No pain, no gain
In this article:
Michael Thomsen discusses pain in
sport, and concludes that it isn't some side effect, but is
absolutely central, underpinning winning and losing every game
played.
People who play competitive sport, as
opposed to a comparable sample who maintain fitness levels through
visiting the gym, swimming and suchlike, have higher pain tolerance.
Pain thresholds, where people recognise, notice the presence of pain,
are the same across the two groups.
One thing too frequently forgotten or
glossed over, is the psychological value of appearing impervious to
pain. In simple terms, a boxer lands his best shot, ever, on his
opponent. Who does not flinch. What's left? What can he do? MM
recently said, and he might've been quoting me here, that one of the
most satisfying feelings in football is when an opponent comes in
with a fierce challenge, intending to (maybe) win the ball while
inflicting maximum damage, and ends up in agony, having injured
himself. While you come away with the ball, leaving him in your wake.
Which all seems at odds with this:
All that Olympic chest-thumping,
legacy-bragging and political point-scoring, and we don't have a
minister for sport. We have a minister for sports, equalities and
tourism. Helen Grant. She says that women should consider “ballet,
gymnastics, cheerleading and even roller-skating”.
Just as we have a minister for the
environment, who, as a climate change denier, simply doesn't get it,
we have a minister for sports spouting health and wellbeing
platitudes, who patently does not get it either.
Sport can often have nothing to do with
health and wellbeing. Sport is a compulsion. Something many don't
feel they have a choice about. Participating, competing, means
getting out of bed on a freezing cold Saturday morning to face a long
trip to a hostile away fixture, with a cold, a headache, tired and
aching limbs, and an ankle (or knee, or wrist, or whatever) already
bandaged and bound to cause no end of grief the next morning, and the
next, and the next.
There's nothing wrong with health and
wellbeing. Being well and healthy are absolutely desirable. They
don't necessarily make anyone happy. There's definitely some
crossover with sport. But they very much not one and the same. It's
time for our politicians to admit that they're far too solitary
creatures, far too personally driven, far too selfish, to understand,
to get, team sports.
“We know what you are.”
Anon. Various terraces everywhere.
Cuckoo Madame
it's no wonder you're
shy.
You're Greta Garbo,
you're the witch of
Salem.
You're anti-social, and
you are too bloody
lonely
for the likes of us.
Robert Wyatt, Cuckoo Madame
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