Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. This week I want to talk about my big toe.
My big toe hurts. It has been inflamed, painful, and a little movement restricted for more than a few days now.
It is an overuse injury rather than an acute injury. There was no singular event I can point to that caused it. Rather, the constant use and overuse from triathlon training and jui jitsu along with my lack of mobility work caused the issue.
It is that lack of mobility work that i think really played the biggest part. And the culprit there, was disruption of my normal routine.
Disruption to our normal patterns and routines, is a threat that we are constantly on the look out for on the flight deck. We have patterns, flows, and habits that, when disrupted, often lead to mistakes.
We mitigate that threat by trying to minimize disruptions that are in our control. By trying to anticipate disruptions that aren’t in our control and planning our patterns and flows around them. Or recognizing when we have been disrupted and restarting our patterns or flows to make sure nothing was missed.
This process is part of the Threat and Error Management system or TEM. By understanding where there is a potential for a threat that could lead to an error, we are able to develop mitigation strategies.
My normal evening routine involves a minimum of 10 minutes but often times closer to 30 minutes or more of stretching, rolling, and mobility work.
Speedy, my two year old, recently switch from his crib to a twin bed. A bed which he is very easily able to climb out of. The multiple back to be shuffles has created a disruption in my evening mobility work.
I know it’s coming, the threat has been recognized and analyzed. But the damage is often done. The mobility work suffers.
It wasn’t until my toe started hurting that I realized what the likely culprit was. Speedy switched over to his new bed more than a month ago. It took more than three weeks before my big toe felt the ramifications.
Movement is medicine, and an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, as the saying goes. The small reduction in dose, compounded over multiple weeks, led to the overuse injury.
Now you might be thinking as you read this that a small disruption, leading to a small discomfort, in a small body part is all rather insignificant. And you wouldn’t be wrong. It is a very first world problem.
But, consider the importance of the big toe. The windlass mechanism, the flexing of the big toe is what controls the arch of the foot. This is our ability to absorb and create force as our arch contracts and extends. All driven by the big toe.
Walking, running, jumping, squatting, pushing, almost any movement where you are on your feet, starts with the big toe. If it is degraded so is your movement and your ability to produce force.
Tiny disruptions, seconds here, minutes there, can have tremendous downstream consequences. Understanding and mitigating those disruptions and their effects, can help us all on the path towards serenity.
Thanks for joining me, stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.
