The National Post informs me this week that that the age-induced athletic injuries we “baby boomers” are experiencing have become so common they have been given a name: boomeritis. Whether it’s Governor Arnold Swartzenegger’s femur fracturing skiing accident or President Bush going over his mountain bike handle-bars, the impact (pun not intended) is more about the frequency of the injuries and the duration of the recovery that reminds us we are not 20, 30 or even 40 anymore.
It sneaks up. A weight training routine has been effective and pain-free for 20 years until a nagging ache persists a day after a workout, goes away and - bang - after the next workout really hurts and a visit to the doctor (when the pain hasn’t eased after a week) reveals a rotator-cuff injury – muscle and tendon damage – that takes 4 months to heal! That’s one that hit me in 2006, and is still haunting me in 2007. Or the other one that took me down for most of the summer: the stress fractured metatarsal uncured on a training run shorter than most of the distances I have been covering for 30 years.
The Post story, borrowed from The New York Times (neither available on-line) appropriately reminds “no pain – no gain” may be an appropriate maxim for 20-something jocks, but the 50 going on 60 year-old boomers need to listen to every pain, adjust their workouts and vary their routines to avoid serious injuries that put us on the sidelines for weeks. A quick search reveals “boomeritis” reveals multiple other stories in the Times. Now that we have a “condition” expect a new industry and slew of products marketed to prevent and treat our “boomeritis” and intended to keep us moving like it’s 1984 or at least ....
It sneaks up. A weight training routine has been effective and pain-free for 20 years until a nagging ache persists a day after a workout, goes away and - bang - after the next workout really hurts and a visit to the doctor (when the pain hasn’t eased after a week) reveals a rotator-cuff injury – muscle and tendon damage – that takes 4 months to heal! That’s one that hit me in 2006, and is still haunting me in 2007. Or the other one that took me down for most of the summer: the stress fractured metatarsal uncured on a training run shorter than most of the distances I have been covering for 30 years.
The Post story, borrowed from The New York Times (neither available on-line) appropriately reminds “no pain – no gain” may be an appropriate maxim for 20-something jocks, but the 50 going on 60 year-old boomers need to listen to every pain, adjust their workouts and vary their routines to avoid serious injuries that put us on the sidelines for weeks. A quick search reveals “boomeritis” reveals multiple other stories in the Times. Now that we have a “condition” expect a new industry and slew of products marketed to prevent and treat our “boomeritis” and intended to keep us moving like it’s 1984 or at least ....
