Mindset

Despite writing workout programs to help clients with niggles, pains and injuries every day, I continue to find myself surprised and excited to see how profound the effects of corrective exercise can be. I’ve got a few examples of things I’ve found especially exciting over the last few months: Two separate early stage workout plans have provided a pretty much immediate resolution to two clients chronic back pain. Another program has radically improved nerve pain which has been going on for years. A much more gradual approach has seen a client almost back to full function after an acute shoulder injury. A similarly gradual approach is showing consistent benefits to a clients hypermobility caused pain. I’m sure you’ll agree that these are pretty impressive results just from showing up consistently for the right exercise! These are my top tips for getting the best out of a corrective exercise routine: 1) Injuries are almost never fixed by rest. If something hurts, be proactive. Learn what is causing your pain and work to correct it. 2) Keep it simple! Don’t turn to the social media trainers who show you a million advanced stretches. Go for the most simple (appropriate) movements first, do them frequently, then add complexity and variety gradually as you progress and need more challenge. 3) Turn up consistently. Even if you feel that progress is slow, it will start to snowball pretty quickly if you keep at it. 4) Straight from the outset, the right exercise should give you some form of benefit (even if it is only a short lived and tiny amount at first) if you’re to take it as a sign you’re going to get a longer term improvement from it. If this isn’t the case, it’s wise to get further advice from a hands on…

Are you feeling achey after starting a new exercise routine - or even just doing something different to usual? It's probably something called DOMS. It usually comes on about 12-24 hours after your workout or activity. It can be really quite painful and alarming if you're not expecting it, but it usually starts to reduce on the second day and will gradually decrease over the following three days. I think there might some individual variation to the chances of you experiencing muscle ache. I've worked with clients who get DOMS super easily, and clients who never seem to experience it. Personally, if I skip even two workouts, I will ache a lot when I restart again! It's caused by tiny tears being made in your muscles when they're doing something unexpected. It's totally normal for this to happen and not really a sign of damage. Sometimes a bit of DOMS is unavoidable, but it's definitely not something we want to strive for as a sign of a good or effective workout. Not least, painful muscle aches after workouts can become a barrier to creating a good routine. If you're aching most times you workout, you could see it as a sign that you're doing a little too much and instead, reduce your workout to a level which doesn't make you ache, and build up to what you'd like to do gradually over a few weeks.