How many of you spent last weekend watching the US Open Tennis matches in Flushing Meadows, NY? It was much more entertaining than watching the weather reports about the slow-moving hurricane Dorian, which was devastating because it was so slow…but also really boring reporting because…well, it was so slow. But the more important question that I have is this. Did you see how Rafael Nadal had SAID?

Wait…what?

No, I didn’t mistype that, and my iPhone didn’t auto-correct the wording so that it made no sense (I can make no sense without Apple’s help, thank you very much).

What I mean to ask is, did you see how Rafael Nadal had Specifically Adapted to an Imposed Demand? In the medical world, that is called S.A.I.D.

So, did you notice? It is pretty obvious once you see it.

Rafa’s dominant left arm is nearly double the size of his right arm.

I was first introduced to this phenomenon of having a specific adaptation to sports training when in college. It was before entering physical therapy school that one of my friends showed me how his body had changed from playing tennis.

My friend, Mike, was 6-foot 5-inches tall…a little over 4-inches taller than me.

But when we were sitting beside one another at a meal in the cafeteria, I noticed that Mike seemed to be sitting in a hole.

I looked at him sitting next to me, and he was at least 4-inches shorter than me when sitting.

“Is your chair broken, or are you just sitting in a hole?” I asked jokingly.

“Nope, I’m all arms and legs,” Mike said. “My torso is really short.”

It wasn’t until he pointed it out that I took note of his legs being so long. As he was sitting, his bent knees nearly touched the bottom of the table.

I had never really considered the fact that legs and arms and torsos could all be in different proportions to one another on a very individual case.

But it was what he did next that really taught me a lesson…

“Check this out,” Mike said as he placed both of his elbows on the table. From there, he brought his forearms together with his hands and fingers pointed toward the ceiling, kind of a like little child getting ready to say prayers before bed.

I was amazed. Mike’s right forearm was double the girth of his left…and nearly 2-inches longer!

He then went on to show me the difference in his hands as well. With the heels of his palms lined up, the right palm was an inch longer that his left. His fingers on the right hand were also longer when lining up the lines on the skin at the base of the fingers.

“What the heck?” I asked.

“I grew up playing tennis. I would spend hours swinging a racquet on the court, and when off the court, I would use this apparatus that looked like a slingshot, but was for strengthening my forearm,” he explained.

I was dumbfounded. It was the first time I had ever considered how different people really are…and how adaptable our body is.

It’s not just my friend Mike and Rafael Nadal that have this specific adaptation to the imposed demands of tennis…Roger Federer also does.

And it doesn’t just happen in tennis. In fact, if a single-armed dominance sport is trained at young age, the body will adapt to the stresses on the single arm that is trained. You can see this in baseball players as well, but it is not easily seen by overall size of the arm.

With baseball, throwing, if started at a young age, can actually cause a twist in the humerus that occurs at the growth plate when the child throws. This leads to an improved ability to cock the arm backwards…but a slight loss of the ability to follow-through as well.

You wouldn’t be able to see the adaptation in a thrower, because it happens in the bone, not on the surface or in the muscles. The only way for you to “see” it is with an x-ray…unless you have a trained eye in looking at the throwers movements.

Some of these specific adaptations are obvious (at least when you know to look for them), like Nadal’s left arm.

Either way, whether you can see them or not, adaptation is there.

Most high level athletes have very specifically adapted to the sport in which they participate.

Some specific adaptations that I have seen in working with people:

1- Ribcage changes in rowers based on which side of the boat they row on, starboard or port.

2- Thrower’s shoulders, as described above.

3- Balance on the non-dominant leg of a soccer player being far better than the dominant leg.

4- Dominant arm size being larger in tennis players…you know, the whole thing that started this topic.

Notice that these adaptations are not all structural. The balance issue in soccer players is a learned neuromuscular adaptation in order to balance on the non-dominant foot while the dominant foot strikes the ball. I’ve seen this even in high level soccer players.

While the structural changes in the skeleton are permanent, the neuromuscular adaptations can be addressed and improved. In fact, working on balance on the dominant leg helps most soccer players become much more accurate and much stronger when striking the ball with their non-dominant leg.

The final men’s match at the 2019 US Open was one of the most exciting I have seen in a long time. Daniil Medvedev fought back from being down 2-sets to none, and forced a very uncommon fifth set to determine the overall winner this year.

Does Nadal’s giant left arm give him an advantage over other players? Not really, because the game requires the entire body to be working well in order to play at that level.

But it is amazing to see the adaptability of the human body to all levels of activity and stress.

So remember, your body is adapting right now to what you are doing. So try to balance the time you spent reading this blog with some time walking, swimming, biking, or running. Rather than becoming the proverbial “couch-potato,” let’s work on keeping our adaptive processes moving in a positive, more active direction!

Now you know what Nadal SAID. What will be your SAID?