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When to Play Through Pain and When to Chill

June 27, 2009 6:15 pm 0 comments

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Geezer can recall a particular high school coach's requirements that his athletes play through pain. He can also remember a teammate who played basketball for two weeks on a broken leg. Oops. Coach's bad.How to tell the good pain from the bad? New York Times health writer Gina Kolata finds some answers to that question in this helpful piece.
Keith Hanson, a coach who directs the Hansons-Brooks Distance Project,
which recruits talented distance runners and supports them while they
train, says he follows one key rule:" If you are gimping — altering your
gait— after 10 minutes of running, then it is an injury and not just an
ache or pain. You should never run through injuries. If you do, they
almost always turn into compensation injuries. What started as an ankle pain becomes knee and hip problems.”
Kolata, a runner, got the most surprising answer her own running coach, marathon champ Tom Fleming. “I never listened to my body,” Fleming told Kolata. “Maybe I should have.I think it’s an impossible task.” Fleming said athletes need
someone else, a coach if possible, to tell them when to rest,
when to take an easy day and when to work hard.
Read more on distinguishing the good pain from the bad in the New York Times.
Read more about when to run through pain from About.com.

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