The Power of Momentum in Recovery
You went home to your bed in Wickford an hour early, slept well and woke up feeling incredibly refreshed. You greet your other half with extra enthusiasm and kindness, sending them off to work in Basildon with a coffee you prepared and skip in their step. The traffic lights are in your favour, making your journey to work less stressful so you’re smiling more than usual and as a result get a warmer response from your colleagues.
Most of us have probably had a day like this. One positive action leads to another creating a sequence of positive events – this is momentum in action.
I urge the people of Wickford, Basildon, Billericay and surrounding areas to apply the same principle to managing back pain and other injuries.
One positive action gives you a boost and encourages you to take another. The more positive actions you take the stronger your sense of control over your problem becomes and the more further positive steps you will take.
The most challenging and most important step - is the first one. Progress may be slow but persist. You will be gaining positive health and recovery momentum and achieving the healthy and vitality you desire before you know it.
5 Steps to a healthy week
I’m going to show you in five steps how you can maximise your week for health and recovery. I recommend doing all five of these steps on a Sunday morning.
Step 1 - Nutrition
You shouldn’t go shopping when you’re hungry because your current state influences you to buy unhealthy, processed and sugary foods.
We can take this idea a step further. Before shopping, watching a five minute video or reading an article on healthy eating will significantly alter what ends up in your basket.
The five minutes spent getting into a healthy frame of mind will pay dividends all week. Every time you look in your fridge or cupboards you’ll see healthy, nutritious options. A big rewards for a small effort. A useful tip is to ensure you include convenient healthy options.
When recovering from back pain or any other injury the people of Wickford, Basildon, Billericay and surrounding areas need proper nutrition from your food as these will be used as building blocks by your body to carry out repairs.
Step 2 - Exercise
Next you're going to schedule your exercise for the week.
Personally I use an online training programme. It tells me exactly what I need to do and shows me how to do it. It also tells me exactly how many reps and sets I need to do or when I should work to failure. I spend another two to three minutes going through it and making sure I understand each exercise. Next, plan exactly when you will workout and put the times in your calendar. These are now protected - nothing else should be scheduled at these times. They do not change.
You have now removed any friction that might prevent you from working out. If you're experiencing back pain, sciatica, knee, hip or shoulder injury please make sure that your exercise programme is appropriate to your stage of recovery. If you're unsure about what you should be doing give us a call on 01268 202 207 or email wickfordosteopaths@gmail.com for guidance.
Step 3 - Meditation
Take 30 seconds and schedule your meditation sessions for the week. The health benefits of meditation are well proven. It can help you recovery from back pain, sciatica or any other injury from that matter by helping you get in a better frame of mind. Using an app with guided meditations is a great way to get started if you are new to it. My personal favourite is called Oak and is available in the app store.
Step 4 - Information
Travelling in a car or on public transport presents a great opportunity to take on useful information. Your options used to be limited to whatever was on the local radio station in Wickford, Basildon, Brentwood or Billericay if you didn't want to listen to a National station. But now with podcasts you can learn more about your back pain, sciatica, frozen shoulder, knee arthritis or whatever injury is currently bothering you. Alternatively you could simply listen to something with a positive message that will help lift your mood or many other health matters that help improve recovery and rehabilitation. Taking five minutes to create a playlist on a Sunday morning means you'll be less stressed and more educated.
Step 5 - Learning
Closely related to the previous step, step five involves deciding which books you will read in the next week. Go online and order something or select something from your bookshelf that you have previously read but want to re-read. Take the book(s) and set them on top of your coffee table. When it comes to deciding in the evening whether to watch trashy telly or read something that will develop your mind and teach you about recovering from pain and injury - you have removed the barriers to making the healthier choice.
You still obviously need to cook the healthy food, do the workouts, the meditation, listen to the podcasts and read the books but when you’ve created the space for them and scheduled them like this its surprising how automatic they become. You are removing the need for willpower to make healthy choices, which is often depleted after a long busy day.
Give it a try!
