You’re spending your lunch hour playing racquetball. You’re ten minutes into the first game. The score is 12-11, you’re the 12. Your opponent wants to even the score. She stands in the service box and calmly looks at you to be certain you are ready. Then she bounces the ball and sends a low drive serve into the backhand court.

            Your body is ready for the serve, but you think the ball is going to go just a tad to the left . Then you track the ball as it goes even more to the left and you stretch your arm to reach the racket out to hit that ball.

            You stretch so far that you miss returning the serve. You sigh as the ball passes the racquet and then you wince because when you reached to return the serve your hip didn’t quite follow your arm. You hip is telling you, with a just tad of pain, that you shouldn’t have stretched so far and so uselessly.

            All sports are filled with minor and major injuries. The first decision to make after injuring yourself is to figure out whether it’s minor or major. Then you must decide how to deal with your injury. Do you need to go to the ER? Will a dab of analgesic stop the throbbing? Do you stop playing for the day or can you manage to finish the game interrupted by the injury?

            Pain is always an indicator of how much damage has been done. Excruciating pain is not good. Treat your body with care, and consider calling 9-1-1, if you are experiencing that type of pain when injured. There’s the glancing blow of a ball that might leave a slight bruise that could be considered the least amount of pain. An ice pack could lessen the bruising and settle what minimal amount of pain is felt.

            And then there is everything in-between. There’s as many variations of how to deal with middle-of-the-road pain as there are types of this pain. Analgesic that can be spread on the area that hurts remedies are too numerous to detail. But once you spread a remedy on the aching area how long do you wait to play or when do you decide to call a medical professional?

            Like many other experiences in life pain can be relative. You may be one of those people who has a high pain tolerance. Your hip still hurts after turning the wrong way, twisting a muscle, and then continuing to play. You’ve put on a hot therapy pain reliever. Now you play another two games of doubles.

            Or you may wimp out immediately after you twist that hip muscle.  You hobble around the court area seeking sympathy. Finally someone loans you an analgesic you’ve never heard of, but you put it on the area that aches. Your opponent asks if you want to play more racquetball. You beg off, saying you are injured, but you really wish you could finish the game.

            Whether you play two more games of doubles or you sneak in those final points you have to know your body. Sounds kind of weird, doesn’t it? Knowing your body. All of us need to have a working knowledge of how our bodies react and what we need to do to keep them functioning so we can play racquetball even when we are in our nineties.

            That’s the first priority, isn’t it? Being able to play racquetball. We’re supposed to care about our bodies and we do, but we care about them to make sure we are on the court when we want to be.

            But we also need to heed our body’s signals to take care of ourselves when we are injured. The sudden pain in the hip that remains after a few weeks may need a look by a physician. On the other hand, the twinges of pain may just mean sitting out a game rather than playing continuously

            Your body wil tell you what you need to do to recuperate from injuries but you need to listen. It’s a difficult concept, but one must learn that concept in the sports world. It’s all too easy to think we are invincible even if we are pushing into our eighties.

            When it comes to injuries your body knows what you need to do. Listen to it!