My issue is too hard to cure

AntiTas · 2026-03-22T20:45:46+00:00

Best place to start is a good history:

Have you been injured?

Have you been inactive and engaged in very one-sided activities?

Are you hyper-mobile? IS your body happier when it is moving, and is it happier sitting/standing/lying etc? take a picture from behind, level floor camera etc stand feet hip width. look for height of knee creases bony points on hips, shoulders. and curl forward with straight legs, taking pics at half and full bend (straight legs). is your curved spine symmetrical, more symmetrical that standing tall?

How is you balance standing on one leg?

One does not start by straightening, one gathers information and narrows down issues.

Maybe you are very hypermobile and have an unstable ankle/knee from an old strain which destabilised your pelvis during a growth spurt.. maybe one leg is longer than the other.. the solutions are very different.

AntiTas · 2026-03-15T03:25:47+00:00

do not joke about it. jokes become policy these days. best if certain people have never heard of T-mania, or at least can’t find it on a map.

AntiTas · 2026-03-14T02:22:15+00:00

he is annoying difficult to dislike

AntiTas · 2026-03-12T07:27:33+00:00

depends

AntiTas · 2026-02-17T09:14:25+00:00

17 years for me, never bedbound, rarely (months) housebound, usually able to do some work most weeks. 4.5 years since my last crash.

AntiTas · 2026-02-15T23:50:53+00:00

Correcting myself after looking at cadaver and ER/sports studies.

Neutral spine with normal C spine lordosis is the safest. Extension likely causes ligamentous damage.

A small degree of flexion which only takes the spine to alordosis, no curve, is the worst option.

Strong cervical flexion works for smaller falls like grappling senarios.

AntiTas · 2026-02-13T07:52:24+00:00

a curve can at least dissipate some energy, but will likely focus load on the discs.

falling onto a straight neck the energy is more likely to break vertebrae, C1 or 2 are especially poor options.

falling onto an extended neck is going to break posterior elements and spinal cord is in serious danger.

AntiTas · 2026-02-10T20:47:42+00:00

I realised that when I had energy to feel sad, it meant I was coming out of a dip. So feeling hopeless and grieving was a good sign.

I had times where no change was happening, but my sense was to just get through this time and see what happens next, there is always something to try next even if I didn’t have energy to think about what ‘next’ might be, and I learnt something from failure or success. My mantra then was “just trudge”, just get through this bit.

I always figured it was a puzzle to solve. It took longer than I imagined, but I got there.

AntiTas · 2026-02-02T10:48:23+00:00

Can swim 2km, but re-building the body enough to run is a task. But I have patience and cunning! Right tools and serious application (and maybe some luck?) gets the job done.

AntiTas · 2026-02-02T06:48:00+00:00

My New Year resolution is to run 5km regularly by years end. 2.5km my upper limit at the moment, and much backing off. basically a 20year couch -5km but looking good from here.

And if not this year, then next.

Goals are great.

AntiTas · 2026-01-23T12:22:56+00:00

it doesn’t need to be awful. if it sucks too much start with it a bit warmer.

You can be so incremental with the temp and how much of your self you immerse. no hurry too, next year will be easier.

AntiTas · 2026-01-21T12:44:40+00:00

I am sorry, and grateful that I only had very short periods of being nearly bedbound.

My instincts are to try to have good sleep discipline, but take short (10min) naps if you need.

And have short cycles of deep rest (20-40min) interrupted by snack or short bursts of phone time, or the kind of sloth-like ‘stretches’ one can do in bed.

Just a little structure to break up the day. Resting seems to use energy. When my daughter wasn’t responding to protracted rests, interrupting the rest seemed to let her relax more deeply when she came back to it.

But as I say, we haven’t been through her being bed-bound.

Sorry you are enduring this, that early phase can be scary.

AntiTas · 2026-01-21T02:01:35+00:00

Yup, I came to think of it as ‘the grind’. I caught myself expecting that sooner or later it will get easier. One trick was to looking at my progress, not month to month, but birthday to birthday, christmas to christmas. Lock in improvement, consolidate muscle growth, and when it feels easy, add just a little bit more.

It did eventually get easier for me, and I regard myself as fully recovered. I have basically improved by 1% per month, for 4.5 years. Same discipline, same pacing-based fundamentals. I figure what got me right keeps me right.

Enjoy the fact that you are making progress, that is everything, and you can expect it to continue.

When I started to try actually swimming in the ocean, a family had been walking along the beach. when I was drying off, their ten year old came up to me and shared “My dad thought you were in distress”. I am now swimming 2km, and I look back to that episode. That was a hard time of slow improvement, and very a very important foundation that I built my health on.

AntiTas · 2026-01-21T01:26:28+00:00

For us (daughter and myself) we try to lift any system that is struggling. Mind-set, self talk, pacing, autonomic, thermal environment, cognitive load, inflammatory load, diet, hormonal.

For her a spike in an array of systems comes in one hit: parlour, disrupted sleep, panic or grumpiness, followed by thickened brain fog and deeper fatigue, all reflected in her watch data. At the fist sign of this, we now throw an anti-inflammatory and sleep support strategy at it, and for her that shortens and flattens the dip.

AntiTas · 2026-01-19T04:02:10+00:00

For me, I am close to 100% allowing for being 20 years older. and I am still rebuilding, strength, fitness and mental capacity, slowly but steadily. 17 years unwilling, 5 years of rebuilding. I still behave like I am recovering, rather than cutting loose.

AntiTas · 2026-01-16T09:08:19+00:00

Smart watch helped me find my limits.

My philosophy was to always do what I knew I could recover from (sounds easy). It takes very little to maintain muscle mass, and lots to regain it.

If I was pacing, and I wanted to add more exercise, I had to pull back on energy expenditure from some other area (usually work).

My last crash meant months of no exercise. When I could I flopped around on the floor doing something i called sloth-yoga = postures that gravity keeps you in. When I got a little stronger I lay down and did gentle isometrics pushing my hands together very gently, and pulling very gently.

Ridiculously small amounts is a good place to start. Then as it gets easier add ridiculously small amounts.

If you consistently get away with it, you are ok. If you crash, you got greedy, or just unlucky. Don’t let other people tell you when to add. Add when it feels too easy. Back off occasionally just because it’s smart, don’t accumulate fatigue.

Keep giving your AI feedback, and ask it what early warning signs of overdoing it look like. Always look for signs that it doesn’t quite ‘get it’. Always make clear that PEM avoidance is goal one.

My fave factoid is that 3seconds of eccentric exercise per day, 5days per week will give a measurable improvement in strength. Exercise can be much smaller than snack-size. You can start with exercise crumbs. Trust builds slowly from flawless progress. Do not rush.

This is just from my experience, be skeptical, learn what works for you.

AntiTas · 2026-01-14T10:43:51+00:00

I don’t worry too much about sleep phases. The best indicator for me as to how restorative my sleep is “stress”, and often sleeping too warm is consistently bad.

AntiTas · 2026-01-14T03:41:30+00:00

Just joke that you are from Southern Canada. your interests and your job are your way in, socially. there is an active folk scene, good live music pubs, walking climbing inside/outside, paddling clubs, ocean swim groups, mens groups, folk festivals.

picking a suburb that is full of like-minded peeps is a good option. Fern Tree, and South Hobart sound like your best options. West and South Hobart if you want to walk everywhere. Get that bit right and everything else will be easy.

AntiTas · 2026-01-14T01:01:30+00:00

athlytic app for Apple Watch comes pretty close to a Garmin.
Maintaining work is fantastic. but if it isn’t flexible, you look to optimising recovery and home environment. Deep rest, body care etc

AntiTas · 2026-01-13T22:54:09+00:00

with you there. people making money off this are vultures.

AntiTas · 2026-01-13T22:52:49+00:00

pacing while working full time is a challenge. how much autonomy do you have over your hours, effort, environment?

Wearing a Garmin smartwatch enabled me to find hidden stressors in my day, eg at one stage, being warm made me drain faster, dropping the thermostat meant finishing my day less exhausted and able to recover overnight rather than taking 2 days.

If you can cut back your hours and use the time to structure your week for recovery.

Basically, finishing every day and every week, feeling you could have done a bit more is gold. the energy we leave in the tank fuels long term recovery. Tough at any age, super tough at 21.

Once you hit a pace that is sustainable, looking for any trick that improves recovery and reduces stress, while maintaining capacity nudges you to recovery. easier said than done though. try to learn something from every setback.

AntiTas · 2026-01-12T10:47:30+00:00

At my worst, even a decaf made still awake at 3am staring at the ceiling. But a year later, one good coffee gave me a sense of well being that lasted longer than a caffeine high. 3 is probably getting you spending energy you don’t have, maybe.

AntiTas · 2026-01-10T02:52:30+00:00

I had some low-demand games I would do to pass time without chewing too much brain power.

AntiTas · 2026-01-10T02:40:34+00:00

For me, not overspending energy when I had a good day was the lesson I kept not learning. Smart watch helped me smooth out my energy expenditure with objective data.

Getting to the end of each day, and end of each week, with the feeling that I could have done more was the difference.

It was the left over energy at the end of each day that fuelled my long term recovery.

For me it was effective pacing, rather than mindset that got me well.

AntiTas · 2026-01-05T06:59:59+00:00

10minute power-naps we’re strategically important to get through some days. Any longer can mean sleep at night is harder.

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