#758 Inhuman Training

Perhaps it’s a mistake to overtune the human body. Maybe it’s better to leave a margin of schlubiness to take up unexpected twists, turns, and jolts. Let your small muscles stay loose in case you step in a gopher hole.
I thought about this the other day when I heard they took a major league pitcher out of a game because he was experiencing a “tightness in his thigh” That’s right, that’s how they put it, a “tightness in his thigh.”
Now perhaps his team’s monetary investment in him is so great they aren’t taking any chances, but “tightness in his thigh”? Come on. Any coach of any little leaguer would tell him to shake it off, zip up his whining, and get back in the game.
The next day the same team lost an outfielder because he had totally messed up his shoulder diving for a fly ball, and I thought further about the over-training hypothesis.
I once played racquetball with a guy who was in absolute peak physical condition. He worked out on weights, both machine and free range. He ran on a treadmill, rowed on a rowing machine, biked on a biking machine. He had prominent bulges, six-pack abs, glutes, pecs and delts up the yingyang.
But he was always spraining something. Or straining something, or twisting his knee or ankle, or pulling a hammy. The most worked out muscles he had were in his jaw from complaining all the time.
On the other hand, there’s the drunk that falls off the top of a building and survives to walk away, sleep it off, and be none the worse for wear the next morning.
Maybe what’s happening is the sports trainers are training athletes to isolate and improve the major muscle groups. Then doing their range of motion exercises on machines that are too linear. So all those small supplemental reaction muscles aren’t staying in balance to do their jobs.
They aren’t ready to pick up the slack when a groundskeeper leaves a dirt clod larger than a square centimeter on the pitchers mound.
I have to stop now. I’m experiencing a tightness in my typing fingers...
America, ya gotta love it.