No One Tells You..
That playing sports as a child during your formative years can have an adverse affect on your long term health. Here’s the story:
I was having some intermittent pain in my right shoulder muscle. I went to the orthopedist to get checked out. After x-rays, the doctor told me that they looked “good.” Not sure what that meant other than I didn’t have any serious damage. The diagnosis---is that I have muscle and rotator cuff tendonitis. He recommended physical therapy.
When I went to my first therapy session, Emily asked me dozens of questions. I was pretty sure that my problem is caused by how I sleep—on my side with my right arm tucked up under my head. Instead, Emily felt it could be that---but definitely it had something to do with my sports history! What?? That was 60 years ago. Yeah, when my body was still growing!
I played softball for 11 years—third base to be exact. The first year I played, it was shortstop. But after that, once it was determined that I could launch that ball from third to first, that was my position from then on. Emily felt that the evidence was clear that my range of motion is what it is today due to what I did back then. Makes sense—especially when you add that my dad threw the ball in the backyard with us kids nearly every day—which included a game called “burn-out” where you fired that ball as hard as you could. It was fun.
Even knowing what I do today, I wouldn’t have changed anything. Softball was my life. When you grow up in a large family, middle class, in the country, there’s not a lot to do. We played every day besides our team practices and games. It's just what we did! I loved it--even if it's caused me a little pain right now.
I have exercises to do. We'll see if that works.
