A client came into the purple room yesterday a little disappointed. It went something like this.
Bill: What’s your status?
Client: I was doing great. I’ve been waking up without pain. My back and hip were doing so well, I decide to play some basketball. I was able to play pretty hard and felt good while I was playing, and then I paid for it the next two days with a lot of the hip and back pain.
Bill: [eyebrow lift and head tilt]
Client: Yeah, it was probably too much too soon, eh? I get it.
Lesson learned.
One of the key principles I always mention to patients and clients (and can also be found in All Gain, No Pain) is that we never lose the ability to generate intensity, but intensity places demands on our resources and comes at a cost.
Dipping too deeply into the stress bucket, and you’ll be drawing on those resources you’ll need to recover from stressors and activities. If you’re now lacking the capacity to recover (aka lacking resilience), you man find yourself feeling less than optimal until you can restore those resources via sleep, meditation, breathing resets, nutrition, etc.
It is a rare occasion that the body benefits from being “shocked” into a favorable growth-related change for the better. In fact, let’s make that never just to be safe. Consider how easily you adapt to a one hour time zone change compared to a three hour jump in time zones. You may see by the clock that it’s time for sleep, but if your brain says it’s used to being awake now, your brain will most likely win.
Small, incremental changes allows the body to adapt to stressors without placing overwhelming demand on your resources that set you back.
Think along the line of getting one more rep, putting a few more pounds on the bar, increasing your capacity workout time by a few minutes, cutting a couple hundred calories this week, and so on.
No Pain Sub-Principle: Take the next logical step
Taking the next logical step requires that your thinking, logical brain win over the emotional areas of the brain. When our emotional brain says “Go for it!” we must let our thinking brain step in and say “Wait a minute, what’s the next logic step here?”
We can still be progressive in our approach, but we must use the same logic that we use when we dip our toe in the pool to test the temperature of the water before we jump in.
We must be prepared for the demands of what we are about to experience.
We must take the next logical step.
Get started on your pain-free comeback to the gym today
