A quick thought on entitlement
There’s distinct mismatch between what people say they want and what they’re actually willing to do to get it.
You are owed nothing in this life. If you aren’t willing to sacrifice your time, energy, effort, and other experiences, then you don’t get to complain about a lack of success.
If you aren’t willing to do the grunt work, then someone else is.
A deep dive on healthcare for athletes
Our healthcare professionals are ridiculously good at their jobs.
Watching an orthopedic surgeon perform arthroscopic surgery is like watching Picasso in action. A good sports medicine physician doing an evaluation to diagnose an injury is reminiscent of a modern day Sherlock Holmes.
Witnessing a specialist execute their special skills that they’ve developed from special training (alongside being born with special abilities) is… special.
The problem doesn’t lie with the people; it lies with the system. Our healthcare system wasn’t intentionally designed. It was created to solve problems as they arose.
An unintentionally designed system is going to have issues. Here are 4 things that need to change for athletes to receive better care.
1) Prevention over reaction
Around the year 1500, Dutch philosopher Desiderius Erasmus coined the phrase “prevention is better than cure.”
Over 500 years later and we still haven’t acted on it.
Very few things need to change about our healthcare system when it comes to treating people after they’re injured. Our system is pretty good at that.
We just need to shift the entire emphasis to the front-end of the problem. We should be proactive in our approach to health.
It is infinitely easier to stop problems from occurring than it is to fix them after they’ve already arisen.
2) Integration of LTAD
Failing to plan is equivalent to planning to fail.
In a similar vain to bullet point #1, we need to be proactive, not reactive. Long-term athlete development provides us with a framework to make better decisions about what is best for an athlete at different stages in their life.
LTAD allows your athlete to:
- Optimize athletic potential
- Maximize athletic enjoyment
- Instill lifelong health behaviors
- Instill translatory life skills
- Minimize injury cost
Our youth sports landscape is ever-changing madness. Your athlete’s development should be guided by someone who is well-versed in LTAD.
3) Direct, consistent, and prolonged relationship with clinicians
People are complex. Pain is complex. Health is complex. Performance is complex. Athlete development is complex.
Complex issues require time to solve.
It’s not uncommon to have one of our strongest athletes go to a new health care practitioner and be told “you just need to get stronger.”
Sure, that’s the solution for most 16 year old girls. But, not this 16 year old girl who can deadlift 250 lbs with ease. If you really knew this athlete, you would dive deeper.
The longer that I know someone and the more interactions that I have with them, the more data points I get on them. The more data points that I get, the better the information I have. The better information I have, the better decisions I can make. You can’t cheat that process. Relationships take time to cultivate.
Furthermore, life changes fast. If you get hurt and you have something important coming up, waiting a week and half to see someone to help you sucks. You should have a direct relationship with someone who you can get in with ASAP.
4) Performance is a part of the healthcare process, not an obstacle to overcome.
There are times when reaching peak physical performance is at odds with your physical health. That’s an objective truth.
But, there are also times when not chasing peak performance can bet at odds with your mental, emotional, and existential health.
Waiting until an injury is 100% healed isn’t always the right solution.
That sounds blasphemous to most medical professionals, but they just don’t understand the high performance mindset. Sometimes, the risks of missing out on important events outweigh the risk of further injury.
It’s all relevant. Life doesn’t have “correct” answers.
(It’s important to note, if your athlete is 12 years old, the event isn’t that important. Err on the side of caution.)
More from me…
- 2024 is geared toward pumping out more educational content on social media. Follow me on Instagram @gtperformance_ to learn all about athlete development.
- If you think this newsletter doesn’t suck (or maybe you even enjoy reading it), I would really appreciate you sharing it with some other parents that might benefit from reading it. You can just send them to gtperformance.co/free and they can subscribe there!
Thanks so much for your help in spreading the word about long-term athlete development!
Be >,
Zach
Dr. Zach Guiser, PT, DPT, CSCS