Lee I would argue that you are learning how to listen to your body in the way at the first sign of a niggle in your IT band you are stopping and stretching immediately. You're also learning to make sure you do some pre-run routines to help your IT band. Sometimes things just happen, no matter how well you try to listen to your body. You and I Lee come from the no pain no gain mentality and it is hard for us I think to learn to listen to our bodies, but as you've said as you get older you are learning that you have to do certain things that you never would have thought to do in your younger days. That is a form of listening to your body. Now that I've said that and given you a little bit of crap, Go Vikes!
Totally agree Nick, I was just trying to be silly in the other comments. I tried to sum up my model of listening to your body in my original comments on Jason's blog. As you say, I've definitely learned to listen to the first sign of trouble, which, as you noted, wasn't always a sign of trouble when I was younger. With this idea of always warming up properly with both dynamic and static stretching, and stopping to stretch at the first sign of fatigue or strain, I feel incredibly hopeful for my running progress this year (fatal last words?). The problem is, without knowledge gained from frustrating experience, I wouldn't know what to listen for. So listening to your body does have its limits, as Zetti pointed out, until the proper experience has
happened. It's like telling someone to ask for directions in a foreign country before they've had time to learn the language.
Still, as Larry also noted, there is such a thing as pure
happenstance, like my MCL-sprain; I didn't feel anything wrong leading up to it. Still-still, warming up properly, rather than waiting for my body to speak, might've prevented it. I guess that's like doing your chores before your parental body has to remind you with a spanking.
And of course, during my frostnip mis
hap, my body was too un
happy to talk to me after the first half mile or so. You need to know when silence is a sign of trouble too I guess. Kind of a Quaker-sort of "let your words be few" listening to your body in this case, or maybe more like the good ol' silent treatment of an angry spouse.
So with the
listening to your body mandate, we must include at least these three subclauses:
1. learn the language your body speaks;
2. preemptively prevent your body from speaking when it has nothing good to say;
3. listen to your body's deafening silences as well.
Go Hawks!
Go Vikes!
Hope we meet in the Championship round.