Now and again as a client is moving through the process of wrangling in whatever pain or problem originally walked them through the door, they ask a question…
“Where exactly is this going?”
Unfortunately for that person the answer that I have painfully learned to give is not one that they may expect or necessarily like. It goes something like…
“Where this goes entirely depends on what you want.”
After all, if there is no destination then any road will do.
You see there was a time that I would tell a person exactly what they should work for, or strive to achieve. That was because I could then, and can still now, tell you with confidence exactly what you may need in order to have the best chance at avoiding injury, strain or struggle with whatever level of living anyone may be looking to take on.
How strong you may need to be…
How flexible you may need to be…
How steady you may need to be…
And, how much endurance you may do well to have.
Tell me the level and nature of rigor that you want to have comfortable access to, and I will tell you what you need in order to achieve that.
Again… you must tell me what you want.
Unfortunately, some folks do not think about what level of rigor, freedom or possibility they may want in their life.
At times, they are so stuck in a world of limitation that they cannot conceptualize much beyond solely being free of it.
They do not know where they want to be…they just don’t want to be where they are.
You see folks tend to come to me when they have a problem either does not go away, or just keeps coming back.
At best maybe they had gained some ways to temporarily relieve some of their problem, but ultimately they were stuck in reaction mode with their body… putting out fires while waiting for the next one to crop up. In order to get by in situations like this, often folks need to do a great deal of compromising and acceptance of a situation that seems out of their control.
They lose touch with what may be possible beyond where they are stuck.
This is that awful place that I call Rehab Purgatory…and I deeply enjoy helping people get out of it.
Now, how you actually go about doing that is fairly straight forward.
Figure out what you are stuck doing that is perpetuating the problem, and then learn how to have more options. Ideally those options allow you to do whatever it is you want to do in a manner that distributes labor throughout your body… instead of overloading those chronically aching parts.
That manner we could call body language…or posture…or tone. If you think of it as the way in which you are tuned, then you would not be far from the truth. After all, any instrument must be kept in tune in order to keep a tune…
This process of tuning ones body language is a simple one, and since we are all in a constant state of never ending adaptation it tends to work impressively well.
However you cannot stop there…you need to build a capacity both on and around that newly acquired manner.
And it is having access to a broad and large physical capacity that I often see lacking in folks that struggle to get out of Rehab Purgatory. They are able to work themselves to a place where the pain or problem can be relieved, but they have no place to work towards to give them wiggle room beyond those new boundaries.
A large physical capacity means that you are not just strong, flexible, steady or conditioned enough to simply meet the typical demands of your daily, weekly life.
It means you also have cold access to strength, flexibility, steadiness and conditioning that far exceeds those demands.
Now, if you are wondering just how strong I find folks do well to be, watch the video below to learn more…
If you are wondering how flexible I observe folks do best being, watch the video below to learn more about just that…
If you are wondering what level of endurance any of us will do well to have access to, watch the video below for that information…
And finally, if you would like to know what level of steadiness tends to be needed for our resilience, watch the video below to learn just that.
SUMMARY
Now for some these standards will sit as intuitive and even essential. However, for others they may seem like a bit of a stretch beyond where they themselves may be, or perhaps see the need to be.
Regardless where you personally may find yourself within that spectrum, it is hard to deny that we all do best when we have both not just wiggle room but also a reserve that we rarely need to tap into or use.
That is probably because this is not a novel concept.
Whether you are running a business, a household budget or even a farm…the last thing you want to do is to barely make ends meet. Just like having a financial reserve, having a physical capacity that far exceeds the demands of your typical daily life is crucial for making the big and strenuous events of living more manageable.
With that, just like building a financial reserve… building a large physical capacity is an act of consistent intention and will.
However… it does not just happen on its own… it must be made to happen.
I hope you find the above helpful, and I hope you are comfortable, able and well.