I’ve actually touched on this first thought before. I was talking to a woman just the other day who wasn’t familiar with this blog. She’s very fit and still relatively young, I’m guessing early 30s. She’s a competitive tennis player. She mentioned she runs five days a week. She said her runs vary between three and five miles. Sometimes she’ll hit the track and do sprints. I thought it was a pretty intense program. I asked what she was getting ready for. She said she just wants to stay highly competitive in tennis. I totally understood. Here’s the part that made me realize she hadn’t read my earlier blog. She told me she was wearing shape-up shoes, like the ones I talked about in an earlier post. She asked if I thought there was any benefit. My answer was not anything that anyone would notice. She said the shoes must do some good. I then told her something that actually shocked her a bit. In her case, the shoes may actually hurt. Now I had her attention. I told you that to tell you this. I went on tell my friend that if she’s working hard on the tennis court and sprinting at the track and running three to five miles outdoors every day, her calf muscles and Achilles would eventually need a break. Wearing a shoe that causes those muscles to overstretch can possibly cause more damage than if she wore five inch heels. If I haven’t learned much in my life as an athlete, I’ve learned this. There is no free ride. Hard work pays off. Secondly, and most importantly, we have to be good to our bodies both nutritionally and physically. By training, we only disrupt homeostasis. In resting, we rebuild the body stronger.
