You may be aware that I have pain down my neck and back and running into my shoulder.
I’ve had it 24-7 for nearly 20 years and it will never go away.
But recently it’s been particularly bad.
So I tried a new physio that a friend recommended who works with high-level athletes.
And despite what he’s done with me not feeling all that different to what I’ve had done before, it’s made quite the difference.
For the first few weeks I was religious with the exercises he gave me to do.
Because they helped the pain levels immediately.
It was like taking an aspirin.
In pain, do something, in less pain.
Easy.
But as the pain levels have dropped overall, I found myself forgetting to do the exercises as frequently.
That pain isn’t there as a constant reminder.
As often happens when we make changes.
Our weight / body / energy levels get to such a position that the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of change.
We do something about it.
We make changes to our eating and / or exercise.
After a certain amount of changes, we’re no longer in that same level of ‘pain’.
It stops being that constant reminder to do something.
And that’s when it’s easy to forget.
To miss a few and then realise “it’s been weeks”.
That’s the point where our perception of what we’re doing needs to change from a painkiller to something more akin to a vitamin.
Where the benefit becomes longer term.
And something about our approach has to change.
It’s easy to remember when to take an aspirin.
Our body tells us.
Harder to get into the habit of taking vitamins.
But we can approach it in the same way.
Having a clear definition of when we take it.
We might take our vitamins with our morning coffee.
A clear implementation intention.
When X happens, I will Y.
When I have my morning coffee, I will take my vitamins.
We maybe have to use some reminders to start with (alarms on our phone, a calendar reminder, notes by the coffee jar, etc) but after a while it just becomes habit.
I’ve decided that my physio work is part of my warm-up for a workout.
And leaving the little rubber ‘peanut’ that I use to massage my shoulders next to my keys has acted as that reminder.
We might specify that our workouts happen at a set time each week and set a repeating calendar event.
We might specify a time in our week to book Sessions and / or make arrangements around our food.
Whatever the case, we need to make that conscious change.
Shift how we treat what we’re doing from being an easily rememberable way to move out of immediate pain……..
To being a more routine thing to stop us getting back into that pain (and maybe get even further away from it).
Much love,
Jon ‘armbar’ Hall
P.S. Being surrounded by like minded people on the same journey is super useful for helping shift into that longer term habit you may have struggled with before. And you’ll find a risk free trial of that here –> www.myrise.co.uk/apply
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RISE in Macclesfield was established in 2012 and specialise in Group Personal Training weight loss programmes for those that don’t like the gym and find diets boring and restrictive!
