self-employed for most of that time, I had to work. No choice. 

There were days when I would hide in a dark room, come out long enough to see a patient, and then retreat to my darkened sanctuary. For years, you would never find me far away from Excedrin. I always (always) had several in my pocket.

I tried other medicines. I saw several specialists. Nothing stopped my headaches. I learned to deal with them. Most of the time, they would hit in the middle of the night. My routine became to get up, take an Excedrin, get in a very hot shower, get out, eat something, take 2 more Excedrin, and go back to bed.

That usually helped enough that I could eventually get back to sleep.

Here’s the problem with headaches—they’re invisible. There is no outward sign that someone has a headache. More than once, I was told that they were “all in my head.”

Yeah…they were. My left temple to be exact. Almost always.

About the time I turned 45, my headaches began to subside. Some decided it must be male menopause. Maybe. We know that men undergo hormonal changes about that age too. Certainly not as drastic as women but still there.

I’m just thankful that I very rarely have those really bad headaches any more. I still have headaches from time to time but milder and far less frequent. I still always have Excedrin within reach but I haven’t emptied the hot water heater from my hot showers in a long time.

What about headaches in athletics? What does it mean?

A lot of people get “exertional” headaches. A really hard physical effort that results later in a headache. We see those often in sports. It is likely that those have to do with blood vessels dilating and constricting in your head and usually respond to anti-inflammatories.

Still, no headache needs to be ignored. Especially in a teenager or an athlete. If headaches are severe, persistent, or frequent, athletes should see a sports physician, and in Blount County, that is Dr. Ben England at ETMG.

And don’t forget hydration. Being dehydrated can also lead to or at least contribute to headaches.  Not to mention the sports performance side of hydration.

If a headache happens after a blow to the head, it cannot be ignored. Any blow to the head that results in symptoms (headache, dizziness, blurred vision, confusion) is a concussion until proven differently.

We don’t play around with those things. I have a friend that had a concussion in a car wreck that was still having headaches from that concussion two years later.

The long term effects of improper care following a concussion can be catastrophic. It used to be that if you got your “bell rung” that once you were coherent, you were back in the game.

Not so, anymore. That’s because we know better. We know what can happen. That means that if you have a headache after being hit in the head, it is incredibly important not to get hit in the head again. It’s that simple.

New Beginnings

One morning early this week, I fell in behind a U-Haul truck pulling a car, going somewhere. I can only imagine where. A new town. A new home. A new job. Somewhere.

I remember those days. In 1977, my U-Haul truck was filled with all we owned and parked outside the MidSouth Coliseum in Memphis where I was graduating. We walked out of graduation and drove to our new home in Maryville.

We made a couple more of those U-Haul truck moves, to Bluefield, West Virginia then back home to Maryville to stay. Each time, the trip was filled with change and adventure.

Now this is how my brain works—I wondered how that could become a column, a lesson for this space.

And I thought about high school juniors at the end of their season. The next time they are in games, it will be their senior season. They will be the leaders. This will be the year that they always dreamed of.

The best of those start immediately. I can remember when you worked out in the summer before school started in the fall and that was about it. Not anymore.

When the season is over, take a day, maybe two. At most a week. And then get started in preparation for the next go-round. That’s where success is bred.

It’s a new journey. A new adventure. Just like that U-Haul truck headed out.

A new opportunity to get things right. I can remember retired MHS football coach David Ellis telling his young charges in the last week of the season, usually the week of the state championship game, that they had one more chance to get it right.

They would then go through the same drills that they had been doing for weeks, months even. It was still all about footwork and execution.

What a lot of people don’t see is all the time and effort that happens when people aren’t looking. The practices. The many hours in the weight room. Early mornings on the track. A thousand free throws in an empty gym.

It didn’t used to be that way. Back in the dark ages, when I was a teenager, a few of us lifted weights but most depended on farm work to get strong. Shoveling grain and lifting bales of hay. We called it “country strong” and it worked pretty well.

But anybody that thinks we were bigger, stronger, faster, and better trained back then is merely foolish. Kids today have better training, better nutrition, and greater opportunities than we ever had.

Take my tennis playing grandson for example. I played a lot of tennis growing up but there weren’t even public courts in my hometown. The owners of the two private courts in town allowed us to play in their backyards.

All we had to do is keep the noise down and sweep the courts from time to time. We could only dream of an actual tennis lesson. We were our own teachers.

My tennis player has played all winter, going to Knoxville for practice in indoor courts there. He has the benefit of excellent coaches and a granddad that will take him out a couple of times a week just to hit a hopper of balls.

Others have travel teams and position coaches and opportunities that we never even dreamed of. They are on a journey that hopefully leads to happiness and success. Just like those folks in that U-Haul truck.

Parents parent/Coaches coach

Sometimes I get an idea just out of the blue and build a column from that. It can be a single word or phrase. Sometimes people suggest topics (always welcome). Sometimes I struggle to decide on a topic. After 35 years, that should be no surprise.

And then sometimes it falls in my lap. Such was the case this week. I was sitting in the stands at a game when it all came together. All I had to do was sit down at the keyboard and let it out.

Despite my best efforts, I do repeat myself. I’ve talked about movement and exercise many times. I don’t seem to be able to shut up about concussions and dealing with the heat. And I talk about being the parent to an athlete a lot. I’m back there this week.

I want to get to the point of this column right away—There are two purposes for youth sports: Movement education and developing active lifestyles.

We need to teach children how to move. How to run. How to throw. To develop athleticism. To learn the joy of moving their body. We need sports to make movement fun.

We know with certainty that active children become active adults. We know with certainty that an active lifestyle takes care of many of the chronic health problems that plague us. Obesity. Heart disease. Diabetes. And on.

Let me make this very, very clear—the purpose of youth sports is not to win championships. Let me repeat that.  The purpose of youth sports is not to win championships. It should always be to help children grow.

I find the thought of an undefeated season in youth sports disgusting. If it is a local league, then it means that most of the talent is on one team. It usually means that one or more teams in that league never wins.

If it is a travel league, then you’re not pursuing good enough competition.

Don’t get me wrong, keeping score is important.  Trying to win is necessary, not for the trophy but for what it should mean. It should mean that you work harder, are better prepared. Winning by a large margin helps no one.

The genesis of this column actually started last weekend, watching youth sports. I’ll be vague to protect the good folks in this story. And let me say that there are far more good folks in youth sports than bad.

Take Joey Winders for example. Still coaching youth sports after all these years. But, more profoundly, he can be found on Saturdays refereeing Parks & Rec basketball. Alongside his son. Could Joey find a better way to spend his Saturdays? Probably. That he chooses refereeing the most basic of sports speaks to his commitment.

Then a parent in the stand yells at him for a (correct) call that he makes. And then does it again. I’m sitting behind that parent and silently seething. They just don’t get it. I didn’t say anything. Until now.

Or the coach that plays their bench players the bare minimum required by the league. Or not at all. Or the coach that coaches a Saturday morning game of 8 year olds like they’re playing for the NBA championship.

Those people have so completely lost the “why” of youth sports as to be pitied. And vilified.

Folks, no one knows who will be the next Lebron James or Patrick Mahones at age 10. No one knows for sure that their kid will be a star. No one. No coach. No parent. No one.

Coach, your job is to promote movement and active lifestyle in everyone on your team. Every. Single. One. The end of the bench needs your coaching more than the most gifted. Your job is player development—not win championships

Parent, your job is to provide your child with opportunities for movement, to work with them at home, and to support them. Always.