I just kept injuring myself. Train and get injured. Modify my exercises and still end up somehow hurting another part of my body. I was cycling through body parts. Lower back. Knee. Hip. Foot. Mid back. Elbow. Neck. Knee again. Then into something magical and painful that would again have me modifying exercises and trying to make up things I could do. Then I discovered the biggest reason you are not recovering from your injuries
Hands up if you feel me?…I see you sitting there with your pain with both your hands up!
So are you over it? Because I well and truly was. Like deadest, over my head, sick and tired from wanting to move my body and having to stop due to pain.
Waking up tired and stiff and it all only getting worse through the day until I was so ready for bed. Until I would lie down and then couldn’t get comfortable because I couldn’t lie on my left side due to an old left hip injury, couldn’t lie on my right side as my forearm hurt for lifting weights that were too heavy, couldn’t lie on my back as my limbs wouldn’t sort themselves into a comfy position for all of them.
And then rinse and repeat waking up feeling like crap as I wasn’t even nearly close to the 8 hours of sleep I needed a night (though I also actually prefer to get 9 hours but that was total wishful thinking).
Then I studied this very cool thing called Kinesiology and realised the potential of healing if the mind and body working together. See the body knows how it should function.
That’s why your lungs naturally breathe in air and your heart automatically pumps the oxygenated blood around your body to be picked up by every, single cell that makes up you.
There are no instructions for this. No conscious thoughts that say “hey heart, pump now, and now, and now, and now (forever)”. Your body just does what it needs to keep you alive.
Similarly your brain functions to keep you alive from things it thinks are dangerous. Now this can get a little skewed in this day and age and a w.h.o.l.e heap of things can be thought of as dangerous.
Previously for me the ping of an email alert made my brain go into utter freak out mode as I thought of the worst possible email that could come through at that moment, about work, my clients, my colleagues, money (please say you get the picture).
Every time I would hear the ping my mind would tell my body we were in danger and I would go into a fight or flight response. With this nasty reaction I would get an adrenaline dump into my body and it’s this nasty friend that was one factor in causing my injuries.
The biggest reason you are not recovering from your injuries
Adrenaline makes our blood vessels contract to send blood to our big muscles, like our legs, for us to run away from danger. But this contraction and restriction of blood means the nice fresh oxygenated blood isn’t getting to your WHOLE body, only parts of it.
If you go to the gym and work your arms, but then get constant hits of adrenaline all day long then the blood needed for your arm muscle recovery won’t be anywhere near your arms. It also means the blood isn’t near your digestive system and this is kinda bad for digesting your food properly and getting the good nutrients from your food. This pretty much just doesn’t happen if you have adrenaline regularly being released through the day.
But adrenaline also brings along her friend cortisol and this little lady causes MASS inflammation. Inflammation makes everything dense and thick and I think about it as phlegm being trapped in all my muscles as I am trying to work out. Eventually that phlegm is going to make exercise hard, recovery impossible and your fatigue is going to hit the roof.
So I bet you’re asking, what can we do about this? How easy would it be for me to simply say, you need to lower your stress?!? And what a douchie response that would be!! I want to give you three simple techniques to help lower your pain. These are used by hundreds of my clients at different times in their pain journey.
Three simple techniques to help lower you with your pain
Take a pen and paper and write these down so you can refer back to them:
1. Take 10 deep belly breaths – stop breathing into your upper chest and get your belly involved in your breaths. This calms the body through the nervous system and gets you a good amount of oxygen into your body (and carbon dioxide out). You can take these 10 breaths whenever you feel the need throughout your day, but a good sign would be if you feel your shoulders are pinned to your ears…it’s time to breathe and relax.
2. There are Emotional Stress Release acupressure points on your forehead – take you palm and place it across your forehead whenever you are feeling stress, anxious or overwhelmed. It will help you process those feelings and allow the brain to function better again.
3. Stretch after you exercise – yep as annoying and seemingly time-consuming as it is, you need to stretch. Factor in a 5 to 10 minute stretch after each session. A thirty-minute session, add 5 minutes for stretching. A forty-five to fifty-minute session look to take 10 minutes of stretching to bring it through to the hour of exercise. However you word it in, it is vital. It means you allow your muscles to rebalance after you just worked them.
Without this time to rebalance and stretch the muscles become tighter and tighter and this leads to injures. Plus if you have ever done a nice slow 10-minute stretch session at the end of a hectic 50 minutes in the gym, then you’ll know that your stress levels drop with every minute you are stretching. It really does make you feel amazing and ready for the rest of your day (or sleep if you exercise at night)