In this post we discuss why your daily exercises help, but don’t seem to keep the pain away.
Do you find yourself having to do a bunch of exercises every day just to stay out of pain?
These are usually exercises that you perform at home with either your own bodyweight or resistance bands.
Frustrating and time consuming isn’t it?
You most likely find yourself dreading the exercises, but you do them because you dread the pain returning more.
You know exercise is good for you, but should you have to do it every day just to feel OK?
The simple answer is no.
Are your daily exercises working? Kinda
Whenever I meet people in this situation I’m struck by the negative relationship they have with exercise.
Understandably, you’re bored with the same exercises and the amount of time it takes just to maintain the status quo.
But you’re obviously afraid of the consequences when you don’t go through the all-too-familiar routine.
So you do it.
Sometimes with your full attention, but usually whilst trying to distract yourself with a TV programme or a podcast.
You’ve probably also got good at multi-tasking. Doing a few repetitions here and there whilst cooking or brushing your teeth.
Let’s stop for a moment and take a step back. What was the purpose of these exercises in the first place?
To get you out of pain most likely.
Are they working? Yes and no right?
You’re in a liminal space between feeling good and waiting for the next episode of pain.
And there’s a good reason for this.
It can be found in the SAID principle.
The SAID principle
SAID stand for:
Specific
Adaptations
to
Imposed
Demands
Put simply, your body will only adapt to the specific stimulus it receives.
If you perform 8 repetitions with a 5kg dumbbell every day, it won’t create the necessary adaptations that will enable you to perform 8 repetitions with a 20kg dumbbell.
You have to keep asking the question with a progressively increasing load to get further change.
Let’s check back with your current exercises.
Have you been slowly but surely increasing the demands?
Probably not, because if you’re using home exercises, this is extremely difficult to do.
How do you add a measurable load to a clamshell exercise for example?
Even a push up has built-in limitations.
Further load produces further adaptations
Your body has adapted to the exercises you’re using. And that adaptation is not enough to keep you out of pain for any length of time.
It’s a positive sign that exercise has an effect on your pain. But this is only a glimpse of what’s possible.
To gain a longer lasting benefit you need to create further adaptations. That will only occur by carefully and progressively adding load.
To do this simply and effectively, you’ll most likely need a gym.
Summary
Take heart that exercise will probably improve your situation, and congratulate yourself for sticking with it this long.
Understand, however, that there’s a large amount of unexplored territory that contains the long-term solution to your current predicament.
Once you decide to explore it, you’ll move further away from pain without having to sacrifice so much of your time to do it.