Hi there, this is Margo Rose Body Awear Grieving. And we have an opportunity today to dig a little bit deeper with some examples into an idea we’ve brought up here on the website before of being an adult athlete. And I define an adult athlete as being a person over the age of 18, who stays active and fit in a manner that reduces the chance of injuries and avoidable accidents.
I had a conversation today with a man who is a perfect example of coming up with some ways to make skillful choices. He’s somewhere another over 40 years of age, and he was sitting there icing his knee, which was sensitive from having done some really serious bike riding and mountain bike riding. And for this upcoming weekend, he was planning a trip even looking forward to for many months, with you know, some of his buddies like to ride really hard. They had this trip planned to the very challenging terrain, a 70-mile loop around this lake. And he was asking, Well, what about my knee on this trip.
I was really coming up with some suggestions as to ways he could really take into account that he wanted to be careful with his knee, and still have a great time with his friends. So some of the options we considered. First of all, I just asked him to be kind of realistic about the fact that if he’s sitting there with ice on his knee, and it’s already uncomfortable, that the amount of healing between now and this upcoming weekend is somewhat limited. And he should really expect that he’s going to need to make some modifications around this current injury so as to resist a bunch of new injuries on the trip.
So some of the things we talked about, he could choose a route that was easier to shorten, based on how he ends up feeling while he’s riding. So if their previous idea was to go all the way around a loop, you’re kind of stuck, if you’re partway through and you start feeling some pain. So they were going to maybe look at adjusting their route. Other options, not options, but important factors, he normally rides with these other guys, and they’re kind of, you know, tough together, and they do these really athletic things. And I think my friend was really going to need to be careful to not get into any kind of sort of competition mode with his friends and to realize for at least this specific upcoming weekend, that he was going to need to make modifications that they might not need to make on their own behavior. And if he tries to keep up with them, when he’s dealing with something different than they are, that was likely to get him back in the long run of how he’s going to end up being able to enjoy his body.
So not to feel too bad as he has to make some changes. Some other suggestions were that he would need to, you know, maybe mix in more different activities. So if you can’t bike ride as long, but he still wants to have a good weekend, you know, there might be a gym at the resort that they’re staying at certainly a hot tub, how much fun is that they might have a spa, he might want to treat himself to massage his knee has been hurting for a while, it’s likely that other parts of his body have also been uncomfortable. For example, as if someone has an injury on one part of their body like a knee, often the other hip and low back might be sore because you’ve been not putting weight on that one joint, the whole body is going to be asymmetrical and might enjoy some really nice time in a hot tub, maybe spend a little extra money treat himself to massage when he’s up there to go into an area with some resorts.
So maybe a little bit of dancing, lower-risk activity, depending on how you do it, it’s a lower risk activity than some of the mountain biking that they had in mind. So just coming up with creative ways, because he was thinking of canceling the trip. And they’d planned it for months. And it was hard to get the dates that they were all free at the same time, it’s already been booked. And he was talking about canceling the trip because he didn’t think it was going to be able to fulfill all of his previous expectations. And I sort of indicated I thought that was going to be a mistake, I thought he was gonna have a disappointing time. If he canceled this thing he’s looking forward to it. And, you know, he was planning on a fun weekend, and he was looking forward to a fun weekend.
So some of the modifications we talked about, hopefully, he’ll take them to heart and still have a really, really great time with an understanding that he’s going to still have fun. And he’s going to take care of his body for the long term, and be able to bike ride, perhaps in a gentler fashion but for a longer period of years and decades perhaps if that’s what he enjoys. So those are more specific examples of somebody who is making choices from what I would call an adult athletic or an adult athlete perspective.
So I’m curious to hear what kind of sports some of you are all into. If there are injuries that you have that are limiting to some of the sports that you’ve enjoyed a lot. And perhaps together we can even brainstorm a little bit about ways that you can still do some of the things that you love, or find other equivalents that you discover are also really enjoyable. And that way you can sort of take whichever current injuries you’re working around and still move forward in ways that are going to let you enjoy your body as much as possible. So leave me any messages or comments or questions that you have and just a little something for now.
This is Margo Rose. Best wishes to you. Take care