Whenever you are practicing any sport in a serious manner, it’s important to undergo a medical test to make sure you don’t have any conditions that can endanger your health while practicing that sport.
Practicing a sport seriously usually necessitates pushing yourself to the max in order to improve your thresholds for power, resistance etc and thus make improvements to your overall performance. Having an underlying deficiency means you would be putting yourself at risk as that high stress can trigger a failure in that weak aspect of your body.
Sadly, we’ve seen many athletes over the years collapse and sometimes die while practicing their sport, and some of those incidents could have been avoided by better testing of the athlete and detection of underlying problems (usually related to their heart).
To keep on the safe side, I like to undergo a medical sports stress test at the start of every year so that I can set my mind at rest and also understand which areas I need to improve in.
Sanitas also offers some of these tests, you can find more info here. They have a Sport Medicine Unit headed by Dra. Bellver in the Millennium Centro Medico Iradier. You need to contact them at 932 55 46 00 or email [email protected] If you’re with Sanitas the basic test is covered but if you want to take the advanced test with gases then you need to pay 120 euro.
Here’s a good article about stress testing in sports.
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