Category: Daily

Adding a workout or squeezing in a run to reclaim your energy and strength might sound like the best option right now.

After all, it’s the doing of things that makes us feel like we’re making progress toward our goal.

But your basket is already more packed than a hipster’s picnic.

Stuffing another thing into your basket will only add to your stress. It won’t do any favors for the odds of sticking with your new activities.

Often the right starting point is to look at your existing list of stuff to do. And then find a thing or two you can remove to create even a sliver of space for what matters.

-J

Last Thursday, I hurt my back. As in, sitting down felt like living through the Casino Royale torture scene. Getting in or out of bed to go to the toilet made me wish for a catheter.

I’ve had episodes of back pain, but this one wins the crown of pain. And it’s not even close.

Pain is a very personal matter for each of us, but I thought it’d be helpful to share a few things that I’ve done in the last four days to feel better. If not 100%.

Spoiler alert: so much of our pain is about the pain and injury stories we tell ourselves. I might’ve called an ambulance if this had happened five years ago. No joke.

Here’s what went down on Thursday.

I was doing some relatively light Romanian deadlifts with kettlebells and felt something in my back. Since it was just a tiny twinge, I figured it’d be ok and kept going with the set (which is the opposite of what I recommend my clients do).

In the next rep, it felt like someone rammed a rusted butter knife into my back.

It wasn’t too bad right away, but the back started to feel nasty as the afternoon wore on. Walking to get the kids from daycare was a firm no-go. I gave up after 400 meters.

The next morning wasn’t much better.

Moving like Tinman with a “nervy” pain in the back and running down the left leg at various intensities. Joy.

But I knew and know that with most of the non-trauma-induced (car crashes, falling out of a tree, getting kicked by a mule) soft tissue injuries, the pain level rarely correlates with the actual physical damage. I knew that pain is more intense when we’re feeling stressed. And I’d been feeling little stressed the last few weeks.

I also knew that a good night’s sleep would help. So I took paracetamol to numb some of the pain—something I’ve never had to do with a musculoskeletal injury. There’s no way I could’ve slept without it though.

And although I wasn’t feeling much better by the morning, the pain subsided significantly as Friday progressed.

Here’s what I’ve been doing since Friday morning to make my back feel better:

1. Staying positive and avoiding negative language when talking or thinking about my back (“my back is broken,” etc.). But let’s face it, there were times where I felt sorry for myself.

2. Moving as much as possible while keeping the pain <5 out of 10 most of the time.

Walking, Cat/camels (first by leaning against the wall and gradually making my way to the ground), shimmys, child’s pose, back extensions, tactical frogs, squats, push-ups as soon as I could get down to the ground on Friday morning. The last one being more for the mind than anything.

Saturday was significantly better than Thursday and a little better than Friday.

But I still had to be mindful to avoid the rusty butter knife in some positions.

On Sunday, I was still in pain but could do a long walk and run a short distance next to my kid while he biked.

Today I’ve been able to do modified mini-workouts throughout the day, but workouts nevertheless. I still can’t touch my toes to save my life, but I can bodyweight squat deep without pain.

Tomorrow? Cartwheels! Kidding.

Anyways.

The idea here wasn’t to show specific exercises and tactics everyone should do when dealing with back pain. Instead, I wanted to highlight the overall strategy of staying positive where possible, educating yourself about pain, moving as much as you can, and gradually increasing the pain-free range.

Oh, and a heat pad. I wanted to marry one of those on Thursday and Friday.

I hope that helps. If you want to educate yourself about pain, here’s a great free ebook from ESSA and Pain Australia worth a geez. It’s dope.

-J

To improve our health and fitness, we need to have a deep understanding of why what we’re doing now isn’t working.

Gaining this deep understanding requires shoveling dirt away until we’re left with nothing more than the root of the problem. The absolute essence of our struggle.

Digging to the roots gives us the boundaries to work with. It’s only once we know the root cause and the boundaries we have that we can decide on the strategy and tactics to improve our situation.

Until then, we’re wasting time and energy copying other people’s tactics and behaviours in hopes that they’ll work for us too.

-J

When you hurt your back, you know that it’ll come good eventually.

When you get sick and miss a workout or a week of workouts, you know it’ll barely affect your overall progress.

When you eat a healthy diet most of the time, you know that one meal, one day, or even one week isn’t going to make much of a difference.

When you go on a trip and can’t stick to your regular workout program, you know there’re multiple ways to get the same benefits.

When your brain is a bubbling hellfire of anxiety, you know that you can sit with it, and it’ll eventually pass.

The more you know about the body and the mind, the more you can take adversity in stride.

Knowing that in the long term, you’ll be just fine.

-J

It’s possible that the gym isn’t for you. Maybe it’s something about getting there, the atmosphere, or the exercises you associate with gym training.

Maybe you’ve tenaciously tried the gym in random spurts over the years. But struggle to stick with it.

You could keep trying. Hoping that the next time it’ll finally click for you.

Or, you could accept that the gym isn’t for you. It’s not the place where you do your workouts. Accepting tjis allows you to redirect your energy where it counts.

We often treat being in the gym as an essential part of our fitness routine. Whether we like it or not. But there’s nothing magical about the gym.

You pick things up. You carry things around. You put things back down.

And you can do it anywhere. You might as well do it at a place where you enjoy being.

-J

If you’ve been following me for a while, you might think that I am as much against strict diets and short-term fitness transformations as a carnivore diet fanatic is to science, common sense and the sight of a barn full of potatoes.

But it’s not quite as black and white.

I am against short-term transformations for anyone who hasn’t mastered the fundamentals of their health. Fundamentals of having a healthy relationship with food, exercise, stress, recovery, rest, and setting boundaries. As in, a healthy relationship both physically and mentally.

When all those pieces of health have been in place for at least a year or two, despite a busy life, the person has earned the right to entertain the idea of intense, short-term where-did-my-left-lung-go fitness challenges.

Without a solid foundation, the intense fitness challenges are like trying to learn how to drive a car with flat tires, a blacked-out windscreen and a shish kebab as a steering wheel.

-J

You could wait for the perfect moment.

Ace the shit out of it. And then likely struggle when the perfect moment passes, and real life scissorkicks you in the kidney.

Or, you could start now.

Knowing that when you can figure it out now, despite various obstacles, there is nothing stopping you once you get going.

-J

There isn’t one that’s best for everyone.

The best options for you are the ones you can stick to. The ones that improve the health and fitness parameters you care about.

Sometimes what you need aligns with what you enjoy. And sometimes it doesn’t.

But, with most skills and habits, the more you progress, the more you’ll enjoy them.

-J

“Stop being a victim. Take ownership. Stop complaining. Just do it.”

That’s a typical social media masterclass in the character-building-bullshit-circus from apparent fitness experts, aka influencers, who get their life’s meaning from “helping” people by telling them to harden up.

The louder the voice, the better. Bonus points for fitting in a couple of curse words and wearing a singlet and tiiiiiiiiiiiiight pants.

I can imagine how transformative this advice is to a mum of three who works 40 hours a week, has a dog, and inlaws from hell. “Wow. I’ve never thought of that. Thank you for sharing. Now I know exactly what I need to do. Hurray!”

Said no one ever.

Here’s what’s up.

Bullying or forcing people into action might work for a while. But it doesn’t lead to long-term change. Pain and suffering don’t lead to accountability.

What most people need are empathy, encouragement, support and coaching to (re)build self-trust and self-accountability in their fitness.

But I get it. That’s really difficult to yell into a microphone.

-J

The stronger you become, the more variety you can have in the workouts.

You can choose more challenging exercises and make easier exercises more challenging.

You’ll also have better body control and can rely more on your body weight for resistance, so you can get a workout done anywhere with zero equipment.

Ironically, when you reach that point with your strength and have all the options available, you’ll likely be more content with less variety. You’ll probably have a set of exercises you like to focus on and improve at.

But it’s kind of nice to know that you could do anything if you chose to.

-J