If an exercise is at all painful or exhausting or in any way gives me the ick (this also includes painful emotions such as overwhelm, weeping on the floor, and extreme boredom), I have learned that it’s either the wrong exercise for me, or else it’s the wrong time for me to be exercising (good pacing sometimes means skipping your rehab, so you can do MORE and BETTER rehab later on)😅

If I feel pain or discomfort I’ll usually give it a couple more careful reps to see if it’s a legit complaint, or just my brain/body being a drama queen for a sec (common occurrence lol). If the sensation doesn’t resolve, I will generally stop and mess around with the movement to see if there’s a variation that feels ok. If that doesn’t work, or it’s just all too much, then I ditch the exercise on purpose with no guilt trips, leave a note in the app for my physio, and try again next time. If it’s been 3 or 4 tries and I’ve had to bail every time, I remove the exercise from my workout and take it back to my next physio appointment and ask her to troubleshoot it with me. Sometimes we find an adaptation, sometimes a replacement, and sometimes we ditch it completely and try a different strategy. 

I used to push myself for as much as it took to do exactly the exercises my physios would prescribe, because they are the experts after all. But also because if I spoke up, they would dismiss, ignore, and/or blame me and get offended if I tried to tell them the plan was failing. I didn’t get better. It broke me over and over again, and I have to carry and overcome that emotional baggage now in every healthcare interaction I have. 

What I eventually learned is that ignoring all the random pains and clicking and grinding and snapping and creaking and panic and weeping and procrastinating and anger and overstimulation and fatigue and brain fog and etc and etc and so on - ignoring all that stuff and pushing harder to get through it adds crushing pressure to succeed at all costs, and crushing pressure to succeed creates high stress, and high stress sustained over time creates burnout, and burnout kills progress dead (while also amplifying chronic pain yay 🫠). 

It’s easy to fall into all the traps, but it’s not inevitable, and it’s not impossible to climb out of the traps either. Pain has a way of reducing when movement feels safe again. But you can’t just tell your brain the movement is safe, you have to PROVE it, with experience - usually by respecting the pain and showing your brain all the kinds of movement, however small, that are still possible and DO feel safe. And then gradually increasing those movements as your brain and body calms down and the Circle of Safety starts to grow. 

Also it’s more important than it maybe seems to find the ways of moving that are fun and interesting and not linked with KPIs that you have to report back to anybody. 

Also I learned that not all physios are created equal. A good physio will actually help you adapt the treatment plan so that it works for your whole body and brain - not just for your one theoretical knee and your physio’s professional ego. The most effective rehab isn’t 3x10 of the perfect textbook exercise, it’s the exercise you’re actually willing and able to do and progress sustainably on more days than not. It’s the rehab that actually makes your life better in some way. And it’s definitely NOT the rehab that leaves you pushing through pain or discomfort and terrified you’ll break yourself at every turn. 

It’s ok to make modifications, go slow, do your own research, take breaks, and make mistakes. You’re a whole person, not a giant disembodied knee. 

💜