Injury: The 'match-flame-blaze' defense
Heeding a niggle can make all the difference in our 'do what I love' longevity.
Credit: ChatGPT 4o. “Draw a picture of a matchstick next to a flame next to a blazing fire.”
Warmup
Over the past two months, I’ve been asked a LOT about how I prevent and respond to injury. On podcasts. Via email. In comments for this newsletter.
My gut is this: people wonder how someone who is 53 (as of this past week) who didn’t become an athlete until midlife and now competes in a demanding sport doesn’t well … get badly hurt in that 53-year-old body.
It’s a fair question. And to some degree there’s an element of luck involved — as there is for any of us doing physical things we love.
But I’ve also worked to sway the odds in my favor.
After 52 races over six years, I’ve developed a simple injury-avoidance philosophy.
I call it the “match-flame-blaze” defense.
It works for the thing I love — running through mountains, scaling walls, slithering under barbed wire, carrying heavy sandbags and buckets of rocks.
And it can work for you.
My deep thanks to everyone who has voluntarily pledged support for this newsletter in the past few weeks.
The N2L community is just getting started, and I’m inspired by your notes and commitment. It will help us all continue to do hard things we love together, no matter what our age.
Summary
A “niggle” is a familiar term in the world of athletics. It’s a slight but sometimes persistent discomfort that arises somewhere in our body.
Learning to pay attention to niggles is critical for all of us.
Research shows niggles are a good predictor of an injury that may take us out of commission doing what we love.
In one study, the risk of an injury requiring time away from an activity was 3 to 6 times higher when preceded by niggles.
Put another way: a niggle is the little “flame” we never want to become a blaze.
We’ll talk below about a tactical strategy to help keep that from happening.
As always, there’s reading material in the Cooldown to dig deeper.
Let’s get it done.
Post
“Just don’t get hurt.”
That was my doctor’s closing remarks two weeks ago. We were talking about my preparation to compete in Sparta, Greece in November for the Spartan Race Trifecta World Championships.
This competition consists of three races over three days — covering almost a marathon of distance and 80+ obstacles.
Injury is a risk for anyone, but especially as our bodies age and can’t bounce back the way they did at 18.
An injured athlete of age 45 and over will recover at a rate of between 15% and 18% slower than a similarly injured 30-year-old person, research suggests.
A serious injury at my age likely would mean the end of racing competitively.
More important, it could also take me out of commission for many other physical things I like to do — hiking, exploring new cities by foot on vacation, playing in the yard with my friends’ kids and grandkids.
So far, I’ve managed to avoid serious injury and keep doing what I love pretty continuously though this 3-stage “match-flame-blaze” defense.
Stage 1: The match
Put simply, I think of my body in a unhurt state like an unlit match.
Goal: do everything to keep it that way.
Which means the following:
Reducing my sitting and screens. (See this N2L post for tips.)
A dynamic warmup before a workout and a cooldown afterward.
A lot of time spent doing the DBIs — dull-but-important mobility and strength exercises, particularly for the ankles, hips and glutes.
Taking care of my feet. (See this N2L post on some basics.)
Icing anything that feels tender after a workout.
Getting in a sauna multiple times a week. (See Cooldown section for benefits of heat and cold therapy.)
Working to tweak my running form to work out imbalances (both with the help of online videos and in-person coaching).
Making sure I get eight hours of sleep.
Not eating ultra-processed foods or sugar.
Practicing a few core recovery tactics. (See this N2L post for my go-to’s.)
Going to the doctor regularly, getting bloodwork done and not skipping checkups because I’m too busy or they seem scary. (Yep, I get nervous at the doctor.)
Of course, I’m not perfect. None of us are. So, sometimes this stuff falls through the cracks.
And even if we did ALL of this ALL THE TIME, at some point something in our bodies is going to get out of sync.
That’s when the flame gets lit.
Stage 2: The flame
Sometimes we go directly from match to blaze.
That is, something unexpected happens that puts us out of commission: a bad fall, hitting a loose rock or rut in the road and torquing an ankle, getting hit by a car on our bike. This is the “luck” part.
But often there’s first a flame, the niggle, that’s triggered.
Strange on-and-off tenderness in the hamstring. A twinge in the knee. The hint of an Achilles tendon ache.
Yellow lights. Warning sirens. Hazard ahead signs.
Now comes the important part: not ignoring a niggle while also not overreacting.
This is mostly a mental tactic. Because we are busy. We do not want to stop doing the thing we love. We hope the niggle will just pass. And it might. That’s what’s tricky about a niggle.
But doing nothing risks progressing to injury, as the data above shows.
Goal: Figure out what is going on as quickly as possible, reduce the risk and knock the niggle out so we don’t lose substantial time from doing what we love.
1. Do recon
The Internet and increasingly the AI tools such as ChatGPT now at our fingertips are pretty solid start for scanning troves of available information about a health issue and suggesting viable diagnoses and treatments. (See Cooldown for more on this topic.)
Using these tools, I’ve pinpointed the causes of more than a few niggles and treated them with the basics: ice, ceasing certain movements temporarily, adding specific stretches, anti-inflammatories.
If I feel a niggle on a run, I will cross-train instead on a bike or rower for a few days and be OK with deviating from my training plan.
Note: nothing I try on my own is likely to cause more damage if the digital diagnosis is wrong.
Key point here is that I’m not trying to “just push through the pain and hope for the best.”
But I don’t stop here.
2. Tee up an expert
While doing recon, I’m also putting an appointment on the books with my doctor, be it an orthopedist, physiatrist, podiatrist or whomever seems best suited to the issue at hand.
Now, I might not ultimately need this appointment if the niggle goes away.
But since doctors sometimes schedule several weeks out I don’t want to wait until things are really bad … and then have to wait more while I’m increasingly agitated that I’m not doing the thing I love.
Remember, the goal is to knock the niggle out fast.
Given the expansion of telemedicine since Covid arrived, often physicians can accommodate a video visit within a day or two.
Stage 3: The blaze
The blaze is a full-on injury. We’re now out of commission from doing what we love.
It happens from random things — like a fall. It also happens from not paying heed to the niggle.
This is a place none of us want to go.
Because it likely means stopping the thing we love to do for a while. It means letting go of big plans. It means not meeting milestones we’ve set.
Goal: shift our goals.
I wrote about the importance of “goal mobility” a couple of weeks ago.
Now the goal becomes rehabilitation. Full stop. Do this half-heartedly, and we end up stuck in the blaze.
Accepting that we’re in this stage is the hardest. I have friends who are elite athletes, even Olympians, who’ve hit the blaze just as a lifetime of work is peaking. It’s emotionally brutal.
For the rest of us, it’s probably really disappointing.
The way forward: work to put out the blaze with the same passion, success expectations, and intensity as we pursue the things we love.
Is it equally as fun? No. Does it work? Much of the time, yes.
Being in the blaze is also a moment to consider diversification (something we’ll delve into more in a future post). What are the things we never find time to do — because we’re busy with our existing “crop” — that we can now spend time on while recovering?
Cooldown
Short read: A good primer on the benefits and uses of heat and cold therapy from the nonprofit U.S. Pain Foundation.
Medium read: Niggles and injury are more likely to happen when we increase the frequency, speed or load (weight) with which we exercise. Here a good guide on how to more safely ramp up your activities from bestselling author Michael Easter.
Medium listen: A recent discussion I had with the Running Strides podcast that includes more discussion on injury prevention as well as how to approach starting-line-anxiety and finish-line-blues.
Long listen: This podcast with physician Peter Attia delves deeply into the potential of AI for early disease prediction and diagnosis.
There’s still time to claim your code for a free Spartan Race. The world’s largest obstacle course racing company is offering a FREE RACE of any length in 2024 or 2025 to people who purchase a copy of my new book, NOT TOO LATE.
This offer is good even if you’ve already purchased the book.
Thanks for reading. Work hard to stay an unlit match. And as always, find something you love. Dig in. Stick with it when things get hard.
Wendy