You might have noticed that there are a lot of health trends and fads around, a lot of gurus and people with new books. It is claimed that this new way-of-life/diet/gadget/exercise will revolutionise your health and make you feel great! The existence of these trends doesn’t seem so strange; they aren’t so new; there have been many different diets and curious health methods around for a long time. Remember the watercress soup diet? Pilates craze? The electrical abdominal contractor? What about blood-letting (a slightly older craze)? I am sure you can come up with many more. These fads, trends, fashions...
Ahhh, the old Premier League manager merry-go round, struggling to keep track of who works where when the same old faces show up in new places? You may not be alone. The Premier League is once again in full swing and just as interesting as the results, it would seem, is the speculation around which manager will lose their job first. Before the poor fellow is even out of a job people are already excitedly debating who should replace them. It can’t have escaped the attention of anyone that Premier League football clubs replace their managers at an alarmingly high,...
How is it that some human beings can enter and run ultra-marathon races that last 6 whole days, where they run the majority of that time and some human beings suffer such ultra-intense back pain that they feel unable to move from the house or a chair for days perhaps weeks on end? The body’s physical tolerance has an enormous spectrum, using the example above we can see that some people believe their body capable tolerating great stress and some that it can tolerate very little. How can our bodies be accustomed to such a wide array of demands? Of...
“The media”, newspapers, radio, TV pundits, even bloggers are well known for analysing and often criticising sports teams and athletes. It is a cliché answer that sportspeople say they ignore the media, “just focus on what we do”. But is that really true? With social media abundant among sportspeople messages must get through. The question may therefore actually be how does it affect them- motivation or inhibition? The Italian football team, possibly missing out on the World cup finals for the first time in nearly 60 years have suffered a metaphorical battering from their media. They haven’t actually lost their...
The illusion of meritocracy is all around, “work hard and you will achieve”, ”it doesn’t matter your background you can reach your goals”. This of course is partially true, but within most business, governments, and organisations there remains a dominance of white males. If the aim is the best results and meritocracy, surely the aim is to have the best people regardless of background. Sport may be ahead of the rest of society here. In sport the result really does count the most, for all of those involved. The sports club is orientated towards the result and its failure and...
As the clock ticks over, one extra second too this year, into 2017 and the festivities cease and minds begin to turn to the New Year and new aims. Many people might be considering something new or getting back into something old after a gap, short or long. Particularly when it comes to exercise the New Year is a prime time for us to “get back into it”. Combining the excesses of Christmas eating and drinking, the time off to refresh the body and mind and the return to routine often prompts an increase in physical activity. This is a...
It is a complicated subject why we get injured, but we will try a quick summary! Sporting and domestic injuries can be extremely frustrating and debilitating to normal life. The gap between what we want to be able to achieve and what we can do leads to distress. Sometimes these injuries can disrupt our lives for many months. But why do we get injured? This is not as simple as just “pulling a muscle” or “spraining a wrist” where some external force exceeds the capacity of the tissue- although this is a significant factor in many cases. The body does...
Doping is cheating, cheating is wrong, cheaters should be punished. This view is ingrained in many psyches. Yet evidence builds every week that doping is rife in sport. Many of those caught – and many who aren’t – will have been raised to share exactly the ethical standpoint outlined above. Nevertheless, they choose to dope. Sports medicine, inevitably, is essential to performance enhancement. Physicians enable doping and some – the evidence suggests – encourage it. But all over the world clean athletes too will look for a physiological edge, and turn to teams of nutritionists and physiologists and physicians for...
The British Olympic cycling team and Team Sky’s cycling team have demonstrated phenomenal success over the last decade. Dave Brailsford is heralded as the man who orchestrated this performance. His concept of marginal gains is one that it is tempting to apply to all sports. But can it work everywhere? The doctrine of marginal gains states that in any area of a given sport – no matter how small or apparently insignificant – you should look to make all possible improvements. Take cycling: the rider, the bike, the nutrition, the planning, the recovery, the training, the statistical analysis, the list...
What can sports medicine really achieve and just as importantly what should it be aiming to achieve? This may seem like a simple question, but the answer has a myriad of competing influences. Should sports medicine be aimed at merely optimising the sports person’s health? Should it try to improve their performance? Perhaps prevent them from getting problems? How much to intervene and what to leave to nature is a common dilemma in physiotherapy and medicine. The shades of grey are no less opaque in sports. The history of sport includes many unsavoury events where clinicians have intervened too greatly...
