What happened when I didn’t take my own advice

The time I didn’t take my own advice

4 years ago I hurt my hip/back. I was mucking about with some pretty aggressive mobility drills and over did it.

At first I didn’t think it was too bad.

Within an hour I couldn’t sit down comfortably.

It got worse as the day went on. By the following day I was sitting down on my right bum cheek and slowly lowering my left onto the seat.

It took me 8 weeks to get back to lifting in the gym to return to normal.

But it took 8 months before I was running well again.

All because I didn’t follow my own advice.

There’s a big leap going from being in pain to pain free.

A big one from pain free to regaining strength and movement.

And a bigger one from regaining strength to restoring the resiliency needed for running.

It’s NOT about doing more work but doing the right work.

It’s not about a whole bunch of different exercises but about progressing the correct ones. I stopped my progressions too early in my rehab and paid the price.

I should have been back running pain free in 3 months once I started running again not 6.  On top of not completing the rehab I rushed the return to running part too.

It’s very embarrassing.

I was out for a nice easy 30 minute run and got to the halfway point when I noticed my hip. A couple of minutes later it wasn’t a “feeling” it was pain.

Shooting pain right through my left glute.

Fan-*********-tastic I thought to myself. I tried walking for a bit then running again but it was still sore. A little less so but sore none the less.

The problem was twofold.

  1. I hadn’t followed the rehab right through to the end
  2. I had returned to continuous running too soon.

This meant I had missed out on the very important last phase.  Creating resilience.

It’s here that we bulletproof ourselves. Where the activities are demanding and ensure that we know that once complete we are good to go.

The upside of this is a return to running program I created off the back of my own, painful, experience. You can get it here if you would like it

The moral of the story is…

Just because you are pain free does not mean that you are “good to go”. 9/10 this is definitely not the case.

It doesn’t make any difference if it is your hip like me or your knee. You need to go through the full process to ensure that you are as robust as can be.

Homer Simpson and back pain (How back pain makes you stupid)

You might not watch The Simpsons but you will know who Homer is.

Homer the loveable but pretty stupid dad. The thing is nobody wants to be Homer. 

Bart? Maybe. He’s the anarchic wee boy all wanted to be. 

Lisa? Maybe. Intelligent and cool. 

Marge? Again, maybe but definitely not Homer.

Homer is the one out of all the characters that you don’t really want to be even if you are shouting for him

The thing is back pain turns you into Homer.

Back pain does actually make you stupid. It does this in a variety of different ways. But let’s let’s define stupidity first.

Stupidity is the overlooking or dismissing conspicuously crucial information. Back pain does make you do this.

It does it both in your day to day life and also in how you view back pain itself.

Now, this definition isn’t mine, i found it in a really interesting blog post on Farnham Street called “How not to be stupid”.

The guy writing it talks about how there are 7 factors that go into making us stupid.

  1. Being outside your normal environment or there being changes to your routine. 
  2. Being in the presence of a group
  3. Being in the presence of an expert or if you, yourself are an expert.
  4. Doing any task that requires intense focus
  5. Information overload
  6. Physical or emotional stress, fatigue
  7. Being in a hurry.

Not all of these are required for there to be an effect. Any one of them on its own will have an effect. 

In the U.S., ad the U.K, all of these are present in hospitals but I just have the figures for the U.S. In the States there are 30,000 deaths a year from car accidents.  A big number. But there are between 210,000 and 440,000 deaths in hospitals from errors in treatment!

But what does this have to do with back pain and how does back pain make you stupid?

Back pain causes physical and emotional stress. 

It causes fatigue.

It will result in information overload as you seek answers for your back pain. (I appreciate I’m not helping you here).

You might well find yourself hurrying to finish tasks so you can sit down because of the pain.

The pain itself can mean you have to focus really hard to do simple tasks.

So you can see there are all sorts of ways for back pain to make you “stupid”. 

It comes into your life and wrecks havoc. 

Disrupting sleep.

Causing physical and emotional stress. 

Destroying focus and the list goes on,

If you would like to see what a path to being more intelligent would look like all you need to do is reply to this email and we can chat about it.

You can grab a copy of our FREE Back Pain Myths Busted eBook here >>> https://www.performancesportstherapy.net/back-pain-myths-busted-ebook

 

Sleep tight, don’t let the bugs bite.

I think we can all agree sleep is pretty important. I have to say I’m not the best sleeper in the world. It’s not unusual for me to wake up several times during the night and to be awake for a while at some point.

It’s not been helped over, I was going to write the last few months but it’s actually been about a year with Andrew getting up during the night. Normally only the once but can be twice during the night followed by him coming through about 5 am. He doesn’t take any time to settle back down but it is a total pain when it happens. Continue reading “Sleep tight, don’t let the bugs bite.”

Rocky Road Rehab

General aches and pains are part and parcel of life but they come and go. It would be unrealistic to expect to be able to avoid them if we are honest given the many different ways that they can come about.

From getting so busy at work that getting sufficient rest is an issue to stumbling whilst running for the bus. These tend to come and go. Work calms down, you get more rest and don’t notice the minor niggles anymore.

When they do persist what can be done about it?

Continue reading “Rocky Road Rehab”

Is spinal alignment or other structural issues the cause of back pain?

Back pain is often spoken about in structural and biomechanical manner where you can get the impression that you may have to give up doing what you love to do be it golf, crossfit, rugby or gardening because you have issue X. The big issue with this is that it on the one hand over simplifies the problem and catastrophises it all in one go so that you are left thinking that your wonky leg is the cause of all your pain and trying to run on it is a recipe for disaster. Continue reading “Is spinal alignment or other structural issues the cause of back pain?”

What does having a leg length difference mean to your back pain?

The idea of having a leg length discrepancy and how it might relate to back pain or other issues is something that comes up in the clinic all the time. Having a difference in leg lengths is quite common though for the most part these will only be noticeable when lying on the couch rather than when standing as they aren’t congenital, that is to say there isn’t a difference in the length of the bones. The apparent difference comes from tension in the soft tissues of the thigh and hip which pull on the femur and/or pelvis giving the appearance of a difference in length between the two legs. Continue reading “What does having a leg length difference mean to your back pain?”

Why are you using rehab exercises in your training?

I often find when clients develop nonspecific aches and pains they start, almost randomly, introducing low load rehab work into their program in an attempt to solve the problem.  This is usually done after a quick google search which makes various reasonable suggestions as to what might be wrong and the exercises to do to help the problem. This though really doesn’t tackle the problem well, if at all, given it misses out looking at why the aches and pains developed to begin with.

Continue reading “Why are you using rehab exercises in your training?”

Revisiting the spinal flexion debate: prepare for doubt by Greg Lehman

This is great piece by Gregory Lehman and though a long one well worth reading it all. He looks at the pros and cons of maintaining a neutral spine and allowing spinal flexion to occur. Needless to say the case isn’t clear cut and it depends on your goals, tasks you require to do amongst other factors.

 

http://www.greglehman.ca/2016/01/31/revisiting-the-spinal-flexion-debate-prepare-for-doubt/