If you ever find yourself on the treatment table of a physio room, one of the reasons could be that you're suffering from an over-use type injury.

That's where you get injured because of repetitively using the same muscles for a long period of time. And it's particularly common at the end of a long football season.

And it's one of the problems of playing the same sport, on the same surface like you might have been since the season started last September.

You've likely been using your muscles in more or less the same way each week and your joints are going be suffering from the same impact and force time after time if you've chosen to play something like five-a-side on a really hard surface.

Think of the straw that broke the camel's back. At first it's okay to keep doing something and you think it's fine because you don't feel any pain or stiffness or notice any swelling in say your knees, but eventually the problem catches up with you.

But it isn't just happening in football. If you run for a long distance on the same surface each night, problems in your knees and Achilles muscles await. If you swim every morning, expect to have pain in your shoulders eventually. And if you're a keen cyclist exploring the sites of the North-East on a regular 50-mile route, don't be surprised to feel aches and pains in your lower back from the pressure of sitting for such long periods.

The solution to reducing your chances of being injured is to vary what you do. It's that simple. And if you're looking to fill the void that's about to be created with the end of the football season, how about combining all three of the above and taking part in a triathlon?

At 8am tomorrow morning the Rotary clubs in Darlington will take part in the annual Triathlon with more than 150 participants turning out.

The triathlon event was one of the huge successes of last summer's Olympic Games with the Brownlee Brothers taking gold and silver in London - and that is likely to have inspired many of tomorrow's competitors to get into action.

To take part in such an event, you'd need to be working on your aerobic fitness in a big way. You'd be expected to swim for 400m, about 10-15 minutes depending upon how fit you are, run for about 30 minutes, and be able to bike ride for about two hours. Of course there are much more competitive races if you're wanting to take it further.

But the thing is you'd need to be able to do all of those sequentially - that is you finish one event and then immediately change your runners for your bike shoes and then into your swim shorts.

It's one of the best ways to keep fit. If you were taking part tomorrow, you'd be running round the streets of Darlington and country lanes, which means you'd be working your balance and core stability, both vital to reducing injury.

Swimming is great for easing tension in the shoulder muscles, especially if you spend all day at a desk with a bad sitting posture like most people do, and cycling allows you to build up a great level of stamina and cardio vascular fitness free from the risk of pounding your hips and knees.

If you spend the summer doing something like this, by the time the football season comes back around you'd likely go back to pre-season fitter than most of your team mates and it would make those dreaded first few training sessions much easier meaning you'd suffer much less of the notorious next day aches and pains that most players in their 30s and 40s experience.