It was colder than usual this morning when I got out of bed. I sat up, letting my eyes adjust to the light and threw my legs over the side of the bed. As I began to stand up, my knees felt stiff, as though the bones were grinding together. My right knee gave out on me and I had to catch myself to keep from falling. I slept on my right shoulder too long last night, so I shook my arm around vigorously to get rid of the uncomfortable tingling sensation. This has become my morning ritual—gauging the daily pains, aches, and kinks in my body. I sigh as I think about how easily I used to spring up out of bed.
I’m 27 years old.
It’s really not a mystery why my body feels older than what my age would suggest. I played and competed in year-round softball from the time I was 8 years old until I was 23 years old. Not to mention eight years of long distance running for competition and endurance training. It dominated more than half of my life. Because of that I will always be an athlete whether I compete anymore or not.
If I really ponder it, it’s quite amazing, and at times appalling, what I put my body through. Diving around on the ground, running into people, twisting my ankles, getting hit by softballs, pounding the pavement with my knees, and rotating my arm over a million times—all things which would be too much for me to endure now. It makes me flinch with imagined pain just thinking about it. I’ve found in recent years that I’ve had to hold myself back more when I get together with friends for a “casual” game of volleyball or ultimate Frisbee, the competitive drive within urges me to dive! Sprint! Do whatever you need to get the ball! But my knees, hips, and arms beg me not to. And it makes me sad. I watch the teenage girls I coach and marvel at how easy it seems for them to go all out and be competitive.
But at the same time, I pray for these girls and hope that they take care of themselves the best that they can, because it all catches up to you in the end. At age 27, there are some days where parts of my body feel like I am 40 years old. Just squatting down to get something is not as easy as it once was. And the pessimist in me knows that all of these things are going to get worse with time and age. Being 27, I have a long way to go and it scares me a little.
See, the thing about us female athletes is that we’re no different from male athletes in the sense that our competitive drive is just as intense. Female athletes have evolved into tremendously talented competitors in all sports, and the drive we have to push our bodies to their greatest limits is no different than any man’s.
But what separates males from females is our lack of inclination to speak up about potential injuries. Women are more likely to keep quiet about injuries because they don’t want to be perceived as weak or injury-prone. What’s worse is coaches usually disregard complaints about injury and chalk them up to hormonal issues.
Perhaps because most female sports aren’t a million-dollar industry, people aren’t aware of the amount of head and bodily injuries that plague female athletes. Our biomechanics, process of development, and hormones make competitive female athletes twice as susceptible to chronic knee pain, concussions, hip problems, and blown out ACLs; a quickly growing epidemic.
Yet we ask more and more of our athletes—male or female. They are encouraged to become better, faster, stronger, wearing down the same muscles and joints day after day with no time to recover. Add all this together, and you have a recipe that causes female athletes to deal with a number of physical issues later in life.
While all of this is very true, it must be acknowledged that injury and wearing down of the body is basically unavoidable with any seriously competitive athlete. It’s the risk we all took the moment we decided to put everything into our sport. But there’s no time during your athletic career that your body feels 100 percent, it’s just the nature of the beast. I fear this will sound “macho” but as an athlete, male or female, you have to learn to play through the pain. It’s a lesson that transfers off the field and into life, you have to keep going even when it hurts.
However, the severity of these injuries and the likelihood of it becoming an issue later in life can be avoided. For one thing, female athletes need to feel OK with speaking up. It makes you look stupid, not tough, when you aren’t being honest about an injury—believe me I know from experience and I’m paying for it now. This comes down to a person being taught how to be responsible with her body, educating athletes on the dangers of poor injury maintenance. It would also help if females were educated more on the difference in mechanics and body composition and how it affects them as athletes, right down to estrogen and its effect on ligaments. Coaches need to take females seriously when they say they are injured. It’s chauvinistic, rude, and ignorant to think all injury complaints are a result of some hormonal issue. More importantly, female athletes need to listen to their bodies and take care of themselves. Life will be much easier and less painful if you can make it through with the same set of knees.
As for former female athletes, the worst thing you could probably do is not maintain a workout routine. This helps the muscles stay strong and support your joints, which may have weakened from years of competition. Muscle strength is also good for our aging bones.
But notice how none of my solutions include women slowing down in sports or quitting. As prideful as it may sound, I don’t regret one minute of beating up my body the way I did. Sure, I may end up with a double knee replacement but it was worth every bit of it. I can look back knowing I gave it my all, and all I can do now is continue to take care of my body as it ages. All the same, I’ll keep the injuries along with all the memories of the amazing things my body was capable of for a majority of my life. Shout out to all my sister athletes out there kicking ass!
But what do I know? I’m just a 27-year-old Benchwarmer with 40-year-old knees.
Contributor Kristina Sewell can be reached through Editor Shelly Cone at scone@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Mar 3-10, 2016.