Tagged: advice
Patience Isn’t Just a Virtue When You’re Injured.
Recently because I’m a football fan I’ve been reading about recovery of the quarterback of the Indianapolis Colts. His name is Andrew Luck and he’s a professional athlete who was the next up and coming superstar in the league.
That is, until he badly tore the labrum in his shoulder and had to have surgery. The whole thing was mismanaged by his medical staff and it’s a long story, but the point of the whole thing is this: He did not take a snap last football season and has been out of football for over a year due to rehab.
This is a professional athlete with access to daily physio, the best surgeons in the game and things like stem cell treatments, and he still has not thrown a football in over a year. A year. This is a guy who throws a football for a living and he’s not doing it to let his injury recover for a YEAR.
I’ll ask you a simple question: if he’s taking that long to recover with access to all of those resources, what makes you think that you can recover from an injury any faster?
Typical labrum tear surgery recovery is 3-4 months but can easily stretch into 6-9 months if things aren’t dealt with properly.
Over the years I’ve dealt with hundreds of injuries. One thing that I really try to get across to my clients is that if you are hurt, you need to give your body time to heal and recover from whatever it is. This takes TIME. Usually a period of weeks if not months. For some reason my Type A people seem to think that if they just baby a problem for a couple of weeks and then go right back into doing whatever they were doing before they will be fine.
Or even worse, they do physio but keep on doing the same activity that caused the injury in the first place and expect to recover. I had an example of that just last week and when I pointed it out to my client that not stopping the activity meant it would just get worse again she was for some reason completely dumbfounded.
Does this make sense?
The general guidelines for minor injuries is 4-6 weeks. More severe ones are 6-12 weeks. Surgery is anywhere from 3-6 months at LEAST depending on the issue.
My main point is this: we need to exercise patience as a society when it comes to our bodies.
Whether it comes to recovering from an injury, things like weight loss or achieving a goal like running a marathon, you need to exercise patience to succeed.
Are you acting smart, or making things worse by rushing the process?
Setting a goal for recovery is just like any other goal – there is a timeline and a process involved. Sometimes it means not moving anything for a couple of weeks. Sometimes it is moving just a little bit as much as you can as frequently as you can to help the healing process. It can be frustrating and feel like it’s taking forever. But you have a long time to achieve whatever it is you’re trying to do.
If you want to be active and healthy for a lifetime, then taking six months to recover from an injury might represent less than 1% of your athletic or active life over a span of fifty years. You’re not missing anything by taking that time to make sure that whatever happened doesn’t happen again.
Be patient now, be consistent and give it time and you will succeed in your recovery. Rush back into activity and have a setback or make the situation worse and suddenly a six-week process becomes six months.
If an NFL player can not touch a football for a year, you can wait three months to rehab from surgery. Don’t think that your body or recovery process is any different. Patience and consistency wil get you results every time.
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Decide and Commit
As we move into 2018, we all get suddenly motivated to improve our lives and ourselves. For most people this involves fitness. However, my attitude especially over the past couple of years has changed on this topic.
We all basically want to FEEL BETTER. That’s the ultimate driver in life. Whether you think you want to be thinner, faster, have a fantastic relationship, a nice house or whatever it might be – this really means we want to feel good day to day. We want to come home with a feeling of satisfaction and not have negative thoughts. We want to not be tired. We want to get rid of things that cause us discomfort. When you break down living you’re either doing things that are moving you towards better feelings or embracing things that still make you feel crappy.
I’m not going to reiterate the same things you will hear from everyone else. These are things you have heard about a million times. You need to sleep more. You need to cut out toxic things and people. You need to change your work situation if it isn’t fulfilling you. You need to move more. These are basic simple fundamentals that people need to feel better daily and be happy with their lives. And they are much easier to do than you think they are.
The main thing you really need to do is DECIDE to make a change and then COMMIT to it for a period of time – or even the rest of your days. Once you commit and do something for a period of time, often you will realize that either you don’t even miss it, or the benefit of doing or not doing the thing provides you with enough benefit to outweigh the simple pleasure you used to get from it.
For example, I cancelled my cable probably six months ago. I was wasting money and time watching television. Anything I need for entertainment I can get with Netflix and/or streaming shows (for free) the day after. Do I miss it? Absolutely not. Simple thing but it provided a benefit.
I started doing yoga daily thinking I was going to make it 365 days in a row – and then promptly stopped when I went on vacation. However, I still got 20 days in a row under my belt and felt a ton better and still do. I’m going to get back on that train as soon as I can. Is that a failure? I don’t think so. It’s proof to my brain that it’s possible.
My goal for January is to do it alcohol and coffee free. It will help my sleep, save me money and doesn’t contribute anything at all beneficial to my life. And if I can make it a month, maybe I won’t even go back and just stay that way. Maybe I’ll drink occasionally. The point is to make an effort to be consistent and do something beneficial every day – and by the way, NOT doing something is the easiest way to get that done.
Deciding what to do is easy. Committing to it is often harder. My suggestion is to start with something small that will provide an obvious benefit almost immediately. Cutting out one type of food – not a bunch of them. Doing one small thing that will help your sleep like installing a blue light filter or simply cutting out screens altogether before bed. Committing to one small bout of physical activity daily, no matter how small. Any of these can give you momentum and teach your brain that you feel better, and that will make you want to continue.
So if you’re looking for something to do this year, think on how you’re approaching it. Focus on the right things first. Make small steps and just focus on consistency and you will be better off tomorrow than you are today, and then a week and a month from now.
If you enjoyed this, please feel free to like, share and let me know! Until next time.
Rules of the Body
Jill Miller, who is the inventor of a program called Yoga Tune Up, recently revealed on her blog about a month ago that she needs a total hip replacement. At the age of 45. Now, she has been absolutely instrumental in helping many, many people discover a modality that can really help irritated tissue and brought it to the main stream. The story, however is what I want to bring your attention to today.
What was telling about her first blog post, which you can find HERE (and I’ll link to the second part HERE) is that she felt nagging pain not only for most of her life but for the past seven years. Until recently she didn’t bother to have it looked at because she was worried about surgery for personal reasons. That’s fine.
This is one of the most respected and knowledgeable (from an anatomy standpoint) body teachers IN THE WORLD and even she ignored her symptoms. We all do it, from your fellow office worker to high level athletes who want to keep competing.
This is all too common with athletes.
“I’m okay, I just need to stretch.” “I’ll start using my therapy ball.” “I’ll take a couple of weeks off from running and everything will be fine.” And then we go back to doing the same thing that caused the problem in the first place and are suddenly surprised when the issue comes back – and worse.
Just this week another client of mine’s husband after almost a year of pain finally decided to go to the doctor and get checked because his knee wouldn’t stop failing and buckling. My prediction is either a torn ACL or a severely torn meniscus (or both). The problem is that he’s been walking around on it for the better part of a year without any treatment or attention, and likely it’s gotten a lot worse. This might mean that something that could have been helped with therapy before might need surgery now.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:
Your body isn’t stupid.
Pain, collapse, restricted range is a signal that something is wrong.
The sooner you figure it out and fix it the better off long term you will be.
If you have water coming into your basement, you figure out where it is coming from and plug the leak. You don’t sit there and wait for it to subside, clean it up and then wait for it to happen again. Mold sets in. The leak might get bigger. Other things can come into play that make a simple leak a catastrophe. Your body is no different.
When your body is subjected to stress, it responds to it. This can result in either stronger muscles, or deterioration and loss of integrity. A large part of my job is finding out the perfect balance between just enough and too much load, stress or torque on joints. You need to consider your body as a whole and what loads it is being subjected to daily, weekly and annually to really figure this out.
And in case you’re wondering, sitting is a load. Driving is a load. Weight training is a load. Yoga is a load. I remember when I sat through the Yoga Tune Up course (I did not certify because I have no desire to be a yoga instructor) and a room full of body practitioners looked at me like I had two heads when I suggested that yoga poses – especially extreme ones – are still heavy forces through joints. They are, in case you’re wondering. Jill Miller says that herself in her articles. Years ago I wrote a post about why a downward dog is downright dangerous for most people. It’s HERE.
Is this good for your hip socket?
One big fundamental rule I teach my clients is that they should walk out of a workout feeling better – not worse. This means they are far more likely to have had an appropriate level of stimulus and will have a better long-term response. They won’t get worse, they will get better. Isn’t that the whole idea?
The point of this is that nobody is invulnerable to the rules of the body, even people who have spent their whole life practicing something that is supposedly therapeutic. Don’t assume that if you have a problem that things like stretching and pounding yourself with a yoga ball is the answer. It might just make things worse over time. Seek out someone who knows the rules of the body and can identify a proper strategy to bring your body back into balance and stop overloading tissue.
So the next time you work out, try taking a step back. Are you pushing through pain? Have you had a problem for a while and have been ignoring it? Take a really close stock and tell yourself that you should probably get that taken care of before subjecting your body to even more stress.
Because nobody wants a hip replacement at the age of 45. At least I don’t.
Feel free to message me or find me on social media if you have something you would like to identify or a question. Injuries and providing solutions are what I deal with every day.
Why Walking Doesn’t Cut It
When I’m driving my kids to school and heading to work, I see a ton of people out in the mornings for a walk. Sometimes with an animal, and sometimes holding a set of Nordic poles. Enjoying nature, and getting in a great workout, right? Well, as with anything – it depends.
The top thing I hear from potential clients who are overweight and want to lose weight and get more active is “well, I walk.” The invention of the FitBit and devices like it have made getting in 10,000 steps a day a bit of a craze. And I’m all for people getting more active and healthier, but for the majority of people who really want results like weight loss, more strength and pain reduction, simply going for a walk isn’t going to get you there very quickly, and here’s why:
Walking Isn’t Intense Enough
To change the body, you need to provide a stimulus that is beyond what you normally do. Now, most people will think walking for 20 minutes is great – and if it’s more than you normally do it might be. However, most people simply go for a stroll at lunch and expect to lose weight. Simple math will tell you that this walk burns 140 calories, which is replaced as soon as you eat an apple. Even five days a week the calorie equivalent is basically one good solid hour long workout of high intensity. This is again, better than nothing, but please don’t expect any miracle weight loss.
Nordic walking at 4 MPH (which is quite fast for most people) burns 220 calories in 30 minutes. This is with the added pole movement. It feels great – and can be excellent for your mental health – but for fitness it is a bit lacking.
Walking will make you better at – walking. Unless you’re getting your heart rate up significantly you’re not getting any cardiovascular improvement. Unless you’re performing some body weight movements along the way (which is very easy to do) you’re not getting any strength improvements. So, what’s the benefit? One might be getting away from a seated position for a little while and destressing in the outdoors, but this again won’t give you any benefits for strength or weight loss.
People Use It To Justify Overeating
The amount of times I’ve heard “well, I went for a walk” at Starbucks while a person digs into a caramel latte could fill ten books. It’s the equivalent of the ladies who do Zumba or Aquafit at the gym and then promptly order a sugar loaded smoothie at the juice bar (often because they think it’s healthy – thanks, smoothie bar owners), instantly replacing every calorie they just burned. Plus, because they went to the gym that day I’m sure an extra glass of wine is fine at dinner. And then they wonder why they aren’t losing weight. Unless you’re paying attention to your nutrition weight loss simply isn’t going to happen. It’s a massive part of the equation.
This does not mean that you need to severely restrict your diet! There are simple changes you can make to support your new healthy habits (read my article HERE if you want some tips). You can still enjoy social time with friends and drink green tea or something that isn’t loaded with calories.
It’s Easy to Overdo It
I deal with overuse injuries on a daily basis. In fact, just because I spent the past weekend in Toronto and walked everywhere even my joints are a bit stiff today. If you suddenly take yourself from zero to a hundred without any progression then it’s easy to run into problems in your hips, knees and feet and ankles quite quickly. Then you get discouraged and stop. Many people join a group or start walking way too far way too soon because “it’s just walking”. It’s still loaded movement and repetition. The last thing we want is for you to get discouraged or injured before you even start, and walking is one of the chief culprits for this. Don’t even get me started on running.
So What are your Solutions? Again, there are some easy ways to ramp up something as simple as a walk and it doesn’t mean you have to run, enter an idiotic boot camp or kill yourself. In fact, for beginning exercisers this is a recipe for disaster.
It’s fairly simple to increase the intensity of a simple walk into something that will provide some results:
Get Your Heart Rate High, Even For Short Intervals
Studies show that increasing your heart rate to over 83% of your maximum for even four minutes can have a remarkable effect on your heart and lungs. This doesn’t mean you need to run – simply walk faster and with deliberate speed. It won’t take long for your heart rate to increase to the point where you are getting out of breath and you feel your muscles burning. Then stay there. Use the timer on your phone or other device and hold onto that level for 3-5 minutes. Even one minute has an effect, you just have to do more intervals. This is called interval training and it’s been proven to be the most effective method for increasing heart and lung capacity.
Add Some Strength Work
People seem to think that strength training is this horrible thing you need to do in a gym. Almost daily I provide simple isometric exercises for people they can do literally anywhere against a wall. In your office, at home or even at the gym with zero equipment required you can still generate strength. Do me a favour right now and find a wall. Stand with your back to it, rotate your foot out and left the side of your foot into the wall. Feel your butt fire? Great – push a bit harder and hold it for 30 seconds. Hang onto something if you need to for balance. You just gave your glute a workout. Most people while walking barely use their glutes at all because of the motion they are doing – so do this simple isometric (and a few others) in between those interval bouts – and give yourself some strength work at the same time.
All day long you’re going to pick things up, put them down, rotate your trunk, sit, sprint for the bus and many other things that need joint strength. It’s easy to add this into your daily walk with isometrics or bodyweight movements.
This may seem like a simple breakdown – because it is! Taking something like walking as a healthy habit and turning it into something much more effective over time isn’t difficult. If you’re trying to introduce this into your life, feel free to reach out for more detailed suggestions. I have an entire isometric at home system that I can share with you.
And, as always feel free to comment, tweet, add me to Facebook and reach out if you need anything!
Therapy and Exercise Refined 