Compensations: Are They Helping You Or Hurting Your Exercise Performance (for the Endurance Athlete)
Humans are an incredible species. We’re able to adapt to a variety of environments and situations because we can learn new ways to survive. For thousands of years, we’ve been able use our brains and our bodies to respond to a changing environment.
The same is true of our bodies; you can be dealing with an excruciating pain in your lower back, but if you’re an active adult or endurance athlete, you’ll still find a way to complete a 5k run each morning. How can the body do this? Well, the human form is very resilient, and it will usually figure out a way to perform when we ask it to. We can still run even if our muscles and joints aren’t functioning like they should be. How does the body do this? I’ve got two words for: compensation patterns.