Category: injury

A person in white coat and stethoscope wearing a virtual reality headset. by unsplash. Virtual physical therapy: not an oxymoron anymore
fitness · injury · Physiotherapy · research

Virtual physical therapy: not an oxymoron anymore

catherine wLeave a comment

I love me some physical therapy. it has helped me come back from orthopedic surgery, injury, accident, wear and tear and repetitive motion-induced pains.

One of the things I love the most about PT (physio in Canada) is how much I learn about my body through interacting with my physical therapist, adjusting and changing exercises over time. We always talk about what’s become easier, what is still difficult, how different body parts and functions are changing over time, and how that affects my health and fitness goals and practices.

Last year, I spent 5 months in PT for sciatica that had gotten to the point where climbing stairs was painful, hip pain woke me up at night, and even walking right after driving hurt. Yes, I know, driving is the one of the worst things for our musculoskeletal systems. Whatcha gonna do…

By the end of that rehab period, I felt so much stronger and happier and functional and knowledgeable about my vulnerabilities, needs and resources. Yay! Thanks Julian and Louis!

Here’s the thing: PT/physio seems like exactly the kind of healthcare that needs to be in person, with two bodies present: patient and physical therapist. Recovery trajectories aren’t linear. They involve dips and surges, all of which require on-the-spot adjustments to exercise regimens.

So you wouldn’t think that anyone would even consider outsourcing PT/physio to something like AN APP.

But guess what? They have. Yes, I’m aware of the We’ve-got-an-app-for-that approach to healthcare, but I just got a most unwelcome update when my state employee healthcare overseers, MassGIC, started hawking a new app (this one is called Hinge Health), with the promise of ease, flexibility and no copays. They also included this on their website:

From their webpage: transforming how MSK pain is treated. and delivered. I don't think that's what they meant to say.
From their webpage: transforming how MSK pain is treated. and delivered. I don’t think that’s what they meant to say. But hey, I’m a fussy humanities professor…

To be sure, not all apps for all uses for all healthcare are ill-concieved. In a 2024 qualitative study of use of exercise apps for people managing osteoarthritis at home, both patients and therapists report convenience of the app over paper copies of exercises, increased accountability through digital reminders and ease of recording at-home exercise sessions. However, patients also reported problems with the quality of the apps, technical problems and security concerns about their personal data. Therapists reported concerns over compensation for interacting with patients over apps (that is, they frequently weren’t reimbursed for time spent with them) and overall a preference for paper exercises over app use.

For this company, I did a little sleuthing, and found that 37% of reviewers on TrustPilot, an independent reviewer site, gave it one star (i.e. bad bad bad). They cited aggressive marketing practices and also billing the patients when the service was explicitly covered by their insurance. Recall that having no copays was the primary appeal for patients. Sigh.

Technology continues to transform the way healthcare is delivered. I know this. And there are lots of advantages: increased access for those in less-resourced areas, ease and flexibility of access to information, tracking and accountability, and sometimes even cost.

One one size does not fit all. Some of us want and need in-person interactions with qualified health professionals for our care.

Also, when technology is poorly handled, those qualified professionals are either forced to do less or uncompensated work (e.g. emails, app chats, etc) or entirely supplanted by unqualified workers who must rely on canned materials to try to answer the complex questions of patients.

Which gets us to a bigger problem: trust.

I want healthcare that I can trust. And in order to trust it, I need to trust the healthcare providers. And in order to trust them, I personally need to see them in person, at least most of the time. Which sometimes can include telehealth, and sometimes may include email or patient portal messaging, and sometimes maybe even an app. But I need to know that my healthcare providers will provide me the access I need. Arguing with my phone is not how I want to spend my recovery.

I know, phone, it's not you, it's them... Thanks Konstantin S from Unsplash.
I know, phone, it’s not you, it’s them… Thanks Konstantin S from Unsplash.
Flying & Falling into a New Decade
aging · femalestrength · injury · mindfulness · running

Flying & Falling into a New Decade

MinaLeave a comment

The morning after I turned 60, I headed out on a run with my youngest brother who was in town. What a treat! And he pushes my pace. For the first bit, I felt fleet and strong. Flying. The kind of run where your feet barely seem to touch the ground, tiny levitation rockets in my shoes. And that was just a feeling, since my feet were clearly on the ground when I tripped over a tree root.

I went down hard, catching myself on my shoulder. The result: a badly wrenched shoulder and a pivot from a brisk 9-mile run to a nauseous crawl toward CityMD, arm cradled against my body.

Everything in me wanted to scream until my lungs gave out, why me? Beneath that was a darker feeling, too: that the universe had smacked me down, put me in my place. I had wanted too much. I had been too pleased with myself about still being strong, still being fast, still being the person who runs the morning after her 60th birthday. So, the universe decided to show me who was boss.

I was already prickly about 60. About a month ago, a young man I passed in the final kilometers of a 21k (he could not have been older than his early 30s) said, with dismissiveness: well, maybe when I’m 60. I didn’t hear past that snippet. I kept running. I hear versions of these casual dismissals of people based on their ages often. The unquestioned assumption that age is a one-way street, that it diminishes us.

Even with a hurt and hurting shoulder, I questioned. With difficulty.

The list of things I could barely do at first was graceless in its mundanity. Open a bottle. Get dressed (oh yes, including pulling up my pants after going to the bathroom). Brush my teeth. Grab a glass in the cupboard. Never mind trail running or mountain biking. Did I mention I was three days from leaving for two weeks in the Canadian Rockies? I had planned solitude and mountain time to contemplate my new decade.

Close-up of a human arm showing visible bruising and discoloration on the skin, with a wooden background.

I had to borrow rolling luggage, because I could not haul a pack on a wrenched shoulder, and I always travel with a pack on my back. My mountain bike stayed in my middle brother’s garage in Calgary. Still, the first full day there, I wrestled myself into a sports bra, shirt and hiking pants and ventured out. Cautiously. Arm in a sling. A few days later I packed the sling in my little backpack (which didn’t hurt to wear, it was getting the straps on that was the trick). Gradually, I transitioned to trail running shoes and worked myself up to a slow trot. Always aware of my arm.

For the past three weeks, I’ve been managing the background noise of persistent pain.

This is not how I pictured opening this new decade.

And yet. And yet.

Curbed in my go-go mountain enthusiasm, I moved at a pace that allowed me to bask more in all the signs of coming spring. The runoff streams that got deeper with every warming day, so that I had to find new ways to get across that particular bit of trail each time. I had space to think about what it means to cross this threshold.

Because it is a threshold, even if I am, rationally, the same person the day after my birthday as the day before. I have sat with my complicated feelings about being a person in my sixties now for three weeks and something is shifting or emerging from underneath all the accumulated detritus of the years and the immediate distress of the physical setback. It’s a feeling, a sensation, a way of being that is harder to name than fleet or strong or flying.

Out on the mountain trails each morning, even moving with more caution than usual, a feeling spread in me, as the sun moves quietly into the world each day. Grounded, yet light. Buoyant, yet stable. It feels like I have the right to be here without further justification or proof of worth.

This whatever-it-is-ness feels like an arrival. Or a coming home. Belonging. Did I arrive at this feeling because of the fall?  Maybe. If I choose that version of the story, then I can silver line the fall and injury. Forced to slow down, woman discovers inner strength. Another part of me resists the patness of that explanation.  Maybe I just fell. Because I run on trails and other uneven surfaces. A lot. Life happens.  

My shoulder is healing. Not as quickly as I’d like. And when has any injury healed as quickly as we’d like? The pain is still there. Background noise every day. Wearing. And it is retreating. I can increase my effort. Mindfully. The mountains will still be there for next time. My bike will still be there.

I am still here.

Landed in a new decade. Not as elegantly as I might have liked. Penguin-style, which is to say, with awkward grace.

Dancing · injury

The Ankle Bone’s Connected to the Knee Bone, and the Knee Bone’s Connected to the Hip Bone…

Diane Harper1 Comment

I have written here and here about my persistent ankle injury. I finally got to see a doctor specializing in sports medicine, and she says my issue isn’t just a tight Achilles tendon. It’s that my whole leg is weak.

She sent me to a new physiotherapist for shock wave therapy to address the thickened tendon and recommended more exercises to strengthen my leg and glute muscle. The physiotherapist added more.

I am also trying a sleep sock for plantar fasciitis and have gel heel lifts for my shoes.

It has all been a reminder that as the old children’s song goes, all my body parts are connected, from the soles of my feet through my ankle, Achilles tendon, calf, hamstring and up into my glute and lower back.

The exercises are not fun, but I’m doing them faithfully because they are working. This week I managed two swim practices without taping my ankle. I even had a successful ballet class; I’m starting to get back my range of motion and I am getting strong enough to crank out a few pirouettes.

Not me doing pirouettes obviously. I would be thrilled even to do even one double pirouette.
How Much of Healing Is Faith?
health · injury · mindfulness

How Much of Healing Is Faith?

MinaLeave a comment

How Much of Healing Is Faith?

The foot surgery I mentioned last month has come and gone. I didn’t meltdown or freak out, except in the moment when the physician’s assistant was trying to put in the IV port and I got so stressed out that my veins went into hiding and I started to lose consciousness. The poor PA was mopping sweat from my face, forearms and shins, as he tried to keep me awake. The surgery itself was a black box, after the anesthesiologist said the words, I’m just going to start with something to calm y ... I woke up in the operating room, while they were vigorously swaddling my foot in a dressing, thick wads of cotton batting and a tenser bandage.  

At home that evening, I kept waiting for the pain to hit, mindful that I’d been instructed to, Get ahead of the pain. There was none. Nor the next day. Or any day. There was no swelling either. The only mild discomfort I’ve had is when a shoe causes pressure or friction against the stitches on the top of my foot. I had prepared myself for immobility. Instead, after Friday afternoon surgery, I could walk around normally by later that evening on my one bare foot and one swaddled foot. If my steps were tentative, it was out of anticipation of the pain that did not arrive. I was surprised. After all of the everything around my auto-immune situation, I lost quite a bit of faith in my body’s ability to heal. With each hour that passed post-surgery, then each day, then week, now 10 days, my cup of healing faith is refilling. I wonder how much of the healing is due to my restored faith in my body’s ability to heal.   

I diligently forced myself to stay on the couch over that first weekend. With no pain to remind me of why I needed to be sedate, by Sunday night I was feeling confined and itchy to move. I rode a Monday morning loop of Central Park on Citibike. I wore a surgical boot, to be safe. On Tuesday, I wore a sturdy, regular boot when I rode the same loop. Wednesday was on the Peloton (in running shoes, not bike shoes). And Friday, a week post-surgery, yoga (with modifications to upward dog, so as not to aggravate my stitches).

To be clear, although my foot looks ugly with stitches and bruising top and bottom (be glad I’m not sharing a photo), all of this activity is pain and swelling free. I am not pushing limits. I carefully re-read the post op instructions, which clearly say, weight bearing as tolerated. I was told to expect 2 weeks in a surgical boot, followed by 2 weeks in super sturdy shoes. I was told that maybe I could think about running after 6 weeks. Was my foot doctor just setting low expectations? It hasn’t even been 2 weeks yet and the challenge now is to resist the siren call of running. I see the doc tomorrow (if you are reading this on the first Wednesday in December, when it posts). I’m guessing (please please) that he will take out the three stitches. He really adhered to the minimally invasive promise of the surgery with his tiny incisions, each of which only required one stitch. I’ve promised myself to do nothing over-exuberant until I see him.

Which is hard, because I am bursting with astonished gratitude at this moment. All I want to do is dance and run and jump up and down, to test how much better my foot feels. I can feel how much more mobility there is. How the pain that I had is gone. I can stand on my tippy toes, for the first time in several years.

I tell myself that I should moderate my hopes. After all, my toe also has a bunion and arthritis. Even as another part of me is jumping ahead, wondering, if my foot can heal like this, then what about my Addison’s Disease? Finding the balance of faith in my body’s ability to heal and being realistic about what’s possible is delicate. Some people say that faith is everything. While I believe that faith counts for a lot, I don’t think that my belief in my own healing is enough on its own.

Things I’m wondering:

  • Is faith a virtuous cycle, in which the faith in healing supports the healing?
  • Is it more than a virtuous cycle, as in, without the faith the healing cannot happen?
  • How far can faith go, as in, why does it seem to pertain to my foot and not my auto immune situation? I had a lot of faith I could be cured of the Addison’s. At first. Now, that faith has gotten complicated. How do I untangle the knotty question of whether my patience with a longer road to recovery is faith, or resignation to my fate?
  • And is this faith I’m talking about just another word for control? A veiled way of satisfying the human hunger for control over our lives?

One last wondering, can faith harm my healing? I have an answer to this one. Yes. If I use faith as an excuse to not actually follow medical protocols. I did that in the beginning with the Addison’s. Going off my medication. Against doctor’s orders. Believing that I could cure myself with infusions, supplements, meditation and a positive attitude. That didn’t work. Now I’m on my medication. Diligent and compliant. Mostly. Plus, meditation, faith, vitamins and supplements. That really works.

So, for my foot, weight bearing as tolerated. That’s working so far. I’ll see the doc tomorrow. A little girl part of me is bringing him my foot, as if it is a drawing from school, wanting him to be impressed by my healing. Pin it up on the fridge. Give my faith a boost. What if he just says, yup, this is what I expected? It changes nothing about my condition. Puts a question mark in the power of my faith.

Maybe the trick is to have faith and hold it lightly. Faith will intervene when appropriate and only it knows when that is.

A physical therapist helping a client. BY Annie Spratt for Unsplash. Graduating from physical therapy: Catherine’s excited and a little worried
fitness · injury · mobility · Physiotherapy

Graduating from physical therapy: Catherine’s excited and a little worried

catherine w

I’ve been in physical therapy for a recurrence of sciatica since late July. I’d had pain and weakness in my right hip since May, causing me problems climbing stairs and pain that would wake me up at night. Blech!

Once I finally acknowledged that yes, I needed some help, and got started with a supervised twice-a-week plan, plus at-home exercises, I felt relieved. Relieved that I had a structured plan for dealing with the pain and getting stronger, and also relieved that I could leave this plan up to the professionals (thanks, Julian and Louis!), who would guide me through a process of healing and rebuilding my muscles and getting needed functionality back. Ahhh…

Starting with stretching exercises and some easy strength-building (e.g. bridge, clamshells), I moved on to a full array of hip machine exercises, leg presses, balance activities, farmer’s carry, and stair climbing with dumbells on one side. It’s been gratifying to see and feel my strength increase and pain decrease. Yay!

My classes are all on the second floor of one of the campus buildings, with extra stairs to get into the building. I’ve really not enjoyed waiting for the super-slow elevator to take me to my floor, but it was necessary. Until the past couple of weeks. I’m now taking all the stairs, and my strength has increased so I don’t need to rely on the stair railing to offset weakness in my hip. Yesss!

I knew it was coming, so I wasn’t surprised when I got a call from the PT practice to say I didn’t need twice-a-week sessions anymore. I’ll go once a week for the next few weeks to transition to discharge. This means they think I’m recovered enough to maintain my newly-regained strength and flexibility on my own. Uh, yay?

I mean, here’s the thing: I know I should be feeling like this:

This lamb is feeling it. Thanks, Jonathan Mabey from Unsplash.
This lamb is feeling it. Thanks, Jonathan Mabey from Unsplash.

And I am. It means I’m pretty recovered and functional. I’ll have 4 more hours back for my week. I won’t be paying $40 in co-pays each week. I’ll be climbing stairs to beat the band!

But I also I feel a little like this:

This woman is also not completely sure about the plan. Thanks Simon Abel for Unsplash.
This woman is also not completely sure about the plan. Thanks Simon Abel for Unsplash.

What am I worried about? I’m worried about the challenge of keeping up my fitness maintenance without the help of the PT bros, who I’ve come to like and respect and depend on. Now I have to depend on, well, me. Hence the worried face.

The good news is that my gym has all the machines I need and is a mile from my house. I also know what to do, and in fact like the experience of the weight work and strength training. And, I can bring a friend to my gym for free on the weekends, so I can enlist help in getting there.

And yet.

I’m almost at that transition point– not yet finished with PT, not yet into a regular gym routine. So that’s my next challenge: get to the the one-mile-away-from-my-house gym to do those exercises without the guidance of physical therapists, but instead with the company of other exercisers, including friends.

Maintaining strength, flexibility and functional fitness is really important to me. And it doesn’t always come easy. It’ll take some adjustment, just like twice-a-week PT and at-home exercises did. I’ll report back in a month to let you know how things are going.

Dear readers, what have your experiences of transition from PT/physio to maintenance exercise been like? I’d love to hear what’s worked for you.

Thanks!

cycling · fitness · illness · injury · sailing · strength training

You never know when you’ll perform your last heavy deadlift

Sam B8 Comments
Snipe racing on Guelph Lake

I was going to title this post “You’ll never know when you’ll lift your last sailboat” when I realized that it’s the functional impact of my recent health news that will hit much harder.

What’s the health news? I’ve been diagnosed with a hiatus hernia–see here for what that means. It’s also called hiatal hernia. They’re the same condition.

I’m trying not to be dramatic about this, given that in the scheme of things the health news could have been much worse. I’m aware of that since some of the diagnosis involved ruling out the much worse things that could have been causing my symptoms.

What the diagnosis means for me, among other things, most immediately, is no more heavy lifting or intense efforts on my bike.

I think of myself–and this matters to me,  perhaps more than it should–as a strong person. I know that’s connected to feeling good about my size.  I’m large but I’m large and very strong.

I am all about lifting heavy things and intense efforts on the bike. Power and speed are my go-to fitness places. Rawr!

But no more. No more heavy lifting and no more racing. I feel like my entire fitness personality will need a rethink!

The pamphlets on living with a hiatus hernia all talk about the importance of exercise for weight loss and emphasize that low-intensity activities are just fine. You can still do lots of gentle movement, they say reassuringly.

Gentle movement!?

That is not at all reassuring.

Readers may know how much low-intensity exercise bores me. And you know for sure what I think about exercising for weight loss.

I’m giving myself some time to pout and mourn, but it’s very clear my life will need to change.

I won’t miss planks and crunches. They’re on the no-go list along with heavy weights and intense efforts. There’s also to be no more pull-ups, and lots of yoga poses aren’t recommended either. No cobra or camel but chair pose is okay.  Fine then.

I don’t know yet how bad it is and if surgery is called for (most likely not), but I’m not really writing today to talk about the medical issues. I have an excellent family doctor. I feel very well cared for by the Canadian health care system. I’m lucky. And to be clear, I’m not looking for medical advice. I’m writing mostly to share the fitness impacts and the way I’ll need to adapt my fitness story.

Tracy has blogged about entering her 60s and changing her thinking about fitness. For Tracy, it’s now more about walking and yoga, less about racing, and more about sustainable fitness that will see her through the decades ahead. I confess that hasn’t been my plan. With my big knee surgeries behind me, I wanted to get back to fast cycling, heavy lifting, and intense efforts. Now that won’t be happening, and I am trying to come to terms with it.

Swimming seems to be fine according to most things I read. All my swimming is slow swimming.  Maybe this is the thing that finally gets me into the pool. I have a month free membership at the Y that starts today.

There’s always aquafit. I did aqua yoga Saturday morning. And there’s seated bicep curls. (Yawn. ) Long slow bike rides are still good. We’ll know more as I track what does and doesn’t aggravate my condition. There’s also physio to help with a hiatus hernia. I might try that too. See the video below.

In addition to all the movement advice, there are some serious food impacts. I have already given up afternoon coffee (all coffee in fact except for one in the morning), carbonated beverages, and chocolate for dessert. I’m moving on to eating smaller meals and not eating late in the evening. The medication I’m taking requires 3-4 hours between meals. It’s also recommended I eat a few hours before exercising. (And I know the fussy eating regimens are familiar to many of you. Not me. I’ve always been able to eat a normal sized meal and hop on my bike. But no longer.)

Anything else to worry about? There’s also some worry about tightly fitting sports bras and any clothing that fits snugly around the waist. I guess I’ll be switching to bib shorts for the bike.

Sorry if this sounds a bit dramatic.  I know slowing down with age is normal.  I’ve been siding with team “it’s normal but not necessary,  you don’t have to slow down” and yet here I am,  now deliberating slowing down.

It feels like a lot right now.

I’m giving myself time to get used to this news.

By the way,  my family doctor was surprised I even went to the website the specialist recommended and read the exercise section.  Most people,  he said,  just ignore that and keep doing what they’re doing.  Just take it easy,  he did,  but keep moving.

He makes it sound so simple.  But he also seems like not an over-thinker.

Wish me luck!

fitness · injury · mobility · standing · strength training · stretching

Sam is bringing back the yoga balls

Sam B

Way back when,  BTB (“Before The Blog”), I hurt my back pretty badly. First,  there was a fall when skiing.  Then,  there was the Australian beach crash. I talk about the beach incident here.  For years after those accidents I put my back out doing simple things like taking off my cycling shoes or sitting too long at my desk.

All of that prompted me to get a standing desk and I’ve used one at work for more than a dozen years.

So for the past bunch of years,  since moving to Guelph,  I haven’t had very many back issues. I figured I’d solved that problem.

Until last week.

After three days of bike riding,  followed by hot yoga,  and then weight training,  I spent way too much time sitting at my desk.  I was tired and somehow never moved my desk to the standing position. 

I followed the very long sitting at my desk day with a night at the movie theatre. When I got up from the movie theatre seat,  there was that horrible low back pain that I know so well from the past.

The next day I was okay sitting,  and okay standing,  but moving between those positions was very painful.

I thought, in that doomy and pessimistic way that gets us all sometime especially in this political climate,  that that was it.  My back would just hurt forever.

Sarah nagged me into stretching.  And I ordered a new set of yoga balls to use on my back when I’m sitting.

Here they are:

Yoga balls on the dash of the car

Lo and behold,  I’m better again.

Same lesson,  learned again.  Keep moving.

A person on a table being evaluated by a physical therapist. By Judy Beth Morris for Unsplash. Five lessons Catherine is learning from Physical Therapy (this time)
fitness · functional fitness · injury · Physiotherapy

Five lessons Catherine is learning from Physical Therapy (this time)

catherine w1 Comment

I’ve been in physical therapy for six weeks for sciatica, which has been centered on my right hip and glute. I had the same problem in my left hip and glute two years ago, and got physical therapy for it, which helped enormously.

But it came back, this time on the other side. Which brings me to the first lesson from this round of PT:

Lesson one: our physical vulnerabilities don’t ever go away; they’re always there and in need of attention and care.

I knew this, of course, as do we all. But when we devote concentrated attention to some problem, we tend to hope and believe that it’ll be fixed, once and for all. Well, in the case of our musculoskeletal bodies, this just isn’t true.

Lesson two: slow and steady actually works.

Once I got into physical therapy and made a little progress– less pain and more function– I was ready to throw myself into more intense activity. But they counseled me to let pain guide me; if doing something hurt a lot, stop doing it. Sounds simple, but this bears repeating.

Lesson three: more activity brings more discomfort, but it’s okay.

When I was on vacation in Canada, swimming and dog walking and just generally being more active, I had some level of pain every day, for much of the day. Because I’d been prepped for this, I didn’t freak out. I did what I wanted and could do, took Tylenol when needed, and enjoyed the fact that I was able to be more active and out there than the previous month. Yay.

Lesson four: sitting in cars and planes is evil for the body (or at least my body).

Yes, I knew this, but driving from Boston to Ontario and back again (with some detours along the way) showed me once again how my body is vulnerable. And don’t get me started on air travel; that’s what precipitated this flare-up. This doesn’t mean I can no longer drive. But it does mean that 1) I should stop more often and get out and stretch and walk around; 2) I should know that after a very long drive, my body will need attention through stretching, rest, and movement; and 3) If I ignore and push through this, I do so at my peril.

Lesson five: bodies are wonderful things. They take a licking and keep on ticking. And they respond to focused attention and care. This means that I have renewed appreciation and love for my physical self. This time around, both the physical therapists and I are working on a maintenance plan that I can and will follow. I really love what my body can do, and I want to keep doing it for a long time to come.

vintage bicycle in lush green field belarus Getting on and off your road bike with grace!
aging · cycling · fitness · injury

Getting on and off your road bike with grace!

Sam B3 Comments

Sometimes I worry that I’ve run out of things to blog about, but then there are new injury and age-related challenges that arise, I know that I am not alone, and I want to share the solutions I’ve found.

One of the things that older cyclists sometimes struggle with is getting on and off our road bikes. It’s enough of an issue that sometimes people choose a different style of bike–say, one with a step-through frame–when they get older. This issue didn’t bother me until knee surgery. My knees aren’t as bendy as they once were, and I also have stiff hips. I do a lot of physio, but I’m still not very flexible.

For me, it almost never is a problem getting on the bike. I’m all limber and stretchy then. Sometimes getting off, though, can be dicey, and it’s almost always when we’re stopping in front of a coffee shop, full of fellow cyclists, that I struggle. It’s embarrassing, and so I’m keen to find other ways to do it. If I’m home I sometimes gently drop the frame to the ground, in the grass, and step out and over it that way. Very easy! But necessarily something I want to do on the side of the road.

This video was really helpful. Turns out that I’m a fan of number 2, the side lean, and it’s how I now how I get on and off my road bike.

How about you?

This was another video of “magnificent” ways to dismount your bike. Enjoy!

Creating Ease Isn’t Easy
ADHD · fitness · health · injury · mobility · self care

Creating Ease Isn’t Easy

Christine Hennebury1 Comment

After last week’s conundrums, this Tuesday finds me feeling a lot better overall.

Things are getting a bit easier in my brain and in my muscles and while it’s tempting to jump back into my regular routine, I am determined not to fall into that trap.

Instead, I am working bit by bit on creating more ease for myself in my day to day actions.

And, like the title says, creating ease isn’t easy.

A drawing of the word ‘ease’ against a background of sets of concentric circles that overlap.
This ease was actually fairly easy to create. Image description: a drawing of the word ‘ease.’ Each letter is capitalized and is a different colour (blue, yellow, purple, dark pink) and the background is all kind of overlapping sets of concentric circles.

Creating ease means doing gentle yoga and stretches, breathing deeply, relaxing when and how I can and, it means spending a lot of time and energy paying close attention to how I am moving, how I am sitting, how I work, and how I do a variety of tasks.

My ADHD brain is ok with the first few things but it is not a fan of the latter part of that list – in fact, even the thought of paying that kind of attention to those details is tiring.

But I do want to feel better. And I know that unless I make some adjustments, it’s going to be a) harder for my neck/back/shoulders to heal and b) I’m going to keep having some of the same issues over and over.

Right now, I am working on two things that I hope will prevent me from exacerbating my current issues AND will help me avoid some other issues in the future.

Here are my current practices:

1) Getting up and rolling my shoulders/doing a few neck stretches every 20 minutes or so.

I already like to use the repeat timer app throughout my work day so I have a better sense of time passing AND so I don’t feel like any given task is going to take forever. (I have given myself permission to change tasks whenever the timer goes off)

Now, I don’t just note that time is passing, I use the chime as a reminder to move and stretch. It’s not perfect – I sometimes inadvertently ignore the timer – but I definitely have a higher success rate than I would without it.

2) Practicing holding my head differently when I am drawing, writing, and using my phone.

Since a lot of my leisure time is spent doing one of those activities making this change will really help.

Instead of spending so much time with my head down and my neck jutting forward, I am taking Katy Bowman‘s advice about how to hold my neck:

A video called ‘Hold Your Head Better When Using Screens’ from the Nutritious Movement YouTube channel. The still image shows a woman in a purple shirt standing in profile holding a phone in her right hand and holding her left hand up to the back of her neck.

Since I can’t necessarily put my drawing/reading/writing in the same place I would hold a phone, I am also using the same movement to take breaks during my drawing/reading/writing sessions – here’s a demo in this Facebook video of hers from a few years ago.

Between these two movement elements things, the yoga, the massage therapy, and all of the being-careful-but-not-coddling-myself, I am hoping to keep inching towards more ease in my body – especially the muscles of my neck and upper back.

Creating ease isn’t easy but it will be totally worth the effort, right?

Right?

Right?

(It had better be!)