Our bodies are amazing. One of our most potent superhuman
abilities is how we can heal and become stronger, when we place the correct
stresses on our bodies. A lot of us view injuries as a death sentence. But I’m
here to say, that an injury is simply one of many signals that our bodies are
trying to communicate with us to say ‘hey, you need to make this area of us
stronger.’ Now before I continue, I’m not talking about acute severe injuries
like a broken bone for example. If that happens, get to the hospital
immediately.
What I am talking about however, is chronic and nagging
injuries that we often view as being impossible to overcome. I myself have gone
through many injuries and illnesses over the years such as shin splints,
plantar fasciitis, lumbar sprains, torn knee ligaments, calf sprains, neck
injuries, hematomas of the thigh, fractured ribs, hip injuries, & even chronic
fatigue for 6 years. But I’m still here, learning, healing, and building. The
point is, when we choose to play the victim and allow our injuries to get the
better of us; that is where we stop evolving, we stop growing, and we stop
healing. Instead of feeling sorry for ourselves, we need to stay strong in
mind, body, and spirit. We must continue our pursuit of health and have faith
that we can regain our body’s strength and abilities through consistent,
specific, training. If you are injured, get onto it as soon as possible. Go to
a physiotherapist or another professional, start a rehabilitation program.
Better yet, do some of your own research, get in touch with your body. If you
have a certain area of the body that continues to get injured, it’s important
to find an easy low impact exercise that you can start performing on a regular
basis to promote circulation, and strength adaptations in the weakened, injured
area. Over time, you can make the exercise more difficult by improving upon
certain variables such as increasing the range of motion of the exercise,
slowing the exercise down to increase muscular feedback, adding some extra
weight to the exercise, or you may even want to swap to a single leg or single
arm variation depending on the movement you are trying to improve.
Now beyond exercise, lifestyle factors also play a massive
role in our overall health, and this often gets overlooked in terms of how fast
we can heal and how this affects the overall quality of our training. We cannot
exercise away a poor lifestyle. Things such as hydration, nutrition, quality of
sleep, variety of exercises and movements, the ratios of intensity in your
training program, overall stress management, fasting; whether it be
intermittent or prolonged fasting, the amount of sunlight we are exposed to and
more specifically the time of day we expose ourselves to it, the air quality in
our homes, hot or cold therapy, our thought patterns, our intentions, all of
these things play a role in our overall health and immune system, and need to also
be respected if we wish to be in a state of healing and performance.
So, it’s quite clear nowadays that one of the most if not
THE MOST important factor when it comes to healing is when we rest. This is
where the healing occurs as our bodies rebuild themselves during sleep. But the
kicker here is that the healing can only happen if we have placed the correct
stress on our bodies to adapt first. This means that if we want to heal, get
stronger, and maintain the strength so we can enjoy the bodies we are in, we
must find a balance of stressing the body through strength training, cardiovascular
training, or mobility training for example, and then recover through deep
sleep, myofascial release, and other forms of recovery. The old saying ‘if you
don’t use it, you lose it’ is the perfect quote for this scenario because we
cannot just focus purely on recovery if we have nothing to recover from.
Specific stress through our training is what promotes rapid healing and
adaptations in our bodies as a response to rebuild and come back stronger each
time.
So, remember, your body is a healing machine - if you place
the correct stimulus upon it. You cannot sit around and wait for it to happen.
You must signal to your body that you want to heal and you want to be strong.
Keep the communication going with your body. Be patient, be consistent, and
don’t give up on yourself. You can, and you will heal, if you believe in
yourself first, and then put in the work.
And this can be applied to not only physical healing, but
healing of one’s emotions, healing of relationships etc. When we place priority
into a given task, we can achieve anything.
Now, far too often people approach exercise with an all or
nothing attitude. It’s either lift as heavy weights as possible or nothing. They
think that if their muscles aren’t screaming at them then it’s not worth doing.
Now, this approach may work for some people, but for the general public, a more
balanced approach will yield much better results and keep you healthy and
injury free long term. And it all starts with establishing what your baseline
level of fitness is, and what is manageable to you on a weekly scale. Because
it’s far better to be average and consistent long term, than amazing for a
short term and injured for the rest of the time. It’s this go hard or go home
mentality, get lean quick schemes, all of these approaches to health and
fitness are gimmicky and they leave people with up and down results and not
feeling empowered to change their lives for the better long term.
So, what I propose to you is this: start simple, start
small, find a routine that you can stick with every week that is not over
stressing your body and leaves you feeling like you have more energy. This
could be a simple full bodyweight or weightlifting routine, it could be yoga,
it could be running, it does not matter. The point is just simply getting your
body moving to create a habit and routine that you can build upon. So,
establish this routine, no matter how small it may be in the beginning because
this is your official starting point, and from here we can safely add more
exercises. But if we do not establish this starting point from the beginning,
that’s how we overdo it and run into injuries. So, find your baseline and what
you are comfortable with and make that a habit you can consistently repeat
every week without aggravating any injuries.
Now, the second step, let’s say you have a few nagging
injuries in your body that you’ve had for quite some time. Get onto these as
soon as possible. And this is where it’s very important to place a lot of your
focus in these early stages. For example, if you have a bad shoulder, or knees,
or spine, or anything else, get some rehab advice from a professional and start
promoting healing to that area as much as possible. We have to remember that
our whole body is connected from head to toe. So, when we can fix each
individual area, regain mobility and movement, then this will carry over long
term to greater physical results because the overall potential of our body is
improved. If we do not address our weakened, injured areas then we start to compensate
and move in unnatural ways to try to avoid using these areas of our bodies. The
worst thing we can do is give up and not try to heal an injured area of our
body. Remember, if you don’t use it, you lose it. This applies to our entire
body, whether it’s injured or not. If we do not continue to move and exercise
our body, it will deteriorate physically. So, to heal injuries effectively, we
must train these areas to restore the range of motion and the function of that
area.
Now, the 3rd step is where training gets fun and you
can start to customize your routine and set some bigger goals. So, let’s say
you’ve got your old injuries to a healthy functioning level, you have
established a baseline routine of let’s say for example 2 days a week at the
gym doing lower body on one day, upper body on the other day, and you’re also
going for 2 30-minute walks a week. Perfect. Now, what do you want to achieve
from here? Have you ever wondered what it might be like to enter and complete a
running race? Or a triathlon? Or do you have an ideal physique in mind and wish
to build more muscle? Or do you simply wish to move your body in a variety of
ways and maintain mobility into your older years? Or do you wish to learn a new
skill like a handstand or a back-flip, or maybe learn martial arts? It could be
anything. The reason it’s important to ask ourselves these questions is because
it provides us with some clear-cut objectives giving us more purpose and
motivation to stay consistent with our training and appreciate our physical
health. When we have clear-cut goals, we are more likely to stay on track and also
more likely to be more aware of other lifestyle factors that affect our life.
