Recently, my super-duper awesome videographer, Anton Wong from seventytwo.ca asked “how do you avoid injury when your job is one that requires a lot of movement?”
Great question.
Let’s get one thing straight: life is inherently imbalanced. You work at a desk all day? Then chances are the front of your body is very tight. Your chest, neck, and hip flexors. You play tennis or golf? Then you’re constantly twisting to only one side, creating a ton of imbalances. You do a lot of long-distance running? Then you’re creating an imbalance between the front of your thigh and the back of your thigh.
Let all these things go on for a prolonged period of time, and you’re going to get injured sooner or later.
But let’s say you don’t want to live in a plastic bubble. What do you do?
Original source: here.
First, you need to identify any side-to-side imbalances. This requires things like range of motion testing, as well as strength testing. In addition to that, it’s not a bad idea to test certain fundamental movements, like squatting, lunging, twisting, pushing and pulling. These are movements that are fundamental to everyday life. If one of these motions looks significantly off, you may start counting the weeks to your injury. Fortunately, there’s something you can do about it.
Once you’ve identified what’s out of balance, use certain exercises to restore good structure and good balance. This will involve a combination of flexibility, strength and awareness exercises.
Now granted, this will require some help from a qualified professional, but you can expect to figure things out much faster, and dramatically reduce your chances of injury and feel a lot better. So if you need some help, just let me know.
