As a child and teenager, I never thought it was a huge issue that I had a hard time balancing on one leg. After all, I was a stud athlete with tremendous speed and endurance and decent strength. Or so I thought. I needed more functional strength in the right places. One day when I was in the eighth grade, during a physical education class, I was running fast in true Gavin fashion, trying to catch up to my friend who was not as fast as me (I had to prove this to be so). As I neared him, he stopped abruptly and got in my way. As I tried to evade him and stay controlled, I sprained my ankle via inversion (turning your ankle inwards).
I spent the rest of the day and a few more days limping. One lesson I learned was that I must not be arrogant with a need to always prove myself (though it has taken years to work through this, and sometimes I still struggle).
However, it was only until I revisited this memory recently with the health and fitness knowledge I currently have, that I realized that the injury resulted from my lack of ankle stability. When you think about it, you’re like “Duh!” because it is common sense that anything unstable can be broken far easier. But our human minds can be like that, so don’t beat yourself up if you have any “duh!” moments when reading this article. Just humbly learn a lesson, like I have here.I also recall that over the years, especially my childhood, I would almost sprain an ankle when I was simply just walking. I brushed it off like it was no big deal like a stubborn human would.
Later in life, as I began sprinting competitively, my achilles tendon (the tendon attached to your heel) would always hurt. A lack of ankle stability meant that the pressure that the achilles tendon took would often be too much for it to handle. Again, I did not realize until recently that there was a correlation between my years of immense achilles tendon pain and my ankle instability. This hindered my performance and development big time in the sport which I loved. I realize that it also caused me to suffer in the other sport which I loved, hockey (and causes me problems to this day when I play it). I have a hard time stopping and starting and controlling my edges, which causes my body to expend so much more energy than a person with better ankles would. I can often fall as well.
Let me give you guys another important tidbit of knowledge and another injury testimony. Since our bodies work as a whole, if one part suffers, the rest of it can suffer too. I also have always had unstable knees and sporadic knee pain. I nearly snapped it sideways two years ago when my partner in self-defence class fell on me while I was trying to get out of a headlock. We both fell, but my knee bent sideways, causing a moment of immense pain. Fortunately, it was a minor injury and I was off crutches after only two weeks. It certainly humbled me to be more diligent in improving my joint stability. This was a blow to my ego because I was making great progress in improving the amount of weight I could lift in the gym and the size of my legs. But our ego destroys us, and we must put it aside to know what matters more.
As I have learned to put my ego aside day by day and gained knowledge on how to properly train joint stability, I am blessed to share this wisdom and knowledge with others, in many different capacities. Please get in touch with me or anyone here at Sweat22 if you would like more guidance in your health and fitness journey. We are happy to help you reap the benefits in whatever capacity. That is why I pour my heart into these blog posts and create insightful content on our Instagram page. I hope you enjoyed the article.
Gavin Fan
BHK, NSCA-CPT