Your Problem Could Be Mental
Strate-age-y
S kating and surfing in your thirtiesThe weekend warrior syndrome
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In your thirties the harsh realities of life really set in. Economic survival plays a big part, and it might even play a bigger part in your life than skateboarding/surfing. Eventually, a lifestyle may set in, if it didn't already get you in your twenties. You become a weekend warrior.
I've thought about the weekend warrior situation a lot, because I see them all around me at my various sports scenes, and I think I understand why it can be so dangerous. The reason is that due to my lifestyle and situation as a freelancer, I've been fortunate enough to never really have been a weekend warrior. For almost twenty years now I've been able to keep up my dedication to sports by going at it from three to five days a week. Some weeks I skate, skateboard, or surf, one or another, every single day, sometimes having surfing and skating sessions in the same day.
Why soreness prevents injury
This schedule does two things. One, I'm almost constantly a little sore and usually have some nagging minor injury in the background, and sometimes a quite bothersome injury requiring taping, wearing a brace, or some such hinderance. The other thing this does is it keeps me from crashing and burning in a major injury. Although I have had countless minor injuries in my ankles, shins, knees, hamstrings, groin, lower back, upper back, shoulders, and neck, as well as fingers that I often have to tape because of skateboarding, I have had only had a couple of injuries that kept me grounded for more than a few weeks.
I'm convinced that one reason high level amateur, pro, teaching pro, or semi pro athletes don't get injured that much is because we're always injured. There's an automatic limitation put on what you'll do if you're always sore. I may go out and lay into some jump or maneuver at high speed, but only after I've warmed up enough that the day-to-day pain is no longer felt. It's a natural warning system that constant training has instilled in my body.
That may be hard to understand if you don't do sports almost every single day like I do. The first goal is to get the soreness out, to get loose enough so that you don't hurt any more. Then you start going for it. You're on top of the world, you can do anything. Well almost anything. You're not going to do anything stupid, because your body won't let you. Then you warm down, and you go back to normal, which is sore.
Now if you stop, stop training every day, then you got a problem. Let a week go by and you're not sore any more, you're liable to go out and hurt yourself. But I have an advantage, since I am used to a three to six day a week schedule, if I quit for a week, I know it could be dangerous, so I'm going to work up to my level again over the course of several days.
The weekend warrior doesn't have this knowledge of how dangerous it is to go five days without practice. That's his routine, five or six days off then one or two on. That is crazy, if you're going to do anything stressful. Why, without all that pain, you might get injured!
So what can I do? I got a job!
Just knowing about the reality of the schedule that I've just told you about should give you an advantage. You can see that if you're going to really only skate or surf on a weekend that you are going to have to either a) train during the week and try to simulate your sport to the point of soreness and nagging minor injury or b) you'll have to set your weekend sports goals to a reasonable level.
If you try b), this means no more going out there and warming up for five minutes and then being a hero and cranking off your hardest tricks. It means spending most of your session warming up basically, if that makes any sense. You're going to have to back off on your style, whatever that is, so that it's not very demanding, except for about 10% of your workout. If you read about the pyramid style of practice, you can adapt that to the weekend warrior so that you have a huge base on your pyramid and a small peak where you can let go. But no more.
If you have higher expectations of thrills, I would advise a), figure out some way of training during the week. It's gotta be some form of exercise that simulates your sport and it has to be done to the point where you're sore. It would be good if you can exert yourself about as much as you figure your weekend session would last. If that's too much time, then try to put in at least an hour. Spend some time working on your stretch, in your legs and lower back. If I get a muscle strain it's usually because I neglected in warming up to stretch some muscle that I use heavily, like my lower back or legs.
As a better alternative to lifting weights, you could run on a treadmill or on soft ground, or jump rope. Surfers can lie on a bench and make a paddling pattern while holding small weights. Jumping rope is a good thing to do if you're a skateboarder, it's great conditioning for ollies and kick turns.
Once you get those nagging minor injuries going, you may never get seriously hurt again.
