A short tale of costly impatience

Roughly a year ago, I started playing five-a-side football on a Monday evening. Having not kicked a ball in a number of years, plus my main focus having been weight training for so long, my cardiovascular fitness wasn't quite up to scratch! So, in January 2022, I decided to do Couch to 5k, purely to improve my overall fitness and stamina.

Now, I don't enjoy running. Never have, probably never will at this stage! However, once I got through the horrible initial stages of the C25K, there was a noticeable improvement to my stamina at football.

The whole time doing this, I didn't want it to affect my weight training. That was/is my main focus, and with a small amount of adjustment, I managed to juggle everything successfully. This became easier in the Spring, as I dropped the 5k runs down to a couple of times a month.

All went well throughout the summer. Football was played, runs were done, and my strength training was going in the right direction. Late summer, I tested my 1 rep maxes, and made some significant improvements. During this time, I found on Reddit a thing called Garage Gym Powerlifting Competition. This is open to anyone and everyone around the world, and you just submit your best efforts at Bench Press, Squat and Deadlift to be join in.

This competition usually only runs once a year, but the organisers decided to put another one on in November. I'd just finished a cycle of my training plan, and could run another one to peak during the competition week!

So, after months of no issues at all, early October I pulled my hamstring. Felt it 'pop' when I went for a loose ball during football, and quite gingerly limped off.

Despite all my training and sport over the years, I've been incredibly lucky with injuries. This is certainly the first time something this serious has happened in a very long time.

Straight onto Google I went, to first see how serious it might be (fortunately only a grade 1 tear, the least serious), and also to see potential recovery times. 3-8 weeks seemed to be the consensus, the lower end of which would still enable me to have a stab at doing the competition.

A combo of rest, stretching, and then gently getting back into leg exercises seemed to be doing the trick. So, after 3 weeks, I decided to try and play football again.

This was Monday just gone, roughly 2 weeks before the competition starts.

I managed a whole 5 minutes before my hamstring popped again and was back to the side-lines. Absolutely gutted, but it was my choice to return to football when I knew I probably should have left it a bit longer. Now I won't be able to do the competition, whereas if I'd waited another couple of weeks, I may have been able to do both.

So, what can we take from this story?

Firstly, if you have an injury, don't rush recovery. This just makes things worse, and you'll probably end up out of action for even longer. Despite my hamstring feeling a lot better, it still wasn't 100% and I knew it. I got impatient, and have paid the price for it.

Second, injuries can, and will happen. If you do any exercise, there is always a level of risk. All you can do is utilise as many preventative measures as you can (dynamic stretching before, proper warm up, static stretches afterwards) to help keep them at bay.

Finally, DO MORE STRETCHING! The majority of people in this country would benefit hugely from a full body stretching session every day. Myself included, and I will be doing more from now on. (And don't say you don't have time, it'll take less than 10 minutes and you can even have the TV on while you're doing it!)

As strange as it may sound, I'm trying to take this as a positive situation. Our bodies are amazing, but not unbreakable. I've learnt a lesson about how hard I can push mine, and that is useful knowledge to have. It will also make me get into a routine of stretching more regularly to help prevent this from happening again.

Plus it gives me more time to prepare for the next competition, so hopefully I'll get an even better result!