October 08, 2026
Dealing with bad news presents varying degrees of difficulties. We often look for blame. That blame frequently lands on the person who delivered it. When it comes to human performance, things like the scales or the friend who mentions your eating habits or weight gain bear the brunt.
Don’t shoot the messenger is not a new term. We perhaps think we have outgrown it but in reality we have just become more sophisticated about who we shoot. When it comes to our health and fitness the messenger is increasingly the sport or fitness pursuit we follow.
It is rare that you tear a calf on the sofa…..stay with me. So when something goes, we blame whatever we were doing at the time. Running is bad for your knees. CrossFit wrecks your shoulders. Cycling ruins your back. The list goes on and delivers for us a story that we like, that feels convenient and in the moment makes sense to us. It was in the sport where we first felt the calf or the shoulder so surely the sport must be the cause. Most of the time the opposite is true.
I have seen dozens of people pull out of sports events be it endurance or fitness related due to “injury” in the final block of their training. Yes the injuries have been real, but when we actually sat down and looked, the injury didn’t start in the sport itself. It started weeks earlier. Hectic work schedule, poor sleep hygiene, lack of daily reflection practices, new baby, travel commitments or some new eating fad. The sport where the injury showed up was just the day the bill arrived.
The sport is the great messenger. It’s the one that finally tells us to slow down, because we ignored everything else that tried.
Think about everything that sits underneath a training session. How you slept. What you ate, and whether it was enough. How much stress you’re carrying from work, from home, from the inbox you checked at 11pm. Whether your blood sugar is swinging all day. Whether your head is actually in the session or still in the board meeting. None of that shows up on the training plan. All of it shows up in the tissue.
Your body doesn’t file work stress and training stress in separate drawers. It’s one bucket. When the bucket is three quarters full before you lace up, the sport doesn’t have to do much to tip it over. This is where the business person and the athlete turn out to be the same human. The CEO who “suddenly” does their back in deadlifting has usually been sleeping five hours a night for a month, living on flights and coffee, and treating the gym as the one place they can switch off. The ultra runner who “randomly” gets a stress fracture has usually been under-fuelling for a season and calling it discipline. Different sport, same story.
So where do we go here? First, stop asking what the sport did to you. Ask what you brought to the sport. What was your readiness actually like that week? Not what the watch said. What you’d say if someone honestly asked you. It’s common to see people a bit tired when they show up to train. I always ask “how are you?” and am normally met with “good thanks”. But of course what presents in front of me is telling a different story. It is not easy being told that today is not a day to train when someone is already on the dance floor but it is always for the right reasons.
Second, treat the early signals as information rather than inconvenience. The niggle. The heavy legs. The session that felt twice as hard as it should. The irritability. That’s the body trying to have a quiet word before it has a loud one. Most of us ignore the quiet word because the plan says intervals. The body whispers before it screams.
Third, and this is the uncomfortable bit for many, look outside training first. Earlier to bed. Less training. Less coffee. Not skipping meals. Spending time with those you love. Nobody wants to hear that the fix for their knee is sorting out their evenings or their home life. More often than not, that’s the fix.
Of course there are times where sport hurts people. Bad technique, bad programming, too much too soon, a rock you didn’t see. Sh*t happens we know it. However the kicker is not always the sport and we love to think that blaming the sport lets us off the hook for everything else.
The best part is watching people quit the sport and the underlying problem doesn’t leave with it. It waits for the next messenger. Your back, picking up the kids. Your blood pressure. The way you’re snapping at people by Thursday. The list goes on and entertains throughout.
So next time something goes, before you blame the run, the ride or the barbell, have a proper look at the six weeks before it.
What was the sport trying to tell you?
The injury is never just an injury.
No Weakness,
Marcus
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