An Orthopaedic Surgeon’s Personal Running Journey
Meet Dr Bryan Wang and discover his personal sporting journey and the benefits and importance of seeking medical treatment promptly
Since his days serving the country in the commandos formation in Singapore Army, Dr Bryan has enjoyed endurance sports, be it running, swimming or cycling. Though to ensure no disruptions to patient care, Dr Bryan mostly hits the pavement or the pool early in the day to get his workout in before sending his three children to school.
Ultramarathon Experience
In his sporting journey, he has experienced the importance of progressive and proper preparation for any sporting challenge or activity and has participated in both marathons and an ultra marathon (A normal marathon is 42.195km while an ultra marathon is typically 50 km or longer in distance).
It was his very painful and memorable ultramarathon experience and recent sports injury trends that sparked this article to share the importance of listening to one’s body while carefully pushing the edge to prevent significant damage and injury to your joints and musculoskeletal systems. (One’s running form can impact parts of your body you never thought was possible, these can include your neck, back, shoulder and the more common knee, ankle related injuries).
Dr Bryan, in his much more youthful days, took on the challenge of completing an ultramarathon in the warm and humid climate in Singapore. Despite being physically fit and completing various long distance challenges including completing a marathon, he experienced the painful “wall” and rightly chose to stop to prevent serious injury to his knee. He was out of action and had to recover from the effects of the strain. He did struggle long and hard in those final kilometres of that race, contemplating if he can push through the pain and ultimately made the call to make sure his well-being and safety takes top priority, both as a medical professional and personal responsibility to his loved ones.
When Pain was Unbearable
In our recently commissioned survey to understand the decision making behaviours in the Singapore context, over half of respondents only sought medical help “when pain was unbearable” and slightly less than half delayed seeking medical advice due to time constraints.
In our fast-paced society, we are often time crunched, by putting off seeing a sports orthopaedic specialist doctor, one can tend to continue to train through the pain, try to stretch more, seeking alternative remedies, some scientifically proven, quite a few others not so. What we have seen in over 16 years of medical experience are that patients go through more pain than needed when delaying treatment. It also impacts their mental well-being when they are not able to complete their workouts, training programmes planned out, resulting in increasing anxiety especially when a race or event is drawing close.
Seeking Medical Help
Instead with quality medical guidance, we discovered patients gain by:
Being able to get back into action faster overall by not delaying treatment
Working with our partners, improve their natural body imbalances to try to avoid future recurrences of injuries and to speed up the recovery process
Are able to enjoy daily life, their chosen sports for the long haul
Be it pushing oneself too much, too soon, too hard (too fast an increase in frequency per week, too much an increase in training volume, too big an increase in intensity suddenly). The effects can be detrimental and can put one ‘out of action’ through an injury or worse, result in longer term joint, ligament and associated damage that may not be reversible. Dr Bryan has met and helped both athletes and weekend warriors alike to get back into action. Working closely with his trusted network of allied health professionals such as physiotherapists, Beacon Orthopaedics takes a collaborative approach to support the recovery of his patients and help them understand their bodies better to prevent a recurrence and strengthen any inherent musculoskeletal imbalances at the same time.
Join Dr Bryan in his journey as he prepares for the Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon in 2023, you can find out how he will be preparing for the event and experience his journey Instagram (@DrBryanWang) and here on our blog!