Ask a physio: When getting fit, muscles and tendons are on a slower schedule than heart and lungs

The first properly warm Saturday of the summer is one of my favourite days of the year. It is also the start of one of my busiest weeks.

Someone comes in with a sore Achilles after a long walk. A shoulder that did not love three hours on a paddleboard. A pulled quadricep after the season’s first slo-pitch game, a sprint to first base from a body that had not run flat out since last summer. Almost every one of them says a version of the same thing: “I don’t get it, I didn’t even do that much.”

And they are usually right. They didn’t do that much. They just did a lot more than they had been doing.

That distinction is most of the story. The problem is rarely the activity itself. It is the size of the jump. Think of what you have been doing over the last month or two as your base. That is the amount your body has adapted to. Then think of what you did on Saturday as the ask.

Trouble shows up when Saturday is a big jump from the base. Not because you are fragile, and not because you are getting old. The gap was just big.

Nobody gets hurt going from zero to ten. They get hurt going from zero to a hundred.

There is a reason this trap stays so well hidden. Your heart and lungs get fitter quickly, within a few weeks. But tendons and muscles are on a slower schedule, and real change there takes months, not weeks. So you feel ready long before your tissues are. The enthusiasm arrives first.

The quad gets the memo later.

This matters more, not less, as we get older. The parts that complain, like quads, calves, and lower backs, take longer to settle at sixty than at twenty. And staying active is not the same as being ready for one specific demand. Walking most days is real fitness, but it is a different stimulus than three days of hiking under a 45-pound pack. That walking counts for something.

It may just not be the thing that weekend asks of you. None of that is a reason to sit out the game. It is a reason to give yourself a head start.

Here is the part I would most like you to take from this. Don’t let the first time be the hardest time.

If you have not sprinted since last summer, the first sprint should not be legging out a single with the throw on its way. Jog the bases a few times before the season opener. Add a couple of easy build-up runs the week before. Not full effort, just reminding your legs what fast feels like.

That is often the whole intervention.

The same logic travels everywhere summer takes us. Paddleboarding asks your shoulders for hundreds of strokes they have not done since September. Before any of it, ask one question: what part of me has done very little or none of this lately? That is the part to be generous with.

And doing less is not the safe option. This is the bit that surprises people most. People who stay active year-round tend to get hurt less than those who do very little and then surge.

Fitness is not what puts you in trouble. It is what protects you.

So the answer to a quiet spring is not a cautious summer. It is a summer with a runway. Start a little smaller than your enthusiasm wants. Go more often rather than bigger. Give the sleepy parts of you a gentler introduction.

The goal is not to talk you out of the game. It is to still be running the bases in September.

Sean Overin is a registered physiotherapist who coordinates the Chronic Pain Program at Tall Tree Health, which has a clinic in Port Coquitlam. This column is general information, not a substitute for individual medical advice.