Just Keep Striving
Rehab, Resistance and Running
Sorry to all you March Madness fans but this week’s story of rehab in the sports world goes to Gary Woodland. To be honest, I never heard of him before last week. 30 months ago, Gary had a baseball sized hole drilled into his skull to remove a brain lesion. Of the multiple complications that arose from the surgery, the PTSD was perhaps the longest and most severe. Ultimately, he rehabbed and overcame to win a PGA tournament last week and now will compete later this month in Agusta at the Masters. On top of that, Gary has the fastest clubhead speed on the PGA tour (had to fact check my golf friend’s report on that one – it checks out). 128 mph at age 41!
I must keep the jokes going. On Wednesday morning, my son comes downstairs for school and says “Dad, Chuck Norris’ calendar goes straight from March 31st to April 2nd. Why? Because NOBODY fools Chuck Norris.
I also must keep stressing the resistance training. The American College of Sports Medicine recently released a position statement summarizing resistance training for healthy adults. After synthesizing 137 systematic reviews from 30,000 participants, the summary is: 1. ANY resistance training beats NO resistance training. 2. Don’t train to failure. 3. No gym necessary – bands, bodyweight, even a bag of groceries works just fine. 4. Consistency beats complexity. There you have it, lift stuff and keep lifting it.
And finally, an exciting announcement (in my opinion, anyway). I am joining a team from the Penn Sports Medicine department to run a distance medley relay team for the corporate division at this year’s Penn Relays on April 24. More to come on this in the weeks ahead, but this a-hem, how should we say, “mature” not “old” team is in it to compete. This race start time is not too short of my normal bedtime. I really am old. We’ll see how much “speed” I still have in the tank as I run the 1600m leg of the relay. The main goal here is to train and strive to do something hard. No matter what phase of life you’re in, you must keep striving. I still think I can beat my kids’ speeds… but not for long.