Why Being Sore Might Be Ruining Your Progress

Ever finish a workout and think “OH MAN I’m going to be SO SORE tomorrow, I DEFINITELY got my workout in”?

Did you know soreness doesn’t indicate you’ve made progress or are any closer to reaching your goals?

Shocking, I know. I used to chase that soreness too, thinking it was a sign I had absolutely crushed my lift and I’d be closer to those muscles I wanted the next day. It wasn’t true.

Here’s why:

Muscle soreness, especially DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness, or second day soreness), is a sign of muscle damage (not a bad thing, it’s thought that working out micro tears muscles and then repairs them stronger, which is how you build muscle). Some people experience soreness with every workout. Some NEVER experience soreness. If you do something you haven’t done for a while, you’ll be sore. If you lift way more than you’re used to, you’ll be sore. If you do something new, you’ll be sore. All of those are good ways to increase your muscle size, it’s true.

But, progressive overload matters when trying to reach a goal. Think of drawing a road map from where you are now to where you’re going. There are steps along the way that you take to increase the amount of weight you use, the amount of reps you do, the tempos you use, and all are meant to continually move you along that road towards your goal. If you blindly jump from one thing to the next (program hopping, for instance), or crush yourself into oblivion along the way, you might get there eventually by sheer luck, but odds are pretty good you won’t get where you want to go.

Frequency and quality of training matter along this road. If you chase that soreness and are so sore that you can’t properly lift for a few days, you lose a day or two of training. And trust me, because I ABSOLUTELY did that when I was younger and dumber, being too sore to sit properly for a few days DOES mean missed workouts. If you try to lift through the soreness, you might get through it–but was it a GOOD lift using the proper muscles, or did other muscles pick up the slack for the ones you were targeting because those target muscles were too sore to properly contract? (I’ll give you a hint: no, it wasn’t a good workout).

And, did you know that when training athletes in season, the goal is to AVOID soreness? If that athlete you idolize on tv is actively aiming to stay strong (and get stronger) without being too sore to compete, do you really think soreness is a must to accomplish your training goals? (Another hint: no, you don’t need that soreness).

Now, if you need to be a little fatigued to feel accomplished and sweaty, there IS a way to do that without crushing yourself, and in fact, they can even help further your goals. Finishers are a great way to up your heart rate and your sweat factor at the end of the workout. They are typically things like airdyne or assault bike sprint intervals, which are excellent for working on aerobic or anaerobic capacity depending on the length of intervals (and man do they make you sweat), or a circuit with low to no weights but higher reps and little rest, which add some volume to your muscle groups and fatigue you and also work on your cardiorespiratory system. Finishers typically last 5-15 minutes and will absolutely leave you sweaty, but usually not sore.

How to Write a Better New Year’s Resolution (That You Might Actually Stick To)

It’s almost the new year, which means we’re all thinking about our new year’s resolutions. And if we’re like most people, we’ll stick to these goals (#NewYearNewMe!) for roughly three weeks, and by the time February rolls around, we’ll have completely forgotten what it was we set out to accomplish this year. 

In the fitness industry, it’s well known that most folks who started the new year off with a new gym membership are gone by February. Some numbers put it at close to an 80% “fail” rate, and anecdotally, I’d say that’s pretty accurate. 

So, how do you make your resolution stick? 

Let’s start by writing a better resolution. A plan is just a dream until it’s written down and you have steps laid out to achieve it. (And, for the sake of this blog, I’m writing about weight loss since it’s such a common new year resolution, though the principles can be applied to any goal). 

Photo by Tirachard Kumtanom on Pexels.com

1. Write your goal down: Make it specific and something you can measure, so that you can see the progress. 
   • Instead of “I want to lose weight” or “I want to look better naked” try “I want to lose 15 pounds” or “I want to get down to 20% body fat.” (I don’t usually like going by the scale because it fluctuates based on hormones, water retention, if you pooped or not that day, but these may be your goals, not mine).
   • How will you measure this? I like using progress photos because it allows you to see your progress even when you don’t necessarily see it in your day to day life. Or, use measurements with a tape measure. Or, use a machine that measures body fat if you have access to one. 
2. Ask yourself: How will you achieve this goal? What steps will you take to get there? Are they ACTIONABLE steps, meaning you can physically control whether you do them or not? Can you be consistent in tackling each step? Is each step something you can easily see yourself achieving?
   • Break your steps down into things you can DO to achieve a goal. We all know the “eat less, move more” part of losing weight. HOW will you do that? Will you write out a meal plan and prep meals each week? Will you sign up for a meal prep delivery service? Will you track calories? Protein? Will you go to the gym? Sign up for a fitness class? Go for a walk every day? How often will you do these things? Can you GUARANTEE you can accomplish those goals CONSISTENTLY, knowing you can always increase your days or time if those two guaranteed days a week becomes second nature?  
   • I also highly recommend having a step by step program if you are going to go to the gym, so that you know exactly what you’re going to do be doing before you get into the gym. Make it easy on yourself–having a program to follow means you don’t have to think about what you’re doing when you get into the gym. You can just go and crush it. 
3. Set yourself up for success by breaking each step down into something you can 100% do before you make it harder. Success breeds more success and feelings of confidence that you can in fact accomplish your goal. Know that you can make it to the gym at least twice a week? Set that as your goal. If you get a third or even fourth workout in that week–that’s a bonus! Don’t go ham with 5 or 6 day a week programs if you’ve never worked out before or if your schedule doesn’t allow it.
4. Know your why: Yes, it can be as simple as “I want to look better naked” or “I want to fit into my jeans better.” Just do yourself a favor and ask yourself why that matters to you—REALLY understand why it matters to you (and understand that being smaller or more jacked won’t bring happiness—that comes with more emotional work). I do recommend tossing some performance goals in along the way like achieving your first chin up or deadlifting your bodyweight for the first time if your goal is aesthetic…they’re easier goals to target and bring an enormous sense of pride and confidence as you hit them.
5. Plan to fail: How are you going to keep yourself accountable and going when the motivation (a very fleeting mood) passes? How are you going to get back on track when life derails you with late meetings and sick kids and crazy travel schedules and finals?
   • Some of my favorite ways to stay accountable: hire a coach for a few months that you have to report back to (brownie points, you’ll learn a lot if you hire a good coach); ask a friend to be your workout buddy; sign up for a race or something that gives you a hard deadline to achieve your goals by; publicly state what your goal is and post about the journey along the way. 

Give it a try. Write your stuff down, give it some GENUINE thought, and put it somewhere you’ll find it again (a post it on the bathroom mirror or in your planner, a note in your phone, a page in your journal) so you can refer back to it.

Questions to Ask Yourself When Writing a Training Program

Whether you’re a newly minted performance coach or personal trainer, or a long time veteran in the weight room, writing a program for your athletes and clients is an important part of your job (and often the one that, as newbies, we obsess over the most, even though your ability to connect and coach is what will set you apart). 

Any good program should start with an evaluation and assessment of the individual and their needs (or, if you coach groups or have 80 athletes on your team in your weight room at once, at least a rudimentary assessment of them and their sport’s demands). 

The assessment should cover a basic health history (past or current injuries, surgeries, medications, illnesses), a discussion of their goals and sport/position demands, as well as a movement screen of some sort (there are many, and you’ll find the one that works best for your population). 

I like using the assessment I learned at CSP, which is part hands on (looking at joint ranges of motion, passive versus active ranges) and part FMS/SFMA style (squat and lunge patterns). I find it to be most instructive in giving my an idea of how people move, and, give or take a few pieces depending on the individual, is very useful. 

(This is more difficult for college strength coaches who can have hundreds of athletes coming in at the same time. They may find other screens more effective given the time constraints and resources available. The point is, you have to assess to get an idea of where to start).

After assessing, you start to build out the program by asking these questions:

• How many days a week will you have to train them?
• How long will each training session be? 
• For athletes: Where are they in their training year? (In season, pre season, post season, off season). How much time do you have to prepare them? 
• For general population: What sort of training background do they have? 
• What equipment will they have access to? 
• What are their top limiting factors? What order should you approach these? (This one is multifactorial, including nutrition, sleep, and other work/life stressors AS WELL AS physical limiting factors like weak core/glutes, injuries, poor ranges of motion from the screen). 
• What are their goals/sport demands? What do they NEED to be good at? 
• What is the SIMPLEST way to achieve that?
• How do you keep them ENGAGED? 

And my favorite, and often most important question: What is the PURPOSE of whatever exercise you put into a program?

That last one makes all the difference between the trainer on the gym floor randomly stringing exercises together because they saw it online and figure it would be fun, and the coach who is actively trying to get their athlete or client RESULTS. It’s the difference between just working out (just getting a sweat on) and TRAINING (having a goal in mind and working towards it).  

If you can’t offer a good reason as to why an exercise is in a workout, why did you select it? It’s certainly okay to say “for fun” for one or two (especially with general population folks who can get bored with a workout routine), but they shouldn’t be the rule, rather the exception. 

Ask your trainer/coach. If they’ve put any level of thought into it, they’ll likely be happy to answer it. Or, if you’re the one writing it, ask yourself (or have a friend ask and give you feedback). Personally, I love having clients ask me why they’re doing a particular exercise, because it keeps me on my toes and keeps me focused on providing the BEST program I can. 

Perhaps you have other questions you focus on when writing a program. I’d love to hear them! Drop a comment below!

Changing your relationship with food

“I don’t understand why they can’t just follow the food plan. Just DO it. How hard is that?”

That’s a surprisingly common phrase I hear out of coaches’ and trainers’ mouths in regards to nutrition. Heck, it came out of MY mouth more than once when I was a new trainer. I couldn’t understand how hard it was for clients to STOP eating takeout every night, or to give up the daily sodas.

What I failed to understand (ironic, because I went through my own struggles with eating), is that our relationship to food is one fraught with emotional baggage. It’s actually easier to start a new workout routine than it is to unravel our deeply emotional ties to what we eat. Try telling a new client to stick to a workout routine; you’ll be met with enthusiasm. Now try telling them they can’t eat their favorite junk food anymore. (I love when some folks say “food is just fuel” without acknowledging food is also comfort and pleasure).

We have so many social ties to our food–including memories of our parents or grandparents making us certain meals, and ethnic and national heritages linked to certain meals–that it’s a tricky road to navigate as a coach as your clients (or you yourself) try to make changes.

What complicates matters even more is the sheer amount of information out there (vegan? vegetarian? keto? no carb? all carb? how much protein is ideal? iifym?), and the tendency of people to feel that if they eat a certain food they’re “good” or “bad,” or if they fail to follow a certain diet plan they’re “failures” or “weak.”

Suffice it to say, unraveling the negative thoughts surrounding our food is one of the most difficult tasks we take on when we begin making nutritional changes. MOST people think they need to be super strict in order to succeed, but at the beginning especially, allowing yourself to make mistakes and learn without feeling guilt is important. Why? Because those who “fail” and feel guilt slide much further off the track than those who understand it happens and it’s okay (the difference between “I ate a cookie that wasn’t on my plan so I might as well eat ALL of them since I ruined my diet” and “I ate a cookie that wasn’t on my plan. That’s okay, I’ll just get back on it and eat my protein and vegetables next meal”).

But the most important reason is that I’ve seen people fall down an obsessive and unhealthy rabbit hole where carbs/fats become the enemy and they’re afraid to eat certain things because they’ll “undo all their work” in one meal. I’ve seen a surprising amount of people become borderline orthorexic in their quest to “eat clean”…far more than I thought I would when I was learning about it in grad school (because let’s be real, most people need to eat better in this country than need to eat a little unhealthier). Even when it doesn’t go quite that far, I still see unhealthy “healthy” behaviors pick up. But that’s a post for another day.

So what do we do about changing our relationships with food?

First, shed the guilt. Seriously. Guilt over food serves you no GOOD purpose. Stop thinking you’re “good” or “bad” based on what you ate for the day.

Second, make a SIMPLE plan. And I’m not talking about strict meal plans telling people what they can and can’t eat. If you’re a coach, understand that some people need more structure than others when they’re beginning (target numbers, specifically). I prefer to work on behavioral changes but even I understand that I need to adapt my own coaching to match my client; if that means focusing on more concrete things to start, I do, while adding a new behavior in each week. While I DO NOT offer food plans, I do talk about how much protein they should be targeting each day (and from what sources), how many vegetables or fruit they should be aiming to get (or suggesting trying a new one each week), tracking calories and measuring food (at least to start, so that they get an idea of portion sizes, although the goal is get them to eat intuitively eventually), and how to make meals that match their goals and plan.

Normally, it looks like this:
-Every meal should have a lean protein (I include sources of lean proteins to choose from/get an idea about what counts as a lean protein).
-Every meal should have a vegetable (I include different types to aim for).
-Put your food into an app (myfitnesspal, Fitbit, etc) that tracks your calories and your macros–primarily so you can get an idea of how much you’re eating, what you’re eating, and so you can see patterns as they develop over time.

Third, make it easy. This is twofold, both in how you approach coaching and in how you approach your own plan. First, I never overwhelm my clients with too many changes to make at once. Making ONE is difficult enough. We clear one or two new habits and then move on to the next one. (For instance, we discuss eating mindfully and listening to our hunger/fullness cues, OR about drinking more water each day). Second, seriously, make it easy to eat well. Prepare meals in advance. Keep “trigger foods” out of the house (meaning if you can’t eat just one without eating all of the jar/bag/box, don’t bring it near you–avoid the temptation). Cut up fruits and vegetables and make them easily accessible for snacks. The EASIER it is to eat something, the more likely you are to eat it.

Fourth, reinforce that consistency is better than perfection, and that if you/your client slips up and binges on an entire pizza, IT’S OKAY. If you fall off the wagon, jump right back on during your next meal.

Fifth, use some Jedi mind tricks. Psychology is a huge part of making lasting changes. My favorite trick of all is to add things into a diet rather than remove them. If someone tells you you’re not allowed to do something, that one thing is suddenly all you can think about doing (if you have kids, you know that’s especially true because they’ll literally do everything you tell them not to). The same goes for food. Telling yourself you CAN’T eat something makes you want it that much more, and when you finally cave and eat it, you tend to go crazy and eat ALL OF IT (because you already screwed up, right? So why not go all the way?). Rather than do that, focus on adding things in first. Want a slice of pizza? Sure, you can have it. But first, have you had your vegetable for the meal? How about your protein? Eat those two things first, and if you’re still hungry, eat a slice! Chances are, you’ll be less hungry by the time you get to the pizza, and you may not even want it anymore.

And you want to know what the biggest thing is for my clients?

Accountability. Depending on their preferences, I make them report back to me everywhere from 5 days a week to once a week. Because you know what? Accountability means consistency–and consistency is key.

How to Write a Better New Year’s Resolution

It’s that time of the year again–the time when we start to think about what we want to accomplish in the next year, from more time in the gym and better eating habits, to better organizational skills, to learning new skills altogether. It’s the time for resolutions.

 

That being said, a fair number of us probably didn’t make much headway on our old ones. In the fitness industry in particular, it’s the time of year where we notoriously see gyms fill up for three weeks and then suddenly by February 1st we’re back to the regulars (and maybe one or two folks who stick around from the New Year rush). MOST people tend to fall away from their resolutions very quickly, and give them up “until next year, I’ll try again then.”

 

 

 

 

 

The fault isn’t so much in laziness or lack of will power or an inability to commit. Behavioral change is about building sustainable habits, and we can probably partly blame the way that we write our goals on our failures to stick with them.

Think about it: normally when we write goals, we say things like

• I want to lose ten pounds this year
• I want to get fit
• I want to eat better
• I want to speak Spanish fluently
• I want to be a better person

Sweet! Great goals, right?

They’re actually incredibly vague. They’re end goals, with no framework for how to achieve them, how to measure your successes, and you have no control over them. Most of these examples aren’t even clearly defined (what do you consider “fit,”, what do you consider “better”), so how would you know what success will look like?

That’s not to say you shouldn’t have end goals. But rather than focus on them, consider writing a road map to them, with steps along the way that you need to take to reach them. If you’re a visual human like I am, actually draw a map out.

1. Start with your end goal.
   I want to get in the best shape of my life. 
2. Ask yourself how you define it.
   I want to be able to run a 5k and I want to lift weights, too. 
3. Ask yourself what you need to do in order to achieve this.
   I’m going to do the couch to 5k running program, and I want to lift 3 days a week.
4. Ask yourself how you hold yourself accountable to these things–because longterm consistency is king.
   I am going to run with my friend because she wants to do a 5k as well. We’ll sign up together and hold each other accountable for our running days.
   I am also going to hire a coach for my lifting, and report back to them each week. I want to start off small with three 30 minute sessions each week before work because I know I can squeeze that in to my days and do that consistently–and if I go before work, I won’t run out of time or energy to go to the gym like I would at the end of the day. 
5. Set dates in your calendar to “check in” on your progress.
   I will test my overall strength/running time on the first Monday of every month and record them.
6. Remember that consistency and sticking with it–even when you’re not in the mood–is what determines your longterm success. Making it a date with yourself in your calendar helps.
7. STAY. FOCUSED. ON. THE. POSITIVE. Nobody enjoys working out when you view it as a drag or a punishment. Change your mindset–think of it as a reward or celebration of all the things your body can do, and will be able to do.

Try it out with your own road map.

How to Create a Bare Bones, Packable Home Gym

Not everyone has the time or money to commit to a gym membership. And, if you’re a baseball gypsy or someone who travels a lot for work or you have kids at home and find it difficult to get away from the house, gym memberships aren’t always FEASIBLE or make sense.

Still want to get strong? Having a home gym helps.

But Ashley, that’s not feasible either. I’m never home in season, how am I supposed to take a home gym WITH me on the road? Or, Ashley, I can’t afford a fancy home gym, you’re off your rocker.

The thing is, you don’t NEED a super fancy home gym to get started. What you DO need are a few key pieces–many of which, my fellow baseball WAGs, you can pack and take on the road with you for easy access to a gym anywhere on the road.

Equipment:

Perform Better Mini Bands (4 pack)
Cost: $14.95 on Amazon

You can use these for a WIDE variety of exercises for upper, lower, and core strength.
Examples of exercises you can perform with these:
-Banded Squats
-Pushups with the band around your forearms
-Wall Vector Taps (great for shoulders)
-Wall Slides with Band
-Deadbugs (with band around feet)
-Monster Walks/Lateral Steps
-Clamshells
-Hip Thrusts

Perform Better Exercise Superband (1″)
Cost: $18.95 on Amazon

Another great inclusion that you can pack up and travel with.

Examples of exercises you can perform with these:
-Banded hip hinges
-Banded RDLs
-Assisted Chin Ups (if you have a bar or branch you can throw this over)
-Leg Lowers
-Banded Pushups (this is very advanced for a 1″ band)
-Seated Rows (with the band around your foot or a door handle or held by a partner)
-Lateral Lunges
-Band Resisted Broad Jumps

Kettlebells
Cost: $8.99-$98.04 (varies by weight/type)

These vary widely in price depending on brand/weight, but you really don’t need MANY to get started/get a decent lift in with MULTIPLE exercises. I’d suggest grabbing a lighter one and a heavier one. Not as easy to travel with if you’re flying, but if you’re traveling in season and have room in your car, they’re a good thing to include.

Exercises you can perform with these:
-Kettlebell swings
-Deadlift Variations (1 leg, 2 leg, conventional, sumo)
-Floor Presses or Shoulder Presses
-Carries (waiter’s walk, farmer’s walk, bottom’s up carry, etc)
-Turkish Get Ups
-Lunges
-Squats
-Rows
-Planks with Drag Throughs

Those three to four pieces will honestly get you MOST of what you need for a home gym. If you have the money to splurge, I’m also a fan of these:

TRX Suspension Training Kit
Cost: $99 on Amazon

You can literally pack this up and take it with you ANYWHERE as it fits right in your bag. For the record, there are a bunch of versions, many of which are cheaper (ranging from $30-$60).

Exercises you can do with this:
-Rows
-Push ups
-Planks
-Lunges
-Single leg squats (assisted)
-Squats
-Squat jumps/rocket jumps (whatever you want to call them)
-TRX Fallouts
-Assisted Pull Ups
-Hamstring Curls

Last but not least:

Pull Up Bar
Cost: $33.82 on Amazon

I’ve had this exact bar since undergrad, and it’s lasted me approximately 9 years so far. Pretty sure I stole it from my brother when he went off to college right when I graduated.

Exercises you can do with this:
-Pull ups (duh): neutral grip, prone grip, supinated grip
-You can also do face pulls with this if you attach a band to it

Honorable mention:
Lebert Fitness Equalizer
Cost: $99.39-$134.95 on Amazon

I have not personally bought or used this because I have a TRX and can do most everything I need to with that, but a few coaches I know rave about these. Up to you. I like the versatility and travelability (not a word but I’m making it one) of the TRX for the baseball lifestyle more.

Five Steps To Being “Motivated”

 

I got to take over the @wagsinreallife Instagram story yesterday, and talk to a lot of women about our story in baseball, how we met…and a lot about my journey as a strength coach. In fact, I’d say I got more questions about fitness, what to do for training, and how I went about shaping my own career path than I did about baseball!

One question really stuck with me: How do I get and stay motivated to work out?

I was super blunt about it. I’m usually not motivated to go to the gym. (Crazy, right? A strength coach, not motivated to go lift?!) And I don’t like relying on motivation in order to get my butt to the gym or out the door for a walk or downstairs to go play around with movement with kettlebells or our TRX.

Motivation is elusive. I learned that long ago. It’s really easy when you first start doing something, because you’re excited about it. But journeys, whether related to fitness or diet or writing or work or whatever, quickly lose their thrill as the days and weeks roll on. This is especially true in fitness, because it takes a considerable amount of time to see changes–and we’re all about immediate satisfaction and seeing changes happen NOW, so having to WAIT to see results?! We lose interest.

We lose our motivation.

What makes this more frustrating for people is the pervasiveness of seemingly highly motivated people on Instagram and Facebook just CRUSHING weights and glistening in the gym with their muscles just popping out in our faces.

The truth is, most of those people probably aren’t all that motivated day in and day out either. What they are is patient, and consistent. They understand that to achieve something takes time, and that IF they want that payoff, they have to do things day in and day out, whether they want to or not. They’re building HABITS. It becomes part of a routine. (I’ve really loved seeing more coaches come out and admit this instead of putting on a front about being forever motivated).

So the real question is, how do you build habits to “stay motivated”?

1. Understand that things take time. Be patient. Set smaller goals along the way to your end goal. (Measurable ones, like number of pull-ups you can do or how many days you make it to the gym each week).
2. Be consistent. This one is the hardest of all. In terms of a workout routine, the key word is routine. Mark it on a calendar how many days a week you’re going to go (start with what you can consistently do, 2-3x a week). Go at the same time every day–early in the morning if you know you’ll be too tired and find ways to make excuses after work to not go, mid day when the kids are out of the house, or in the evenings when you need to blow off steam. It’s individual to you, but make it something you can do repeatedly.
   

   We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit. – Aristotle

3. Plan ahead. I find it easiest to stick to it if I don’t have to think about what I’m doing when I go to the gym every day. I have a program that a coach writes out for me for four days a week, with the freedom to add days to my week if I want to. I know what I’m doing every day when I step into the gym. You don’t need to hire a coach for this, but it does help to have your days planned out for 2-4 weeks at a time.
4. Find someone to hold you accountable. In my case, I hired a coach (because even coaches need coaches). I did this because if I didn’t have someone to report in to, I’d make excuses for the short term. (I also did this because if I asked Nick to hold me accountable, I’d just get mad at him every day for trying to do that, so for the sake of our relationship I didn’t want it to be him). If you don’t want to or can’t afford a coach–ask a friend.
5. Know that you’re going to fall off the wagon. We all do. Life gets crazy, PMS cravings take over, the kids get sick, you have to travel, you go on vacation, a work deadline eats up your days, you get sick. Guess what–IT’S OKAY. This is a totally normal part of making a new habit and of life in general. Don’t beat yourself up over it. You’re not a failure for eating an entire bag of chips or missing your workout. You don’t have to wait until tomorrow or next week or next month to start back on your path. Your next meal, focus on your goals again (mmmm veggies and protein). Go for a walk. Hit the gym tomorrow, or even better, today.

Did this hit home? Helpful? Have questions? Let me know in the comments!

What they don’t tell you after surgery

Let me preface this entire post by saying I am not a medical professional, nor do I play one on TV. 

The closest I’ve ever been to being in the medical field was a few years ago. I worked, for a short time while I put myself through grad school, as a physical therapy aide, at a fantastic place. I learned more from hands on experience in my 16 months there than anywhere else (save my internship at CSP). And as much as I learned from hands on work, I learned even more from listening to patients, about what they experienced. 

During that time, I also underwent a second knee surgery, and spent six months rehabbing with my coworkers, doing my program alongside our patients. Suddenly, I had a greater understanding of exactly what they were feeling. 

I no longer work in that setting, but I still see a lot of clients in various stages of rehab. 

They come in with varying degrees of pain. Some are undergoing MRIs to pinpoint their issues and decide if they need surgery. Some are fresh out of surgery and unable to use their dominant arm for the next few months while their new UCL heals. Some are slowly returning to play. Some are years down the road since they had theirs. 

If you speak with any of them long enough, the same concerns bubble to the surface: will this surgery help, will I play again? Is that pain in my elbow/shoulder normal or did I reinsure myself? It’s a fear that Jeff Passan really portrays well in his book, “The Arm,” which looks at Tommy John surgeries. (It’s a great read, I highly recommend it). 

One of our clients actually sat down and voiced his frustrations recently at his healing not following the timeline his doctor had given him, at his doctor not being able to tell him what moves would and wouldn’t cause pain, at not being able to tell him when he should or shouldn’t return to throwing. 

It’s a frustration I understood well. My own rehab had taken almost a year longer than my surgeon had told me. 

“You know it’s never going to feel the same as it did before your surgery, right?” I asked him.

He stopped. 

It was a really harsh thing for me to say, but I wish doctors would explain this to patients. 

Once you have injured a joint, it is never going to feel the same. I don’t think it should ever limit you–I know plenty of people who are stronger, move better, and are playing again at even higher levels than before because they underwent surgery to repair an injury. But that joint, it never feels the same, and a lot of people seem to expect to feel like they did before they were hurt. 

That doesn’t happen. 

Healing also frequently doesn’t follow the scheduled plan. What takes one person three months may take another person a year. 

I CAN say that from past experiences and what I know of human remodeling from applied ex phys, and more so from listening and seeing so many patients experience it at the rehab clinic, that there are a few things you can expect. 

1. Your rehab is only as good as what you’re willing to put in to it. Doing a 20 minute program twice a week won’t cut it. Do your homework. 
2. Don’t OVER do it. You’re still healing. Listen to your body. You’re going to have some good days, even some GREAT days, but as some very wise people have said, it’s not how you feel that day, it’s how you feel the day after. Start small. 
3. Depending on your surgery/injury, you’re going to experience some very rough patches in your healing process. This seems to be particularly relevant roughly three months in to your recovery. This has been something I’ve seen in every person with whom I’ve spoken or worked.
4. Things are going to hurt, a lot. Scar tissue is painful to break through. Strengthening atrophied muscles is exhausting. You’re going to be sore and ache from doing things you normally wouldn’t have thought twice about. Don’t shy away from it, but listen to your body. There’s good pain and there’s bad pain. Don’t reinjure yourself. 

My “rules” for a happy, healthy life

When I was younger, my main focus was “the hustle.” To call me a workaholic would be an understatement. The older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve come to understand not only that there’s more to life, but that I work better when I step away and explore life and remember to take time for my physical and mental health. 

These are not hard and fast rules…more like guidelines, but I try to live my life by them. 

Wear your seatbelt.

Don’t text (or drink) and drive.

Always use sunscreen.

Drink plenty of water.

Move.

Sleep.

Eat your vegetables.

Explore new foods.

Cook more often than you eat out.

Don’t hold grudges.

Laugh often.

Smile frequently.

Power down your tech a bit each week.

Get plenty of fresh air.

Be a hugger.

Read.

Develop empowering, supportive relationships.

Give.

Forgive.

Work hard.

Enjoy your down time.

Strive for more.

Accept and love yourself.

💋 Keep on rockin 💋