If you could bear with me for just a second, I’ll let you in to a little secret: I really don’t like science. At school, I dropped the subject as quickly as I could for the simple fact that it was objective and so I could therefore never argue with it.
Even the greatest efforts of my opposing opinion wouldn’t stand a chance against its unequivocal truth and so I felt trapped. As an English graduate, I thrive on being subjective, but science doesn’t allow for this so I struggled to flair my creativity and express my personality; it’s either science’s way or no way and so for this reason, we never got along.
But considering our differences, I can’t deny that behind sport there is science and recently, myself and the subject have become surprisingly good friends.
Longevity in sport is what every athlete strives for and so considering this, I welcomed the opportunity this week to have a bio-mechanics assessment.
Bio-mechanics is all about prevention rather than cure and the aim for the assessment was to identify any weakness in my body’s mechanics, which over time would cause a lack of ability for me to move freely. This needs to be put right as it would no doubt hinder my running and I definitely can’t be having that!
I had never really heard about bio-mechanics before, and to be honest I went into the experience pretty blind and nescient; after all, my body feels absolutely fine at the moment, so how much could I actually learn from this?
The assessment was carried out by Martin Haines, the CEO of the science-based bio-mechanics company Intelligent Training Systems, who, getting straight to the point, found out some pretty remarkable things about the current state of my body.
Not all good, I hasten to add. And I am shocked.
I have one leg longer than the other, I have a dodgy knee, I have a weak right shoulder, I have spasms in my lower back… the list goes on but I’ll save some time and name only a few!
What I found most surprising was firstly, I had no idea that such problems were going on inside what I thought, was a fairly fit and sound body and secondly, the connection that the weaknesses had with each other was extraordinary.
From years of taking part in competitive tennis and running, I already knew that I had a weak left hip; continuous twinges and long term injuries have taught me that, but I had no idea of the effects that this weakness had not only on the alignment of my spine, but also on the rest of my body.
As a result, Martin has written for me, a really simple corrective exercise programme to follow for a few weeks, before he reassesses me to hopefully measure my progress.
You can read my full report about the truly fascinating assessment in our magazine and on the website in April. I’m really excited about what the simplicity of bio-mechanics can do and how it can help us, and I can’t wait to share it with you!
In the meantime, thank you science for your help.
