If you hurt yourself, get it checked out

A twisted ankle in March can cause back pain in June.

It's easily done. You're walking down the street and roll your ankle on an uneven pavement. Or you're having a kickabout in the park, lunge for a ball that's really a step too far away and tweak your knee.

OK, it hurts, and you're swearing and hopping about for a minute. But then you shrug it off, thanks to endorphins (the body's natural painkillers) and your body's automatic adjustment to your natural gait, which protects the injured ankle by shifting more weight to your
other side.

A few days later you notice some swelling, which soon goes away. A few weeks later, you've forgotten all about it. But your body hasn't.

Without noticing, you've changed the way you hold yourself. Your body has shifted your weight to the "stronger" side to protect the injured limb.

What started as a protective movement has now become an ingrained pattern, and your body has lost its natural alignment.

With more strain on the uninjured side, it often doesn't take much to overload it - something as run-of-the-mill as a heavier-than-usual shopping bag can do it.

It will always be the weakest link in the chain that fails. And if your body is out of alignment, it's often your back that takes the greatest strain (80 per cent of adults in the UK suffer from some form of lower back pain, often for just this reason).

Usually the pain is on the opposite side of the body to the original injury, and with the passing of time we often don't associate the two.

Especially as the second injury is almost always more painful, lasts longer and is harder to fix.

So do yourself a favour. If you hurt yourself, get it checked out. If you think that sounds like a fuss over a little niggle, you're not alone.

Half the people who come to us for rehab thought the same.

David Higgins is co-founder of tenpilates.com