Stressed out

Some people - usually the ones with brooding stomach ulcers, hyper on caffeine and sporting a stockmarket trading-induced permasweat - think that stress is a good thing. It gets you 'in the zone' they'll gasp in between pained clutches at the chest, it gets things done.

But the reality is that the thing that gets done is you.

Enter stage left Wayne Rooney, the everyman of modern-day professional football.

He's broken a second metatarsal in two years - the metatarsals being the bones that back up the toe rather than the toes themselves.

It's a stress fracture caused essentially by overtraining and overplaying on perfectly manicured hard surfaces.

Treating it involves encouraging the bone to regrow - which should be easier because he hasn't stopped growing yet - by whatever means possible.

And on top of all the physical stuff is positive thinking. The placebo effect proves that if you think you're getting better, you almost always are. Remember how kids recover from THE most painful tackle ever with the help of magic water?

It's the same thing. The mind is as powerful as the body, argue the experts and that's why emotional stress causes so many problems in the first place.

If you stick a fork into spaghetti and twist it, the spaghetti tightens up. And as it gets curled round, there's more space on the rest of the plate. Substitute stress for the fork and muscles for the spaghetti.

Hey presto: a crude example of how tension becomes the baddie. Except the space left on the plate is other muscles, tendons, ligaments - and ultimately bone - all being warped.

It doesn't seem so odd anymore.

The psychological pressures of life in the superstar celebrity fast lane soon add up. Rooney, for example, has just been given a mauling in the press for his gambling. His dirty washing is regularly paraded in public - sometimes more literally than others.

Then there's the pressure of performing better every time.

Enter Jimmy Anderson of England and Lancashire. His stress fracture of the back is the cricketing answer to football's metatarsal plague.

It's not surprising when you think about what bowlers face. If you've ever tried completing one of those electronic wire games five times in a row, you'll know how hard it is. The arm locks up and starts to ache - maybe you even get the shakes from the physical tension.

Now do it against the clock with umpires and cameras plus a paying public scrutinising your every move. By the time you get to the sixth attempt, you then have the pressure of pulling out an even faster ball. Or a slower one. Or one with a different bounce.

It's a lot with a livelihood at stake.

But it's not worth getting stressed about.