Injury Prevention

You get invited to a padel game. Somebody at work booked a court, or your brother-in-law has been going on about it for months. You go. You’re terrible at it, which is fine, but also — you can hold a rally. Within an hour you’re sweating properly and having actual fun. Three weeks later you’re playing three times a week. Eight weeks later your elbow hurts when you lift a coffee cup. ...

If you lift weights and you snowboard, you already know the pattern. You train for months, you book the trip, you show up — and then you stand in a rental shop being handed a board because it’s “about your height.” Nobody asked what the board’s camber profile was. Nobody asked about waist width. And you ride away on something that either fights you for six days or, occasionally, feels inexplicably good — and you never find out why. ...