What do Wayne Rooney, Steven Gerard, Andrew Flintoff, Simon Jones, Tim Henman and Andy Murray all have in common?
They are suffering from or recovering from injury. Why do we see the same athletes being injured time after time? Is this a coincidence?
My suggestion is that this is not coincidence, but a failure by the medical teams around them to see the big picture. What do I mean by this?
Well, the body is a complex system of inter-related systems that all affect each other. However, our sports teams use a compartmentalised approach and generally see the physical body as a system of mere pulleys and leavers.
The human body is a physical, mental, emotional entity. However, I see little evidence of any top sports teams having anyone in their team who can put the pieces together. It’s a little like taking 5 blind people and placing them at different points of an elephant and asking them to describe the whole thing. They will all come up with different answers and yet not understand ‘the whole’.
In addition, one of the biggest mistakes our athletes are making is eating appalling diets. Many of them eat poor quality, highly processed, high carbohydrate, low fat and protein diets which I have little doubt plays a role in the high incidence of bone fractures in footballers recently.
When you consider that one tea spoon of sugar inhibits the immune system by 50% for 4 hours and many athletes keep chugging litres of sugary sports drinks is it any wonder their bodies are not running at optimum?
From my own experience working with athletes, using a holistic approach has enabled them to stay injury free and achieve personal bests. It’s very frustrating to see British athletes making such fundamental errors when the evidence is all around them.